No, Marie Kondo didn’t betray you
Marie Kondo isn’t trying to get you to fill your house up with stuff now that you’ve gone and gotten rid of everything on her instruction. Specifically, her stuff.
Perhaps some of you are confused. Allow me to back up to the very beginning and explain.
Marie Kondo, in case you weren’t aware, has had a very eventful year. She’s a Japanese organization consultant currently residing in Los Angeles. She’s the author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which instructed readers in what she calls the “KonMari Method” of tidying. Then, in January, she was the subject of the Netflix original series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, where she visited people’s homes and helped them tidy while also instructing viewers on the method.
What’s the KonMari method? It’s actually not too complicated. The idea is, basically, to get rid of things that don’t “spark joy” — that is, they don’t make you happy and don’t serve any purpose by being in your life. It turns out that for most people, that’s a lot of their things, and such gentle advice has managed to lead to quite the backlash since the show was released.
Perhaps the biggest problem people had with the KonMari method was her treatment of books. In one episode, Kondo visits a couple who own many books. She mentions during the course of this episode that she, herself, keeps less than thirty books. Unfortunately, a meme was created that spun this statement into “ideally, keep less than thirty books.” Since many people view books as almost religious objects, this drew a lot of ire.
Others took issue with the aspect of her method that said to thank the things you were throwing away for what they’ve done in your life, believing it silly. Still others — generally the same people — mocked her practice of “waking up” books by tapping on their covers. Both of these practices are rooted in her Shinto belief, which holds that objects themselves have their own energy and divine spirit, and should be treated with the same respect you’d show to another creature.
Hot takes and discourse abounded and many articles were written, but then finally died down as people moved on with their lives.
Still with me? Okay then.
On November 18, 2019, Kondo added a store to her online website, called The Shop at KonMari. It was opened partly in response to people asking her what she uses in her life, and partly because Marie Kondo is a business owner and that’s what business owners do — attempt to grow their business. For just about anyone else, it would have been a career move nobody would have commented on, a logical expansion of KonMari Co.
Not for Marie Kondo.
Almost immediately, articles began flying around with headlines such as CNN’s “Marie Kondo cleared your homes of clutter. Now she wants to sell you stuff”. People talked about feeling betrayed, as if Kondo personally appeared before them and dumped a cartload of knick-knacks in their living rooms. People compared it to Gwyneth Paltrow’s much-maligned Goop, a similar purveyor of overpriced lifestyle goods.
Throughout all of this, I couldn’t help but be confused by the outrage. Was it really so offensive for her to have added a shop?
I decided to check out the store. Just like seemingly everything about Kondo, it was slick and minimalist. The shop sells mostly home goods — think serving bowls and soap dishes — but also a few surprising things, like tea and sponges. A lot of the items, no surprise, have a focus on organization — baskets and boxes and the like. Everything seemed pretty expensive, or at least, definitely more than my cobwebbed wallet could handle.
Still, none of it seemed like it was worth getting so angry about. It didn’t seem like the outrage matched what was happening here. After all, Marie Kondo is not the only organization consultant in the world, and she’s far from the only person to have proposed decluttering as a way to achieve a more beautiful home and peaceful life.
Indeed, cleaning and organization powerhouse Martha Stewart has a shop on her website, and she’s sold her own line of branded goods for a long time. Yet it sits there right alongside articles like “Your Cluttered Home Is Stressing You Out More Than You Realize, According to a New Study.” Isn’t that hypocritical of her, too, then? Yet you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone complaining about the presence of a shop on her website.
I did a quick comparison between the two websites. Maybe it was just the sticker shock of Kondo’s $85 trivet on the first page; I know I wouldn’t pay that for a trivet. But a somewhat comparable trivet on Martha Stewart’s shop was $100. Kondo sells a large basket for $50; a similarly sized and designed basket (albeit with wheels added on) was $390 — thankfully, it was on sale for $146.
This was the case all around: the items in Kondo’s store, and Stewart’s store, were about comparable in price. In fact, I’d say Stewart’s goods were more expensive while not being of the same quality. After all, many of the metalwares on Kondo’s website — like the trivet — are actually handmade. Plus, isn’t it reasonable for her to sell organization and display items? Part of her method is to find a home for what you’re keeping. Why shouldn’t it be a hammered brass bowl to set on your coffee table?
The truth behind the matter is very mundane, and it’s not any different from many other cases of internet outrage: people are simply misunderstanding what Marie Kondo is trying to say.
The KonMari Method is very simple: keep what makes us happy, and get rid of the things that don’t. Of course, she makes a concession for things like mundane household items: nobody’s felt happy when they held their toilet plunger, but they probably felt happy when it unclogged their toilet. Not everything in our homes can make us happy all the time. She also recognizes that people are going to want to buy new things; all she recommends is that you perform the same check — “does it spark joy, do I really want this in my life” — on the item before you buy it. In fact, this advice mirrors advice frequently given out today for living more green, peaceful lives. The idea is that you purchase items with intention, instead of just buying things mindlessly.
Yet many people have construed this basic advice, for whatever reason, as “get rid of as many things as you can.”
In the second episode of Tidying Up, Kondo visits a retired couple who loves collecting Santa figurines. They have probably about a hundred of them. However, their house is so full of things that most of the figurines are stuck living in boxes and in dusty corners. Many people with that view of the KonMari method — get rid of everything — would probably have tossed the figurines. But Kondo, realizing these figurines made them happy, instead helped them to make space to display all of them.
Kondo admits in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up that not everyone is going to want to use her method. Not everyone wants to tidy up. But as she says, if you’re reading this book, that probably isn’t you. So, let me help you.
It’s time we just let it go. Marie Kondo didn’t do anything wrong by opening a store on her website. Rather, she did what every business owner in the history of capitalism has done, and found a way to expand her business. Luckily, it still lines up with her mission: Because she hopes these items will spark joy, too.
