Can clean-up queen Marie Kondo convince a self-confessed collector of sweet wrappers to mend his ways?
I am flying across America to meet Marie Kondo, a diminutive Japanese Mary Poppins who transforms people’s lives by helping them to tidy their homes. Below, cities blossom and sprawl: millions of homes in which people fight, make love, cook, pick their nose, watch TV and accumulate clutter. Kondo has been in a few of them, kneeling to offer respect to the house before helping those who live there to purge, throwing out anything that does not spark joy. On the plane, I listen to the audiobook of her bestselling tome, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. It is easy to see why it has sold 10m copies. Kondo has hitched tidying to the bandwagon of wellbeing, and is prone to saying things like: “Putting your house in order is the magic that creates a vibrant and happy life.” And, “To go throughout life without knowing how to fold is a huge loss.” I would like to have a vibrant and happy life. I would like to know how to fold. Making order from disorder feels like a balm for these turbulent times.
Like a lot of messy people, I first heard about Kondo through my other half, who hoped it would cure my hoarding tendencies. Did I want to be cured? Not enough, perhaps, since I had waited until now to read her book. When I told a friend that I was interviewing Kondo, she responded: “OMG, my sister-in-law read Marie’s book and basically made my brother get rid of everything… and now she uses ‘Kondo’ as a verb.” This is a pretty good summation of Kondo’s method, in which people end up discarding 75% of their belongings. For accumulators like me, it’s the equivalent of going cold turkey.
Continue reading...from Property | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2AmPT1j
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