Marie Kondo who was born on September 9, 1985, in Tokyo, Japan is a writer, consultant and famous for the Konmari method. Her name has been synonymous with decluttering or removing unnecessary items from a full place.
She has developed the method for her followers since she first published The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, the 2014 mega-bestseller and has become a holy book in a minimalist movement around the world.
She has currently written four books and has sold millions of copies and has been translated from Japanese into various languages in the world including Korean, Chinese, Indonesian, French, German and English.
In particular, her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing has been published in more than 30 countries and is the best-selling book in Japan and in Europe, and also published in the United States in 2014.
She was listed as one of the “100 most influential people” in Time in 2015. Kondo said that she had been interested in organizing since childhood. Since in junior high school, Kondo prefers to tidy up bookshelves in class while her classmates play in physical education classes. Every time there was a nomination for a role in the class, she didn’t try to be a class representative and instead, she really wanted to be a bookshelf manager to continue to tidy up the book.
Marie Kondo: Find What You Want To Maintain
She was obsessed with what she could throw away. One day, she had a kind of nervous breakdown and fainted and she was unconscious for two hours. When she came back there, she heard a mysterious voice, like a god of neatness who told her to look at her things closer, and she realized her mistake: she was only looking for things to throw away. All she had to do was find the things she wanted to keep. The things that made her happy: it was a tidying job.
KonMari Method By Marie Kondo
The organizing method of Kondo is known as the KonMari method, and consists of collecting all one’s belongings, one category at a time, and then only storing things that can trigger excitement and pick a place to keep everything.
She explained the coming of the modern era with mass production, people wanted to have more physical goods than before. This, of course, makes our lives easier and more comfortable, but in the end, many people begin to have many things that are sometimes not necessary.
She said that people interest in tidying up showed that people began to change their mindsets, and now felt the need to only have what was needed and live a simpler life.
As we know, when storing only items that we like, we make space both physically and mentally. People need space to live, whether it’s in their physical environment or in their mental state. When there is no space, we will lose sight of the environment that we feel comfortable and place to live in.
By making space, we allow ventilation, both in our rooms or in our minds. As a result, we create opportunities to rethink what we want and the ideal life if we want to be said, Marie Kondo.
