Peace of Mind Organizing

Tidying Up with Marie Kondo: A professional organizer's view

3 January 2019

On New Year’s Day, Netflix premiered a new series called Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, starring the Japanese organizer and international phenom, Marie Kondo. Marie’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, was a huge bestseller. Many of my clients have read it and I know it’s motivated many people to declutter and organize. I reviewed it and gave its concepts a try in 2015, the year the book made such a splash in the United States.

The TV show has taken Marie Kondo’s concepts to the next level. I think it will be very motivating for those watch it and I’m excited for its potential impact on the the organizing industry. In each episode, Marie Kondo and her interpreter, Marie Iida, visit a person, couple or family struggling with disorder. Marie Condo is undeniably charming and she clearly motivates her clients. But she doesn’t do much in the way of hands-on organizing—she’s more a muse and a guide. After her session, in which she helps the clients pile all their belongings of a given category (clothes, books, miscellaneous, paper or sentimental items) together in a giant pile, she leaves with the instruction that the client should go through everything before the Maries return, keeping only those things that spark joy. (And thanking the other items before they’re donated or discarded.)

I’ve watched four episodes so far and as I watch it, I wonder whether viewers will think that working with me would be like what they see on this show. So I thought I’d compare my view of how the experience presented on the show is similar to—and differs from—the experience my clients have working me and my team.

How we’re alike

When Marie comes into a home, she’s cheerful, excited and non-judgmental. I can tell that the clients are nervous but they’re also excited to begin. Those scenes feel very familiar to me. I know that my clients are nervous before I get there and I hope that I’m as good as Marie and Iida at putting them at ease.

Like Marie, I do a lot of listening and provide guidance and coaching on the benefits of letting go and organizing. I’m part teacher and part cheerleader. And when I leave after the initial consultation (where we create a plan but do not start), clients are usually excited about the next steps.

And like Marie, I get to see how creating order helps family relationships. That is such a joy.

That’s pretty much where the similarities end, though. When it comes to the actual decluttering and organizing, working with me is a very different experience.

How we’re different

The clients in Tidying Up with Marie Kondo actually do the hands-on work themselves, in Marie’s absence. It appears to take a long time—most of the clients seem to be working daily between visits from Marie, and this appears to go on for weeks. This is very different from how we operate. Clients who bring in a Peace of Mind Organizing team make all the decluttering decisions themselves. But we do the physical sorting and implementation of decisions. And we do the organizing after the decluttering is finished (in consultation with the client, of course). My team of organizers can accomplish in a few sessions (or sometimes more) what the clients on the TV show accomplish in steady work for a month. Sometimes my clients do homework between sessions, but often they don’t.

Another big difference is that Marie is prescriptive in terms the order of work. She says that people should work one category at a time (as opposed to an area at a time) and address every item in that category—bringing it together from all parts of the house—before moving on to the next. Her categories are (in order, of course): (1) Clothing (2) Books (3) Documents (4) Komono or miscellaneous (i.e. everything else except sentimental items) and (5) Sentimental items. She says that clothing is easiest to let go of and by the time you reach the sentimental items you’ve built your decision-making muscle and have a better sense of what sparks joy. When we help clients, by contrast, we work with them to choose priorities and the order in which to work. I’ll offer advice about what we should do first, based on my experience, but the choice is the client’s.

Beyond advice on folding, storing things vertically, and using drawer dividers, there is very little organizing going on in the episodes I’ve seen so far of Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. As I mentioned, the Peace of Mind Organizing teams organize after the decluttering is finished. Our goal is to transfer skills to clients so they can maintain the organizing systems that we create with them. During the session, we’re talking about organizing principles that will help transform the clients’ lives. Marie is transforming lives without a doubt. And perhaps more education is happening that doesn’t come through in the show. But it appears that she leaves the clients to organize on their own without a lot of input from her. That’s not how we work.

I’m excited to finish watching the series later this week and I’m thrilled at Marie’s positive, gentle, non-judgmental nature. It’s wonderful to see how her work is affecting the clients’ lives. That’s the part I can really relate with!

If you’re in the St. Louis area and are up for a gentle, educational, and fast-paced organizing experience, please check out my Operation: Peace of Mind page and then shoot me an email so we can get started!

Tagged with: decluttering, marie kondo, organizing team, television

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