KonMari and How Ideas Spread

10 shirts and 2 pair of pants standing tall in one dresser drawer

It started with a group chat message among our cousins about a show where people pray to their houses and clothes.

What?!?

What they were talking about is “Tidying Up”, a Netflix show about cleaning and decluttering. Two of our cousins had watched the show. One of them had started working on decluttering and organizing their clothing using the methods described in the show. The two people in our chat who had seen the show had what I thought were conflicting perspectives, so I had to watch at least one episode for myself to see what it was about.

The show was interesting and entertaining. I didn’t come to the same conclusion as the other two from the methods used in the show. The host, Marie Kondo uses the KonMari method of tidying and decluttering to teach people how to overcome their overabundance and clutter.

As I watched, I didn’t recognize Marie or the method. I was commenting on the show to my wife in the room and on our cousin chat as I watched. Partway through the episode, my wife got up from her chair, went over to our bookcase and pulled out her copy Marie’s book: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing and plopped it in my lap. We owned the book! As I looked at it, there are about 20 colored flags marking important spots. She’s had it for a few years and read through it twice. She’s put some of the ideas into practice, but not done the full program.

That was when I discovered that the host of the show was also the creator of the method.

I continued to watch.

As she had people pile their clothes holding each article, checking to see if the object “sparked joy”, something resonated in my memory. I grabbed my computer and looked up The Happy Philosopher. Sure enough, within the last month, I had read his post about his experience using the KonMari method to tidy his house.

Interesting. The book has been in our house for years, I read a blog about the method, and now family are telling me about a show about it.

Ideas and thoughts are interesting things. They exist and move, filter in and out of our conscious and subconscious waiting for the moment that we’re ready for them. It’s like when I buy a car, and then as if some switch was thrown, I notice all the other cars around me that are the same. Our current vehicle is a 2007 Mazda CX-9. We’ve owned it for a few years. I didn’t think about Mazda’s at all before buying it. After, I notice all the CX-5s and 9s on the road. They were there before I bought mine, I just didn’t see them.

I’m glad that our cousin mentioned her experience in our group chat that day. For whatever reason, I was open to thinking about the KonMari method that day. Like the Mazda, since watching the show, I’ve stumbled upon many bloggers who have written about their experience practicing the KonMari method.

I’ll admit, I’ve dabbled a little bit with it myself. I love the idea of folding and putting away clothes so that they stand on end. I rearranged my dresser about a week ago to do that with some of my clothes. What amazed me was that I was able to free up a whole drawer in my dresser just from using the space more effectively. I do like being able to see all of what I have at one glance rather than having to either lift pieces of clothing to remind myself what is underneath, or just never wear them because out of sight is out of mind for me.

I started reading Marie’s book. I’m about halfway finished and it is quite good. I feel like my wife and I do well with our clothes, okay but not great with books, and bad with papers and what Marie calls komono (small, miscellaneous things).

I’m sure that we’ll tackle the full method as a family in the coming weeks and like others, I’ll write about our experience. For now, what is most interesting to me is the confluence of the ideas: clutter, tidying, happiness. Having moved recently, we went through most of our stuff and got rid of a lot. Being in the new house, we’re experiencing challenges with how and where to store some things. Like Marie, many of the other bloggers and influencers that I read and listen to focus on happiness and joy, especially in relation to the things that we want and own.

I haven’t solidified my goals for 2019, but I’m working on them. I know that joy and happiness will play a significant role in the preparation and execution of my goals. Given the preponderance of influence that Marie Kondo is having, my guess is that her methods will also have significant impact on my family and I this year.