Susie O’Brien: Marie Kondo, I think I love you
Tidying expert and TV phenomenon Marie Kondo has thrown a lifeline to those of us overwhelmed by old cushions, newspapers, bowls and books, writes Susie O’Brien.
Susie O'Brien
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Thousands of people around the globe spent their holiday time hugging their baggy granny undies, holding them tenderly to their chests and thanking them for their service. Then they turfed them, along with their collection of broken vegetable peelers and vintage Nokia mobile phone chargers.
The woman responsible for this global spate of cleaning, which has seen op-shops receive a 30 per cent increase in goods they don’t want either, is Marie Kondo.
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Kondo, the author of the bestseller, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, has been “enchanted with organising” since she was a kid and is now a professional “tidying expert”.
This means she goes around the world telling people they need to get rid of their crap. To help, she’ll charge them hundreds of dollars to follow her scheme and even sell them some nifty plastic boxes.
Kondo wants people to keep things that “spark joy” and ditch just about everything else.
It’s only meant to cover objects, but many people are applying it to annoying spouses as well.
The Netflix show, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, is already a huge hit. In it, a family with a sad backstory is in crisis over the stuff in their house that’s holding them back from moving forward. Kondo comes over and everyone starts crying. She takes a look around at the tip she’s being asked to fix up and declares she “loves mess”. She then makes more mess by emptying everything out on the floor.
My kids would be good at this — everything they own is already on their bedroom floors.
What follows is an emotional journey whereby the family works out whether 10-year old Happy Meals toys and broken hair straighteners “give joy” or can be chucked in the skip. Then they do more crying.
I love it in theory, because I love stuff. Lots of stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. My shed is filled with plastic tubs full of uni lecture notes I’ve kept from the early 1990s on post-structuralist feminist theory. There are artworks done in primary school which confirm that my lack of artistic talent was evident at an early age. And there is also a box of photos of guys I had crushes on in my teens, some of whom were lucky enough to give me pash rash at a Blue Light disco.
Looking at those things makes me happy. They bring back nice memories. Joy? Oh yes. I particularly remember the sparks of joy in the bushes outside Burnside Town Hall where the underage discos were held.
The truth, though, is that I don’t need these things.
There! I said it. Phew.
A recent renovation unearthed an alarming amount of complete trash which has been festering in my cupboards for way too long. There are kids’ DVDs that haven’t been watched since Nemo went missing. Kitchen gadgets that are never used and take up space, like the Tupperware salad spinner I bought at a friends’ shopping party after I got day drunk on cheap champagne with the school mums. And a whole pile of silly appliances like a popcorn maker that looks like a giant corn kernel, and an ice crusher in the shape of an igloo that vomits up shards of ice. There’s also my entire craft cupboard, which has been home for some years now to an old meat tray, egg cartons and an alarming number of pipe cleaners too bent to be reused.
Clearly, I need Kondo to help me part with these items, along with old magazine tear sheets for houses I could never afford to own, clothes that no longer fit and sticks used to stir paint that I haven’t been able to part with. Oh, and those old bikes cluttering up my shed. I am still waiting for the kids to grow backwards and ride them again.
I need to acknowledge they have once been useful, thank them for their service and respectfully part with them. Then I can go shopping and buy lots more stuff.
Marie Kondo, I think I love you.
Susie O’Brien is a Herald Sun columnist
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