by Irene Soave
With the release of her third book, Kurashi, the decluttering guru has rearranged her priorities: Now I’ve realized that the most important thing for me is enjoying time at home with my kids
The smartest ones noticed right away: in his planetary bestseller The Magical Power of Tidying Up, he recommended folding socks rather than tucking them in so as not to stress them out too much. Or to say thank you with a small ribbon for their service, for every single item or piece of clothing that we wanted to throw away.
We would have eliminated him with one indisputable criterion: he exuded no joy (and the well-known aria from Rigoletto sums up well the stability and permanence of similar states of mind, nimble as a feather in the wind, especially in half the population).
Others have gotten to the site where he recommended keeping no more than thirty books in the home (per shelf? per meter? no, no: per family. But how? It’s the Japanese word tsundoku, meaning the wonderful stack of books books never read?).
There are those who came into the world a week after cleaning up and felt like an uninvited guest in their own home every time they were not faithful to the method. Which demanded several hundred euros from professional declutterers, who sprung up like mushrooms after the success of the teacher, to clean up a kitchen. Finally, everyone or almost everyone understood the truth, if the anonymous black jacket, which did not radiate joy and was therefore donated to Caritas, had really served that interview where it was more necessary to appear reliable than to radiate joy; and they had to buy another one (even higher due to inflation).
In the end, she admitted it herself: The Marie Kondo method, or Konmari method, is impractical.
The 38-year-old clean-up guru’s renunciation came on Sunday as she unveiled her third work, Kurashi, to journalists. Kurashi represents lifestyle and the advice he roughly gives to create one that includes enjoyable habits.
In between there is no (more) cleaning up. I gave up a bit, he says, after the birth of my third child, cleaning up the house. Now I’ve realized that the most important thing for me is to enjoy the time at home with my children, she says, that’s the best thing for me at the moment and at this stage.
For years, Marie Kondo lied and pretended that something impossible was easy and achievable, laughs Gaia Spizzichino, a 37-year-old Roman woman in Milan who, following the irony of the perfect Marie Kondo-style home, started an Instagram profile , @ normalizenormalhomes, in which he, with 155,000 followers, talks about his tragic cleanup and the difference between normal homes and those of Instagram. I’ve repeated the Kondo method several times. Sure, I’ve never said thank you and goodbye to my sweaters, but I still use some rules. Put things together of the same kind, don’t keep things that have been given to you just out of resentment at throwing them away. Etc.
But the renunciation shows that motherhood gets even the most ambitious into trouble. Maybe we were right in setting less than extraordinary goals before becoming mothers? Instagram has been the realm of photogenic tidying for years: after founder Marie Kondo’s turnaround, many influencers are also doing their job as closet organizers, ie they tidy up closets and drawers on behalf and even induced , is definitely at risk.
The decade of tidying is over, The New York Times begins that of tidying in an op-ed in late 2022: The lockdown that locked us in our homes has also meant that we’re tidying them as much as possible (yes, even with more than thirty books!), the price crisis makes us more economical in throwing away.
Most notably, the shocking discovery made by Rob Walker, the play’s author and design expert, that many objects we keep only because they remind us of something are actually concrete offshoots of our own identity.
It’s not for nothing that the hashtag #cluttercore is making its way on TikTok and Instagram and even on Pinterest boards, 80 million views on TikTok alone: untranslatable, more or less worthy of junk. Packed interiors, walls decorated to the smallest detail, stacks of books, glasses, sweaters, all on display as a constant reminder of our many needs and our many feelings, including nostalgia, of course. Also for the grandmother who didn’t throw anything away.
Jan 31, 2023 (Change Jan 31, 2023 | 3:37pm)
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