Meaningful Platitudes - Edition II: Is Marie Kondo an imposter or an inspiration?
When I tell you I can't get enough of the fact that Marie Kondo is pulling back from her tidying empire and status as an organizing deity to prioritize other parts of her life, I cannot stop thinking about it. I read the original article in the Washington Post 10 days ago and then about a dozen articles covering said article in Variety, Business Insider, and more. I am captivated.
A very brief recap for those who may have missed the backstory: Marie Kondo has written a bunch of books and has a Netflix series based on her trademarked KonMari method of organizing - an approach designed to optimize your life such that everything around you "sparks joy." Kondo and her method really took off in the 20-teens and reading this 2019 article in Vox is almost eery in how it tees up what would come next: 2020 and a global pandemic that stripped control from our lives and forced many people (the fortunate, non-essential workers among us) to hunker down our homes for a year.
Re-Enter: Marie Kondo. Suddenly, Tidying Up on Netflix is must-watch TV and people are learning to fold, color-code, and viciously eliminate clothing (and whatever else wasn't eliciting joy when we encountered it). Academic articles explore the phenomenon around the KonMari variety of minimalism in the context of the pandemic and the uniquely Western and particularly American application of KonMari to our lives. It's all worth reading and I find it fascinating.
But it has nothing on how I feel about Kondo's decision to step back.
I am obsessed with how of-this-moment the decision seems. On the one hand, there's a cynical take: a well-intentioned woman cashed in on a skill of hers that deeply resonated with a whole lot of people during a time when we felt like we controlled so little. (She launched a special online course in September 2020 and told Refinery29 at the time, "Home is now your office, your school, your gym, your sanctuary. Keeping it tidy and joyful is more urgent than ever!" She knew what she was doing.) Now estimated to be worth more than $11m, her "tidying empire" is firmly established, particularly in the US.
Yet, I keep thinking about the single episode I saw of Tidying Up called "Tidying Up with Toddlers." A stressed AF couple, both with jobs and young kids, got the Kondo treatment, describing their various sources of marital stress, at least some of which was due to feeling like they lived in a messy home. There were tears. There was neat folding. There were things that Sparked Joy and there were those that, apparently, did not. But it seemed the emotions were real and that this couple had tried to solve modern adulting through perfect drawer arrangement. And look I get it. I really do. I fold my clothes in Marie's method because it looks pretty and uses space more efficiently. But now the woman behind suggesting that all you need to get your marriage back on track is to clean up and she gets to say, nah?!
Recommended by LinkedIn
On the other hand...
Did Marie Kondo just show us what happens when your life circumstances change and how to give yourself the grace and permission to charge along with it? That when what worked for you before or what you held as important changes - potentially a lot - allowing yourself to embrace that, especially when your identity is deeply tied up in the previous "thing" - a job, a status, a community - is permissible, even encouraged. While I don't know if/how Marie Kondo grappled with the decision, I do know that letting go or making a significant change can be painful, scary, unpleasant, and traumatic. Could her willingness to share the pressure she feels ("Sometimes I pack my schedule so tightly I feel frazzled or am overcome with anxiety") illuminate a path for all of us to have the courage to leave what doesn't serve us in favor of what does? Clearly, I am not the only one to entertain this possibility.
The dichotomy of these two lenses have fully absorbed me. The woman who asks "Does it spark joy?" for a living decided that specific way of living no longer sparked joy. Does that make her a hypocrite sellout or a courageous purist? Does it make her principles less valid if she can apply them in a way that is inherently contradictory to their original intent? Would we (okay, I) care if she hadn't profited so enormously off one version only to change the rules? Or did we (I) misunderstand the rules all along but it felt so reassuring to be in control of something when we were so powerless that we skipped the meaning in favor of the comfort?
It took me so many days after the news to write this post because I really wanted to sit with the two halves of this contradiction to see if I netted out in favor of one or the other. I didn't succeed. The only thing I'm reasonably certain of is that our individual responses to this situation are in fact much more interesting to explore than the situation itself; rather, to use this as a lens to examine our own circumstances and feelings about change, priorities, status, control, and growth - all of which are messy and complicated and dynamic, especially right now, today. Maybe we simply take away that we're not alone.
And, if nothing else, the time to think and write about this sparked joy. I hope reading it did as well.