First off: heard of Marie Kondo, the Japanese tidiness guru? She is the woman who made folding clothes a multi-million pound business, with a number of best-selling books and a Netflix series. She is huge, a byword for a way of life epitomised by having a calming sock drawer. Yep. By dint of her revolutionary folding method — you fold your socks or whatever so as to stand upright in the drawer, thereby saving space and enabling you to see all your stuff — you transform your life.
Just so you know, the other aspect of her philosophy is to ask of each item you possess before you declutter it: does it spark joy? Cue endless hilarity in contemplating your vests.
Anyway. It turns out that in this fallen world, there are limits to the human potential for tidiness. And, as any of us could have told her, that limit comes when children enter the scene. Marie now has three, the latest a little boy. Tidiness succumbed to small children, though I bet her notion of untidy is way different from mine.
“I firmly believed that tidying was possible, even with children,” she said.
“But when my daughters were one or two years old, and they were completely out of control and would overturn the shelves and make a mess, that’s when I realised it is really very difficult.”
Hah. Welcome to our world, Marie.The pictures on her website of her in a minimalist kitchen, contemplating a glass of water, or sorting photographs on a table bare except for a bunch of flowers, can perhaps be revised to include Play-Doh and Kinder egg bits.
Yet speaking as a congenital failure on the Life Changing Magic of Tidying (one of her books) front, let me rally to her defence. She comes from a culture, Japan, where minimalism is an aesthetic. There is something calming about not having too much stuff.
I tried and failed to embrace her philosophy, and frankly even without children I would have failed: think a small flat, with piles of books.
Moreover, a tidy drawer unravels when you’re in a hurry and you stuff more into it in a ball.
Marie Kondo has encountered the reality of children: another book there. But she has given us something to ponder — in a chaotic world, it is a comfort to think that you have control over something, if only it’s a sock drawer.
