The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing: When a Cleaning Consultant Comes to a Dilemma
Kondo is the author of “The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing”, a self-help book that took the world by storm.
“Now I realize what is important to me is enjoying spending time with my children at home,” the Japanese cleaning consultant recently told listeners, according to The Washington Post.
The person behind the KonMari method — decluttering by tossing anything that doesn’t “spark joy” — no longer (totally) practices what she preached. People shared their reactions on social media.
She said that she had become less obsessive with her tidying after she had her third child.
“This was both refreshing and validating to read,” wrote one Twitter user. “I have 3 kids and have been trying out the KonMari method every 3 months but it’s just not feasible.”
But for Kondo, who says her cleaning philosophy is based partly in the native Japanese belief Shintoism, keeping a tidy house is only part of the practice.
“The ultimate goal is to spark joy every day and lead a joyful life,” according to Kondo, who describes this philosophy as kurashi, which she says roughly translates to “way of life.”
Tidier Living in a Small World: The Life and Times of a New Mom and Daughter, and a Model for Living Well with Children
Plus, purging clutter isn’t as much a trend as it is a necessity for many city dwellers in Japan — and other parts of Asia where apartments are small to begin with.
It’s similar to what you’ll get in Manhattan, where the average size of an apartment is 694 square feet.
tidying in its most conventional sense has taken a back seat with her teachings focusing on what matters most in order to live one’s best life
“Just after my older daughter was born, I felt unable to forgive myself for not being able to manage my life as I had before. But, with time, I eased up on myself; then, after I gave birth to my second daughter, I let go of my need for perfection altogether,” she wrote.
Speaking at a recent media webinar and virtual tea ceremony, Kondo said: “My home is messy, but the way I am spending my time is the right way for me at this time at this stage of my life.”
According to the report from The Washington Post, the woman called herself a professional tidier who had previously sought out a perfectly organized home. Now, she has realized what is important to her, and that is enjoying her time with her children.
Editor’s Note: Holly Thomas is a writer and editor based in London. She is morning editor at Katie Couric Media. She was using the nameHolstaT. The author’s opinions are those of the commentary. View more opinion on CNN.
How Does Hugh Grant Get What He Wants? The Remarks of Sarah Kondo and a Parent to Mom and Dad About Their Families
As a species, humans have an immense capacity for adaptation. Over the millennia, this has often served us well. Do you have no desire of the nomadic life? Let’s plant some crops and settle down. Sick of irrigating all those crops by hand? Enter the wheel. Do you want to keep a record of all this? We will be able to write.
We usually struggle with change on an individual level. Would the parents sell the home? Distressing. A favorite bar is turned into a pizza joint. Weird. Twitter swaps the “Home” and “Latest” tabs for “For you” and “Following”? It was Catastrophic.
Her benign comment, while welcomed with a sigh of relief in some circles, was met with a very strong reaction in others. Among the most widely shared of these came from the filmmaker Sarah Polley, who moaned: “Where is the official apology to those of us who she influenced to make our clothes into little envelopes when we HAD three children!”
Though Polley later deleted the tweet and clarified that she’d intended it as a joke, the response it received suggested it gave voice to a broader feeling of frustration. Kondo’s success was built on tidying, and encouraging us to tidy in turn. Where was her loyalty to tidying? She sold us a way to live and then left her well-ordered lane.
The discomfort, serious or otherwise, with Kondo’s personal rebrand demonstrates a rigidity that’s reflected across many areas of life. We typecast actors, then shock when Hugh Grant displays a range that is beyond endearingly foppish, or as in the case of Jennifer Aniston, turn her hand to drama. Children, once established as academic, sometimes struggle to transition to being “creative” or “sporty.”
There is an implicit sense that if you establish a particular activity or trait in your identity it is greedy or unfaithful to try something new. Devaluing what came before is when we rationalize the adjustment. The pursuit of a perfect home was pointless. Of course Hugh Grant loves playing twisted weirdos now, charming leading men are dull!
It can be a problem to apply it to ourselves, because it can be very limiting when applied to others. Why attempt any change, why it comes with an implicit assumption that we got things wrong before? How dare we grow, when we’ve already taken up enough space?
As a child, I was told that I was good in school, but what I was told wasn’t true. You are good in class, but they are good at sports. They run and jump when you sit and read.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/opinions/marie-kondo-tidying-no-more-thomas-ctrp/index.html
Running for a New Diversion: Why Running for London became a Dream About Running for the First Half a Million Years. The Queen of Clean
It was decades before I realized that sitting and reading, running and jumping were not exclusive. After I turned 30, I tried my first jogs and after a few months, I was ambling confidently around London. I was a passionate runner for about a year. I talked about running, I read about running I had a dream about running.
I stopped running sometime in the night. My attention span for almost everything cannot last more than 12 months, which is why I found a new diversion: studying law. Superficially, this may have looked like a callous rejection of hard effort in favor of a shiny new hobby. In fact, it was a natural progression.
In a culture that’s inherently suspicious of the unknown, change is often misread either as an aberration or as a tacit acknowledgment that we’d underperformed until that point. The queen of clean has shown that change is often a sign of growth as it shows you that limits you set for yourself weren’t true.