‘Queen of clean’ Marie Kondo set in motion a home organising phenomenon when she introduced the world to the ritualistic art of tidying up. Now, five years since she last spoke publicly in Britain, something in her own immaculate and once uncluttered world has shifted: kids.
So zeitgeisty was Kondo’s categorical approach to minimising mess during the last decade that it spawned two best-selling books, a Netflix series, a spot on Time magazine’s list of the world’s most influential people, and an international uplift in storage boxes sales.
Yet it transpires that even a mother with a tidying-up empire to her name is not immune to the kind of colourful plastic detritus that accompanies children.
“Perfection isn’t necessarily the goal anymore,” says Kondo whose ethos of minimising ‘stuff’ and retaining and categorising the items that ‘spark joy’, means she’s eased up on mess since having her third child: a son, three, as well as daughters, seven and eight, with her husband and KonMari Media chief executive, Takumi Kawahara.
“Traditionally I would prefer toys that had a more natural colour or were more simplistic in their design,” she explains through an interpreter as she faces me over video call, dressed – pristinely – in an alabaster blouse, from an office of blush-painted walls and tall green house palms. “But my kids would gravitate towards something that was a lot brighter and stood out, or it would have characters on it. They would receive these as gifts and fall in love with them.”
And so she began to embrace the idea that however colourful or garish or whichever the character from kids’ TV emblazoned across its front, “if it sparks joy within my kid, then that in itself is quite nice”.
This acceptance of clutter creepingly taking over an otherwise spick and span living room is a shift relatable to parents the world over, not least Kondo’s millennial fans, who were reared on pared-back grey interiors and now constitute a good chunk of the 39-year-old’s seven million-plus social media followers.
“Five years ago, when I was last in London, I hadn’t had my third child yet. I think the children have become the centre of how I organise my own life,” says Kondo, who will make a visit to the capital next month to partner with the Clean and Tidy Home Show for an in-person course at London’s ExCel Centre.
“Until now, on a very personal level, what sparked joy in me was rather important and had a high priority but as our family continued to grow, finding a larger balance in terms of what sparks joy for the collective became more important to me.”
She says: “I recall one time, the house wasn’t fully tidied up, but my kids asked, ‘Hey can you read a book to us?’” Previously, Kondo would have tidied, but she explains: “I felt, in that moment, reading a book to my children would spark more joy and leaving the space in the state that it was in became second.”
The trademarked KonMari Method that sits at the heart of her business evangelises allocating household items “homes”: play figures in the play figures box, sweaters on the sweater shelf, stationery in the stationery tray, and so on.
Motherhood means Kondo has learned to accept “temporary homes” too – what you and I might describe as “a pile of stuff in the hall”. Nonetheless, there are places where she draws the line at mess: “There are two things that are very important to me, the first one being the sink. I want to make sure the sink is tidied up everyday so that’s a daily routine.
“Likewise, the bedroom, because whenever I go to sleep and wake up, the first thing I see that day are my surroundings and my bedroom, so I prefer not to have any toys scattered about. When I wake up, anything in my line of sight really is kind of burned into my memory as I start the day and I carry that image with me, so I try to make sure that the bedroom is always tidy.”
This extends to her children’s rooms: “Before anyone goes to bed, we make sure all the items are stored properly and assigned homes so we don’t see any toys scattered about as we go to sleep.
“If toys are being actively used or scattered during the day, I think that’s bearable, but even the kids’ bedrooms, before going to sleep, I think it’s important that they return the items to their designated homes.” Her kids each have designated spaces for their toys within their wardrobes. “Of course there will be sometimes where, within this space there might be a little clutter and they might not be perfectly tidied and we might agree, ‘Okay, let’s do this tomorrow,’ but at least it’s out of sight for when we go to sleep.”
The KonMari Method tidies by category, not location, and follows an order: clothes, then books, papers, miscellaneous, then sentimental. Inspired by her Shinto belief system and the rituals practiced as a shrine maiden in her native Japan, Kondo devised it as a 19-year-old university student, then commercialised it with her husband. There are now 900 certified KonMari consultants, across 55 countries (paying $3,000 each plus $500 annual membership) to learn, license and deliver the method to their own clients.
Meanwhile, her books, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and Spark Joy – a combined 30 million sales, in 24 languages – followed by an Emmy-winning Netflix series, taught followers how to do it, keeping items that “speak to the heart” and discarding those that no longer spark joy, thanking them for their service before “letting them go”.
“We’ll be talking about how the art of tidying up can change people’s lives,” says Kondo of her London appearance. It sounds grand but the popularity of her Netflix series, in which she organised participants’ homes, stemmed from the transformations they sought in their wider lives. In Kondo’s world, it’s not about simply tidying for the sake of tidying.
“Everyone has the potential to be able to want to and enjoy the process of tidying up their surroundings,” she says. “I think each individual has perhaps different timings where they come to realise, ‘I think I need it right now’.”
Comparing standards is hard, she says; after all, her own have changed. I can’t help wonder, though, what it must be like to have her over for dinner or her kids for a play date. Might you be tempted to do an extra spritz of the kitchen or cram the toys and coats into a cupboard to present some semblance of order? Does the same apply the other way around?
“Of course, I’ll always tidy up to a degree when I know I’m having guests. In terms of having people over to my house, I wouldn’t necessarily say everything has to be perfect. This is something I’ve learned through having children – it doesn’t always have to be perfect. I guess that pressure is not necessarily there anymore.”
Marie Kondo is a speaker at The Clean and Tidy Home Show, which runs 19-20 October. Tickets from www.cleanandtidyhomeshow.com.
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