What is Marie Kondo's KonMari Method?

All of a sudden, everyone is talking about this organizational method. Welcome to MsMojo and today we’re doing a deep dive into What is Marie Kondo's KonMari Method? For this essay, we’re looking at everything you need to know about how the KonMari Method works. Marie Kondo first made waves when she released her best selling book "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” in 2011. But she really became a household name when Netflix released a show focused on her method called “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo” in early 2019. Now, it seems like everyone is turning their homes upside down in an effort to follow her teachings. The idea behind the name “KonMari” is a simple one; it’s just a combination of the originator’s first and last names that ends up sounding pretty catchy. Kondo was even smart enough to trademark the name. If you haven’t read the book or seen the show, you may be wondering what all the hype is about, and we’re here to break down every part of the KonMari method so it’s easy to understand. At its core, the KonMari method is about finding a way to manage your possessions, in a way that brings positive energy to your life instead of weighing you down. Kondo has many strategies for deciding what to keep and what to discard, and we’ll outline all of them here. The easiest way to start with the method is to understand Kondo’s “six basic rules for tidying,” which are: Commit yourself to tidying up, imagine your ideal lifestyle, finish discarding first, tidy by category, not by location, follow the right order, and ask yourself if it sparks joy. Let’s start by looking at the first two rules: commit yourself to tidying up and imagine your ideal lifestyle. Before you start dealing with your physical “stuff”, Kondo suggests some exercises to help you get into the right mental headspace for tidying. She suggests that you “visualize your destination”, imagining what your life would ideally look like. Once you can envision this, it will be easier to make decisions on which of your possessions you should keep, and which you no longer need in your life. Setting a clear goal for yourself should make the entire process go more smoothly. The method is not about a one-time cleaning effort; it’s really about permanently changing your mindset in terms of how you deal with the tangible things in your life. The idea is that once you have made this change, it will become a new lifestyle. Kondo suggests that you undertake this task alone. Of course, families can be involved, but the ideal situation is for each member of a household to make decisions about their own possessions. It’s also very important that you don’t discard anyone else’s possessions for them. The focus of the method is really about discarding more than it’s about organizing, which is why Kondo suggests doing all of your discarding before you start to organize. This way, you’ll know exactly how much stuff you’re working with when it comes time to figure out where to store it all. While the final storage strategies are certainly important, they’re not nearly as vital to the method. This isn’t about just going to the Container Store and calling it a day! Now let’s get to the actual tidying. One of the most vital parts of the method is that Kondo suggests you do your tidying all at once. Her strategies basically involve turning your home into a disaster zone, so this is definitely one of those it gets worse before it gets better situations. Her theory is that you should dedicate a chunk of time to doing your clearing out because if you spend a few hours here and there doing it, it’s more likely to descend into disarray again. One thing that may seem counterintuitive about Kondo’s method is that it involves tidying by category rather than location. So while it may seem to make sense to tidy one room at a time, Kondo actually suggests you gather things from all around your house in each category instead. The categories she recommends are: clothing, books, papers, komono (miscellaneous) and finally sentimental items. This is also the order that she suggests you work in. The order is important, because she starts with something relatively simple to make decisions on, clothing, and works up to dealing with the more challenging things, like items with sentimental value. When you start the KonMari method, it usually involves piling all of your clothes all together, which can give some extra perspective on just how much stuff you actually have. Once everything is all piled up, Kondo insists that you touch every single item, taking a moment to contemplate its role in your life. While there will be of course some logic to your decisions about what to keep and what to discard, at this point you should be letting your emotions dictate your actions. This brings us naturally to perhaps the most well known aspect of the KonMari method, the concept of sparking joy. This is probably also the most misunderstood part of Kondo’s ideas. In theory, it’s simple enough, you are supposed to address each of your possessions and decide whether it sparks joy. Of course, many people wonder how they will continue to live their lives without decidedly joyless items like toilet plungers and can openers. But keeping items that are useful to you is important as well. “Spark joy” is a rough translation of the Japanese term tokimeku, which actually means “flutter” or “palpitation”. This should help you understand the feeling you have when there’s something you want to keep. It should elicit a nearly physical reaction in you. When you’ve finally sorted through everything you own and established what will be staying in your home, that’s when it comes time to organize. Marie Kondo has many ideas for how to best take that on, including folding techniques for your clothes and containment strategies for items that must be stored. But the bulk of the work is done when you’ve finished choosing what to discard. Have you tried the KonMari method? How did it work for you? Let us know in the comments!