Is Marie Kondo’s Advice Really Life-Changing?
A new series explores tidying, and letting go
A new Netflix series, “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo,” is a mashup of reality show and how-to. It’s a continuation of the principles of Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and her years of experience helping people clean out their homes.
There’s a reason why her book has endured, when so many other books about cleaning or minimalism have fallen off the radar: her KonMari system works.
Her method revolutionizes decluttering. If you have too much stuff, there is hope. You can go category-by-category, see what “sparks joy,” and get rid of everything that doesn’t.
I followed the KonMari system to clean my home a few years ago. You can get the gist of her method from articles, but the book is a short read, and I found it well worth it. (I would refer back to my copy, but I gave it to someone else so she could declutter. She, too, read it and gave it away.)
Did the book change my life? Yes. Not in the “sell all your belongings and live in a monastery” way, but it definitely changed how I look at cleaning and organizing.
When I was growing up, I was frustrated because I didn’t know what to do with clutter. Cleaning didn’t come naturally to me. Then came…
