Me, trying to get rid of anything that doesn’t spark joy: Ugh I’m such a dumbass I should throw myself away.
Marie materialising in my room: Yes, this negative attitude doesn’t bring you joy. You should thank it for getting you through your past traumas but you no longer need it or want it so it should go.
I like Marie Kondo because I’m so used to all the rhetoric around “decluttering” or “tidying up” being about how it’s somehow immoral to own things and that we need to burn our possessions and all live in sterile minimalist Hell in a plain white apartment with a deck chair and one potted plant.
So I like hearing the tidy lady tell me that yes I should live in a hovel with a bunch of linguistics books and dragon statues and here are some ways to keep the hovel clean and orderly while I lurk in it.
It’s so refreshing.
All the other home decor people: “Kitschy nerd shit is a waste of space and you’re gonna get your soul devoured by a chaos dragon or some shit if you don’t get rid of all of it right now.”
Marie Kondo: “See, if you organize the kitchen in this way, you can display these Khorn Berzerker miniatures far more prominently.”
I was just reading an article on how much backlash Marie Kondo has been getting from some white westerners (especially women it seems).
And I’m just baffled. I expected dismissal from a lot of people, if only because of the animism and how some of the techniques are much more intensive than the average person’s… folding underwear, for instance, will strike most people as excessive when they first hear of it.
But there’s dismissal and there’s hatred, and it seems like the hints and bits I’ve personally seen are just the tip of the iceberg.
I’ve seen people blogging or vlogging about “doing konmari!” and then proceeding to… not. “Oh, she says do it all at once but I’m just doing my closet”, “I’m not thanking stuff I’m throwing out because that’s just kooky”, “I don’t have time to pile EVERYTHING so I’m just doing a drawer at a time”… that kind of stuff. Doesn’t seem so bad. I mean, they’re trying to cash in on the method by drawing in people who want to see it in action without actually fully doing it, but it’s not hateful as such – they’re adapting it and for many of them, it’s probably not malicious click bait, they honestly think they’re making it work for them and sharing that. It’s dismissive at times (they actually do use the word kooky, I’ve seen it a few times), and I’m quite convinced some of them only even bother calling it by name for hits, but it’s nothing compared to what’s apparently going on if you dig deeper than I did.
Some people have called her a monster. Some people have literally stated they could have come up with what she did and stripping her of any credit. More generally, people have just been pushing back with actual anger because, for example, they feel her values are totally foreign and weird and she’s trying to force them on them. Well, for one thing, she’s not forcing anything on anyone – obviously. The real issue, when you compare the reactions she gets to the reactions white male minimalists get, is that she’s a woman of color and she’s offering advice. It gets turned to “weird non white/non christian lady is imposing her views on me and she wants to burn my books OMG”.
And it makes the click bait people seem part of a larger, uglier movement, now.
And it’s maddening to me because… I am SO happy she exists. This is a woman who has a passion for tidying because of how happy tidy and clean places make her and has made it her job to share that. That is literally what she’s doing: she’s making a living out of helping people get the happiness she’s achieved for herself. Realistically, her method cannot possibly help everyone, but she really believes they can help some people so she’s going for it.
Yes, she makes money. Good for her, she’s making things better for people and that should enable her to make a living of it, and if a lot of people are buying, more power to her. She’s not deceiving anybody, she’s selling books about tidying that plainly state they’re about tidying.
Success is not evil just because it’s achieved by a woman of color instead of a white man.
First of all: Marie Kondo’s decluttering philosophy is not just some “woo-woo nonsense” she came up with on the fly. The Ascent explained that she’s using practices from Shintoism, which includes beliefs that nature and material things have spirits and must be treated with respect.
She’s not shoving her beliefs down your throat. In fact, she told Refinery29 that you don’t have to change your home if you’re comfortable with clutter. Just make sure “you still have a designated spot for each item, and also to understand how much quantity of each category of things you have and need.”
Marie Kondo: Maybe treat your home and possessions with respect, here are some methods to help you stay organised but feel free to tailor it to your self own life 🙂
The internet: Holy shit this woman must be burned at the stake immediately
This is what I’ve been saying when people bring this up in real life conversation. The idea that household objects have spirits is not new. And I think that bringing these beliefs into the practice of letting things go todeclutter your life is extremely effective.
We all joke about what Toy Story “did” to us, but it really is true that many people feel an inexplicable guilt when they throw something away, not just because it feels wasted, but because we feel, somehow, vaguely, impossibly, maybe it can feel sorrow.
I’ve only seen this addressed a few times by organization experts, and even then it was mocked.
Marie Kondo connecting her culture with that universal worry and telling people it’s okay, normal, to have that anxiety, and to give them ways to cope with it (i.e. thanking the object for its time in your life) is a really effective way to help people let go of these unecessary possessions!
Moreover, in the United States, many of us have been raised by our parents’ generation on the idea of the “starter house,” a smaller space we deem only acceptable until we can “upgrade.” But our generation can’t afford that.
In the show, young couples with children say they don’t have enough space, that their house is too small, and Marie Kondo teaches them that in fact, they do, and it’s not, they just need to learn how to manage and prioritize their space. People end up happier about their situations and lives.
The truth is we do live in a highly materialistic and throwaway culture, in which we accumulate a lot that we don’t need, until eventually we are drowning in our own Stuff.
This is especially a problem among the poor and disabled (both of which I am), because we hold onto things we don’t need now in case we need them later because we can’t just buy them again. But I think that fear of throwing away something we’ll need later grows to extremes, until we are trapped in a mess created by our anxiety.
I think it’s extremely refreshing for an expert to come in without judgement, without looking at us as if being poor and living in a mess of hand-in-hand, like so many others do, and saying there is a way to bring peace to your space, no matter who you are. She meets people on a level they can function on. Everyone is different with different needs, and she works with that.
This anxiety, along with the judgement we are Used to feeling from people who have jobs like Marie Kondo is what has made so many people feel so defensive and negative about what she has to teach, but it’s no excuse for the racist and culturally negative attitudes people use alarms against her work.
I have OCD, I am poor, I have a clutter problem. Solving it isn’t easy. I’m getting rid of stuff I think I can’t possibly part with. But once it’s gone, I feel so much lighter.
You don’t have to live by her ideals or even have any interest in her work at all, but the things being said about her and the dismissal of her work and culture need to stop.
