Kondo-mania takes over globe
Home decluttering expert has been mentioned on Twitter more than 80,000 times since ‘Tidying Up’ released
First, let’s take a moment to thank the device you’re using to read this story, or the table holding up your newspaper.
Your computer and phone and furniture work very hard for you. They’re inanimate objects, yes. But think of how you’d feel if you lost them.
We all have attachments to our things. And if you live in America, you probably have too many of those things. Enter Marie Kondo. Her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, first graced us in 2014. As of now, she’s also a streaming sensation: season one of Tidying
Up went live on Netflix on January 1, just in time to catch loads of well-meaning but hungover resolutionmakers.
Kondo drops in on harried families not unlike Mary Poppins, armed in a uniform of spotless snow-white sweaters and floaty skirts and cheerfully bearing an armload of nested boxes. T-shirts are folded, books are tapped, papers and cords are wran- gled, the house is thanked. When she departs, she leaves in her wake a beatifically serene family, secure in the knowledge that the carefully folded drawer contents and meticulously organised home will definitely, for sure, always look that way.
The tenets of Marie Kondo-ing your home are simple: Hold every item you own. If it sparks joy, keep it. If not, get rid of it.
If social media is any indication, the message has resonated. Since the show launched, America has collectively emptied its closets onto the bed. More than 94,000 Instagram posts are tagged #mariekondo, and she’s been mentioned on Twitter more than 80,000 times since January 1. Two-thirds of the people talking about Kondo on Twitter are female, according to a data analysis from the social media analytics firm Brandwatch, and the majority are having a positive reaction to the show.
It’s not surprising that the show is appealing to people, said Katie KilroyMarac, an assistant professor of anthropology at University of Toronto.
“This is a golden age of consumers” in America, said Kilroy-Marac, who studies material culture and ethical consumerism and has done research on hoarding. Collectively, she says, we’ve reached a breaking point: “We’re literally suffocating in our things.”
A not-insignificant part of the appeal of the show, and of the idea of Kondoing our own spaces, is the idea that being more organised would make us less stressed.
Darby Saxbe, an assistant professor of psychology at USC, worked on the UCLA Center for the Everyday Lives of Families study as a graduate student. In it, researchers did observational studies of middle-class families around LA, not unlike the ones featured in Tidying Up.
“One of the things that researchers noted to each other was what a clutter crisis our families seem to have,” Saxbe said.
Even if you’re not prepared to embark on a full Kondo-ing, there are lessons to take away. Create an intentional relationship with the things you own. Treat your things with kindness. Be grateful to your belongings for what they do for you.
And don’t forget to thank your phone. —