Marie Kondo said we should only keep something if it “sparks joy.”
Well, she sparks zero joy in me.
Kondo evangelized the “life-changing magic of tidying up.”
A ceremonial purge, she promised, would purify our souls as well as the mess we see at home. It sounded damn good. So much so that there was uproar at the news that Kondo has relaxed her standards now that she has three kids to look after. “My home is messy…I have kinda given up” she said.
Reaction ranged from schadenfreude to fury: had all those hours of meticulously arranging our pilfered bottles of hotel shampoo really been for nothing? If Kondo was ready to give up on tidying then perhaps it did not hold life-changing magic after all — perhaps it was just a massive, self-inflicted pain in the balls. If Kondo has given up, what hope do we have to be tidy?
I have come to the conclusion that most people can’t change anyway. A hoarder is always a hoarder. A messy person is always a messy person. It’s in his or her DNA. I speak from experience, I have friends who live alone in a big house but have enough shit to open their own Walmart and enough shit in their fridge to feed the entire continent of Africa.
So, surrender!
Fuck Marie Kondo!