Marie Kondo shocked fans during a recent webinar by revealing that she has “kind of given up” on keeping her home tidy. “My home is messy, but the way I am spending my time is the right way for me at this time at this stage of my life,” she said.
The recent webinar was organised to promote Kondo’s new book, Marie Kondo’s Kurashi at Home: How to Organize Your Space and Achieve Your Ideal Life. “Up until now, I was a professional tidier, so I did my best to keep my home tidy at all times,” she explained. “I have kind of given up on that in a good way for me. Now I realise what is important to me is enjoying spending time with my children at home.”
Naturally, this has sparked some pretty intense backlash. One Twitter user shared a screenshot of an article about Kondo’s new attitude, captioned “VINDICATION IS MINE.” Another demanded an “official apology to those of us who she influenced to make our clothes into little envelopes when we HAD three kids!” Amen – how dare she demonstrate how she folds a T-shirt! The audacity!
Obviously, Kondo did not force anyone to “make [their] clothes into little envelopes” at gunpoint. She did not break into homes brandishing a knife and coerce people into binning all their worldly possessions. She did not invent consumerism or capitalism. Any anger at Kondo herself is misguided, but perhaps the strength of feeling towards her is really symptomatic of malaise and frustration at that which she has come to signify: the relentlessness of this culture of ‘self-optimisation’, where every aspect of your life should be as streamlined and efficient as possible.
Cheeringly, though, Kondo throwing in the towel is a sign of the times. We don’t want to be clean girls, we want to go goblin mode. We don’t want to girlboss, we want to girlrest. We no longer want to live in Kim Kardashian’s monochrome mansion, we want to live in Julia Fox’s rodent-ridden apartment. And fair enough x