Marie Kondo Has "Given Up" on Tidying and the World Is Outraged
Paid subscribers, listen the audio version - narrated by me - here
When I read Marie Kondo has “kind of given up tidying,” my heart sank through the floor.
I knew what was coming. A tirade of:
HA! I told you living with less isn’t possible
And
What an idiot this woman was to tell people to live with intention. Now we can get back to buying everything we want whenever we want without feeling guilty.
Sure enough, places like Twitter were lit with negative comments.
MK living messier than before touches a sore spot because she dared to question the unquestionable — our insatiable desire for stuff. She asked people to consider the intentions behind what they bring into their life.
It’s so much easier to smugly decree that if the MK herself has given up on her cause, it’s because the cause was a lost one in the first place than it is to do the hard work of working on your own consumption habits.
But in amongst all the vitriol, I was pleased to find some more considerate Tweets, like this one that puts it all better than I can:
It’s time to question why the world is hating on Marie Kondo right now.
And why we shouldn’t.
If anyone cares that Marie Kondo has stopped tidying, it’s a red flag
Aside from feeling sad about the anti-intentionality tirade MK’s announcement sparked, the other thing I thought about her was…nothing. Certainly nothing negative.
The fact that a woman with wildly different priorities to me has decided to relax her stance on tidying up didn’t make me indignant because I have nothing to be indignant about. I’m not about to stop being intentional with how I keep my house or what I spend my money on just because a celebrity in the same sphere as me has changed their priorities.
If anyone is pissed at MK or happy to name her a hypocrite, that’s more a reflection on them than it is on her. You can only get pissed at things that bother you — if you’re smugly shouting from the rooftops that you know she was full of BS all along, then perhaps it’s time to consider your own habits.
Marie was brave to take on the American market. Shopping and filling houses with stuff is like a national pastime much more than it is elsewhere in the world. The average American house has 300,000 items, in Europe, it’s 10,000.
I know from personal experience what it’s like to suggest that people might want to consider the kickass benefits that come with living with less. You run the risk of being called cultish, unrealistic, stupid, naive, or a deprivation-loving bitch.
It touches a nerve. A nerve that MK was all to happy to shred.
I liked how this tweet puts it:
Admitting that perhaps you’ve brought a few too many things into your house than you really want or need takes a lot of courage. It means accepting that you’ve wasted both time and money — and no one likes admitting that.
Introspection is never easy and MK has forced a lot of people to confront their own habits. IMO, that’s what is driving a lot of the bile against her right now.
It’s easier to “give up” with her than it is to realize that…
Just because MK has different priorities now doesn’t mean her teachings weren’t relevant
I’m on the record for saying that I’m not Marie Kondo’s biggest fan. Her “spark joy” method, although noble in its ambitions, was too flawed. Not everything has to spark joy to be useful or required.
BUT (and it’s a big but), that doesn’t mean her teachings didn’t have value. She questioned consumerism. She helped literally millions of people to buy and live with more intention.
There ain’t nothing wrong with that.
Her objectives were, I believe, good, but they were often misinterpreted. I can’t fathom the trend these days for taking everything to the extreme — if MK tells you to live with less crap, that means apparently, you must live with nothing.
This tweet sums it up nicely:
Now the Queen of Tidying Up has herself admitted that she doesn’t keep her house as tidy as she once did, it confirms in many people’s minds that being intentional with their consumption is indeed as unrealistic as they thought. Like everyone can breathe a sigh of relief that they no longer have to ask the hard questions about their spending habits. They can return to their messy, filled-to-the-brim houses guilt-free, throwing away The Magic of Tidying Up in the trash as they go.
Except that’s not how it works.
Just because someone’s priorities have changed doesn’t mean their teachings and opinions mean nothing. It’s a weird thing we do here, expecting everything to stay the same and for people — especially those who fight for a particular cause — to never change their habits or priorities. If they do, we declare everything they did previously a lie or worthless.
Poor MK never stood a chance at being allowed to be anything but both perfect and constant. And that’s the truly unrealistic concept here.
MK admitting her house is messier than it once was doesn’t conflict with her teachings anyway
People feel betrayed by Marie. They think she’s turning her back on those who bought into her philosophy.
Except, she’s not. I’d argue that her decision to stop tidying up so much fits rather nicely into her teachings.
Perhaps the “things” that spark joy in her home now are her children. All she’s doing is prioritizing them, as she taught everyone to do with things they love:
MK’s work was based on a philosophy of being true to yourself, questioning where you find joy and happiness and asking if stuff is where you are truly going to find it.
That’s not changed just because she’s decided to spend more time with her family than tidying up.
2 of the best pieces of content I’ve consumed this week
Netflix - The Society
The Society is a modern take on Lord of the Flies. A group of teenagers return from a trip to find their town completely empty. They have to form their own society in order to survive. It got me thinking a lot about human nature and living with people whose ideals and values wildly differ from your own. Most of all, it kept me happily entertained for a few nights this week.
Article - Moving to a Small Town Nearly Ruined Me Financially. This is Why
My friend U-Ming Lee gives an interesting perspective here about what moving to a small town during the pandemic did to him. His takeaway really stuck with me:
This is an indirect rant against cookie-cutter advice given by so-called “financial gurus”. Personal finance is personal. Emphasis clearly on the first word. You need to consider a broad range of individual factors in your decision-making. The connection between “moving to a small town” and “lower cost of living” isn’t straightforward.
My newest Medium articles (paywall free)
Here’s Why Sommeliers Ask You to Taste the Wine Before They Pour It — and Why It’s Total BS
4 Ways to Reverse the American Dream so Your Life Is Led by More than “Will That Make Me Money”
THANKS FOR READING!
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Really well said CB! I thought her overarching idea was solid and still very much in evidence with her decision. Her honesty about it is also refreshing. I think one of the collective problems is a lack of introspection, which results in literalism as opposed to a principled nuanced view. It’s intellectually lazy and rampant in the black and white polarization we’re seeing across the spectrum.
I thought we could all breathe a collective sigh of relief with Marie Kondo's revelation. If the "Queen of Clean" has the self-awareness to admit that keeping a house impeccably tidy with three kids takes a superhuman effort to the detriment of joy with her own family, then we must all realise that "impeccably clean" is an unrealistic ideal. I say this as a person who tends to keep his living space in a state of managed chaos -- emphasis very much on the latter word!