The New Marie Kondo Show on Netflix Will Give You Life in 2019
Marie Kondo - organization expert and best-selling author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up - is bringing happiness to clients and radiating positivity through all TV screens with her new Netflix show, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.
In the new Netflix original (streaming January 1), Kondo and her interpreter enter the homes of those who want and need help organizing all of their accumulated stuff.
From stacks of magazines hidden in the corner of a closet to hundreds of baseball cards to a sneaker collection totaling 150 pairs (honestly, impressive), Kondo teaches clients to tidy their homes with her legendary KonMari method.
The KonMari method focuses on organizing homes by categories of items, rather than tidying from room to room. There are five different categories: clothing, books, paper documents, “Komono,” which is essentially a miscellaneous category, and sentimental items, which Kondo saves for last because it’s the hardest one to navigate.
The KonMari method is pretty extensive and incredibly time-consuming (Marie has each client take all of their clothes out of their closets and drawers and create a pile on their bed in order to sort through them, which is anxiety-inducing to say the least.) But it also appears to be effective for families.
The tiny tidying expert brings a mindfulness to the process of organization. She begins the first session with each client by asking to “greet” their home - a process she says is very important to her. Kondo seems to carefully and meticulously choose a particular spot in the house before kneeling down and actually touching the floor beneath her. With her eyes closed, she greets the home as the clients watch and take in her process.
Kondo has a genuineness and a positive energy about her that are as contagious as they are inspiring and necessary after the insanity that was 2018. She addresses the true issues making it difficult for clients to keep their homes tidy and helps to resolve them.
In one of the more heartwarming moments of the season - while working with a mom whose family relies on her to do everything at home, from cooking and cleaning to dishes and laundry, Kondo helps relieve her of this stress by asking if her husband and children could become more involved in the housework (the answer is yes.)
Kondo works with eight different clients in the first season of her show. Including a millennial couple who have two toddlers (and very much enjoy calling each other “babe.”) A young gay couple who believes if they can turn their fratty apartment into a neat and tidy home, their parents will approve not only of their house but also of their lifestyle. And a widower working to declutter her home after her husband has passed.
Kondo’s clients mainly struggle with the problem of choosing which items to keep and which to discard.
She teaches them to keep only the items that “spark joy.” When asked what that means to her, she holds a shirt close to her heart and lets out an overly joyous squeal of sorts, explaining it’s a feeling you can’t really describe; you must experience.
Kondo also stresses the importance of gratitude - gratitude for the items you want to keep and for the items you choose to discard. Even when some of her clients give her questionable looks, she instructs them to thank each item before choosing to get rid of it - a process she says makes saying goodbye easier.
And the show is obviously about more than just organization.
With similar Queer Eye vibes, Kondo helps her clients gain control over their homes and lives and create a better process from themselves and their families. Together they sort through the unnecessary clutter and rediscover things they truly care about and probably forgot existed: wedding videos, Christmas gifts from parents, family mementos, photo albums and more.
Kondo’s show teaches a lesson that can be applied to more than just organization. She helps viewers realize that happiness isn’t about having *a lot* of things - it’s about having the right things - the things which spark joy in your life.
Tidying Up With Marie Kondo starts streaming on Netflix on January 1, 2019.
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