Marie Kondo is full of anecdotes about the weird ass shit that she not only lets people keep but encourages them to elevate in their lives. She says one of her clients ended the process with a bedroom full of vintage pinball machines because what sparks joy in that particular woman was basically sleeping in the middle of an arcade.
Marie Kondo would never make you throw away your weird shit! She wants you to pare down to just your weird shit.
It pisses me off that for YEARS tidying up shows were full of white neurotypicals shaming neurodivergent people for having more than an arbitrary number of possessions and forcing them to go through a traumatic process of throwing away so much of their stuff to fit other people’s standards of “this is how you should live your life” and everyone thought those were fine!
But then in comes this sweet little Japanese lady who says the only rule is how can we make the client’s life happier and less stressful? How can we help them prioritize the things they enjoy being around? Marie Kondo came up with a process that accommodates and respects obsessions and special interests. And people treat her like the devil incarnate.
It’s fucked up.
Okay fun story time:
I’m neurodivergent: ADHD, depression, autism, anxiety. And tidying/cleaning used to send me into panic attacks because the only way I knew how to do it was my mother’s way, which was very neurotypical “if you don’t use it throw it away and if it doesn’t serve an actual “purpose” it’s gone”. This resulted in shit that I loved getting tossed. I would BAWL if I had to tidy up, so my room was just. An unholy mess. Because if it was messy then mom couldn’t find shit to throw it away, and I didn’t have panic attacks over throwing away things I loved.
Fast forward to the birth of my kid. Guilt started to kick my ass, because I’m a bad parent I can’t keep things tidied up. Then, my partner (god I love them so much) told me about Marie Kondo and her method.
Y’all. I cleaned. I CLEANED cleaned. My room became organized for the first time in years because I realized it wasn’t about tossing everything, just the things that weren’t important to me/caused me stress. And that’s still how I clean literal years later.
Does my room still get messy? Yeah, I have fibro and brain fog and pain make it hard to clean. But when I DO clean, it’s much easier, I don’t cry anymore, and I’m surrounded by things that make me happy.
Fuck NT cleaning, Konmari is a life changer, keep what makes you happy and fuck anyone who says otherwise.
She also has organization tips that are basically boiled down to “make everything as easy to access as possible, no stacking things, no tossing things haphazardly into drawers use smaller containers in bigger containers to partition things off (they can be random cardboard packaging etc), you should be able to see everything when you open a drawer or cabinet or what have you, put things where you need them and if that means your shoes are in the kitchen then the shoes belong in the kitchen, if that means granola bars are on the night stand then the granola bars are on the night stand (preferably in their package or in a basket or jar that also sparks joy)”
Coincidentally a lot of these are also tips for people with adhd “everything needs to be visible or it doesn’t exist” (i can relate) and other neurodivergent brains (is that the right way to say it???? Genuinely asking, or is it neurodivergents, or neurodivergent ppl or neurodivergencies?) Her whole method is about respecting and caring for what you own and what makes you happy, reframing your perspective towards things you actually need but stress you out (watch her interview with colbert or minhaj to see what I mean), and most importantly respecting and working with the client by giving them a guide and then gently encouraging them to complete her method with very little interference on her part
-FemaleWarrior
