Long before she was a global name, Marie Kondo was a shy Japanese schoolgirl obsessed with tidying. She began advising clients in her early twenties, spent five years as an attendant at a Shinto shrine, and published The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up in Japan at the start of the 2010s. The English translation appeared in 2014 and sold in the millions.
Her method is easily caricatured and much harder to practise. Tidy by category rather than by room; handle every object; keep only what sparks joy; thank what you let go. Behind the folding tutorials sits a genuine respect for possessions, which is why the approach reads less like minimalism and more like gratitude.
Time named her one of its hundred most influential people in 2015, and the Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo turned the method into a household argument. She has since been disarmingly candid that life with three children has loosened her own standards, which has only made her easier to like.
5 hours and 31 minutes
