It is an act of radical social disobedience to criticise the cult of Marie Kondo. The Japanese “professional organiser” has a totalitarian hold on the global middle-class mind. More than 13 million copies of her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up are at large in at least 44 countries, with 150,000 sold in Australia alone.
Kondo has Netflix shows and was one of Time ‘s most influential people in 2015 (alongside Kanye West, Elizabeth Holmes and Vladimir Putin – not Time ’s most glorious year). Like Marcus Aurelius, Dale Carnegie and Mrs Beeton before her, Marie Kondo gives people a list telling them how to live. If the KonMariTM method has one unifying principle, it is to rid your life of anything that does not “spark joy”.
Illustration: Dionne Gain. Credit: This is not the only rule. There is Rule 2: “Imagine Your Ideal Lifestyle”.
Rule 5: “Follow The Right Order”. Rule 7: “Who Controls the Past Controls the Future”. (Actually, that last one is from George Orwell’s 1984 .
KonMariTM has only six rules.) To make room for neo-Kondo franchises such as The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning to Lighten Up! , bookstores and streaming services dedicate whole sections (tastefully spread out) to the moral benefits of purging your life of any excess baggage. Conversely, it’s hard to find titles like The Joy of Clutter or Heavy Up! which, if they existed, would be in the overflowing mess of the self-published Satanic worship section.
Cluttering gets.
