I think the thing about Mari Kondo that was so revolutionary to a lot of people was just the idea that cleanliness wasn’t something you owed anybody or something you do for other people or like-
Like I grew up with a Very Clean mother, but while I got quite a few good homemaking skills from her, the primary attitude about cleaning and tidying I got from the way she talked about it was that like - keeping clean is a Moral Good that we are Obligated To in service of some higher power like God or Society. Being tidy is how you show your Inherent Value to people by displaying what a Good Person you are to them, and it’s also about Making Them Comfortable and Staving Off Their Judgment. And it’s purposes are performative or they are in service to absolute utility. If it’s not about avoiding judgment, it’s about optimizing yourself to peak productivity, again in service to some overlording expectations you are required to meet to be Worthy. Organization, Aesthetic, and Discipline are all variables in a large equation that exists to determine how good a grade you can get on some cosmic test that you’re always taking.
And I think lots of people grew up feeling like that. That “chores” or cleaning were about other people or a standard set outside of yourself. Something done to you by someone or something else in service of their interests.
And then Mari Kondo comes along as says the simplest damn thing, “your space exists to make you happy” and it’s fucking RADICAL to thousands of people. I realize the advice in her books can seem like the same advice every decluttering “expert” has been giving since the dawn of time - don’t keep things beyond their usefulness, make sure there’s a dedicated space for everything. But from everyone else that advice felt in service to an overbearing “should” that was disparaging and disempowering and just makes a person feel like a failure.
Meanwhile, the very first step of the “KonMari method” is literally just “Think about what makes you happy.” She explicitly instructs you don’t start tidying without first considering your happiness. And then your own happiness is at the center of every step. There’s no hard law, no strict number. Not “try to get rid of half your things” or “throw away everything you haven’t used in a year”. It’s “go through everything in your life while thinking about your own happiness.” Wild. Unprecedented. My happiness? My joy? It’s not about Right and Wrong or Proper and Improper, it’s actually about being happy?
I think for lot of people raised in a certain Protestant mindset in the West, the idea that being happy was a factor at all in maintaining a space, let alone the main goal, was a complete revelation. Of course it seems absurdly obvious in retrospect, but a whole lot of us weren’t raised to take our own happiness into account, especially when it comes to housekeeping. Oh, my goal is to be happy. My goal is to get joy out of my space. I don’t owe anyone anything, but I owe myself kindness, and I deserve only things that make me happy. Amazing. Never even thought about being happy before. Been told how to optimize efficiency, how to optimize appearance, how to optimize utility, how to optimize storage, and it’s all a drag, and then Mari Kondo comes along like “what about joy?” Damn. That’s way easier and more fun and also has more sustainable results.
All of this and that she helps so much with my severe empathy for inanimate objects. I’ve been able to do a lot more with how gentle and loving and considered her approach is rather than with guilt or obligation.
(via dollsonmain)
