Marie Kondō

Marie Kondo (近藤 麻理恵, Kondō Marie, pronounced [maɾie kon.do], born 9 October 1984[1]), also known as Konmari[2] (こんまり), is a Japanese organizing consultant, author, and TV show, host.

Kondo has written four books on organizing, which have collectively sold millions of copies around the world. Her books have been translated from Japanese into several languages including Korean, Chinese, Spanish, Indonesian, Italian, French, German, Swedish, Portuguese, Catalan, and English. In particular, her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (2011) has been published in more than 30 countries.[5] It was a best-seller in Japan and in Europe and was published in the United States in 2014.

In the United States and the United Kingdom, the profile of Kondo and her methods were greatly promoted by the success of the Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, released in 2019, which gained Kondo a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Competition Program.

She was listed as one of Time's "100 most influential people" in 2015.

Kondo opened an online store called KonMari on 18 November 2019.

Kondo's method of organizing is known as the KonMari method and consists of gathering together all of one's belongings, one category at a time, and then keeping only those things that "spark joy" (Japanese language ときめく Tokimeki, translated as equivalent to English "flutter, throb, palpitate"), and choosing a place for everything from then on. Kondo advises starting the process of tidying up by "quickly and completely" discarding whatever it is in the house that doesn't spark joy. She advises doing this by category of items and not their location in the house. For example, all the clothes in the house should be piled up first, assessed for Tokimeki, and discarded if not needed, followed by other categories such as books, papers, miscellany, and mementos. Another crucial aspect of the KonMari method is to find a designated place for each item in the house and making sure it stays there.

Kondo says that her method is partly inspired by the Shinto religion. Cleaning and organizing things properly can be a spiritual practice in Shintoism, which is concerned with the energy or divine spirit of things (kami) and the right way to live (kannagara):

"Treasuring what you have; treating the objects you own as not disposable, but valuable, no matter their actual monetary worth; and creating displays so you can value each individual object are all essentially Shinto ways of living.