Since Marie Kondo's birthday is this week, I wanted highlight her!
Today I wanted to provide an introduction to Marie Kondo, for those of you not familiar with her and her contribution to the organizing world.
Marie Kondo (aka KonMari) turns 36 at the end of this week! She was born in Japan and is married with two daughters. She started consulting for tidying at the age of nineteen. She has now released five books and had a Netflix Series called Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.
Her show is one of the moments that brought my attention to the importance of an organized home and that people need someone to guide them through the process.
There are three areas about Marie Kondo that really captured my interest.
She was Always Organizing
From reading her mother's magazines on decorating and cleaning tips as a young girl to her encounter with The Art of Discarding by Nahisa Tatsumi in middle school, KonMari was always seeking out ideas around creating order. When she encountered the The Art of Discarding she immediately decluttered her room and was thrilled at the transformation after getting rid of so many unnecessary belongings.
Marie would tidy everywhere she went and quickly turned it into a career.
She Loves Sharing Her Joy
She identified a need for teaching how to tidy with her KonMari Method. She believes anyone is capable of a tidy home, regardless of their personality or excuses.
Her belief is that if you tidy all at once you won't rebound.
The origin story of her book is that she had too many clients on her waiting list that she found a way to spread her KonMari method to others by writing a book.
She has a Shinto Influence
Shinto is considered the indigenous religion of Japan and embodies many aspects of the Japanese culture and values. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shinto)
One aspect of Shinto is that spirits are believed to inhabit all things and those spirits are worshipped. Marie Kondo's exercise of greeting a house and her emphasis on thanking belongings comes from her Shinto background. She states "One theme underlying my method of tidying is transforming the home into a sacred space, a power spot filled with pure energy." The gratitude of our homes is a great concept to get our organizing mindset flowing!