The Untold Truth Of Tidying Up With Marie Kondo

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Tidying Up With Marie Kondo premiered on New Year's Day 2019, and Netflix subscribers everywhere excitedly tuned in to the new series all about decluttering your home and changing your life. Tidying Up With Marie Kondo instantly captivated audiences with star Marie Kondo's charming and sweet personality and joyful take on how to get clean and organized. The show was an instant hit, to say the least, and soon had viewers everywhere trying out the KonMari method for themselves.

If you aren't familiar with the method, it separates itself from other cleaning strategies by encouraging users to hold items before deciding what to do with them and determine whether or not they spark joy. According to Kondo herself, this mindset allows those who adopt it to keep a tidy home forever. "The KonMari Method isn't meant to make your home tidy for a short amount of time," she told HelloGiggles in an interview back in January 2019. "Rather, it is an experience you go through using both your heart and mind."

If you've watched Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, then you know how much of an impact Marie Kondo has made on the families and homes she's visited. But how did those people get to be on the show? Well, it turns out that the application process was seriously competitive. According to Vulture, Netflix had to work their way through hundreds of applications to get to a top 45 and then narrow it down even more to the eight families that made up the show's first season. While it's unclear how Netflix ended up deciding on the eight clients they chose, Kondo herself actually shared the original casting call to her Facebook page back in December 2017, and the post got hundreds of likes. So, even before the show was formally announced, it was obviously something people wanted in on.

As intense as that sounds, it also makes sense. Who wouldn't want a professional and world-renowned organizer helping them sort through their home? It sounds like a dream, albeit a competitive one.

While Marie Kondo is originally from Japan, she currently lives in Los Angeles, though she didn't move to the United States until she was an adult. You might expect that she may have had some trouble with the cultural barriers between her and the clients on the show, but, as Kondo told HelloGiggles, it almost seems as though tidying up is the same in every language. "When I first started professionally tidying, I assumed there would be more differences in how people tidied based on where they're from," she said. "But in reality, the differences have been much less than I expected. The issues people encounter through tidying are the same — no matter where you live." The art of organizing your home is universal, according to Kondo, and that's pretty amazing.

However, that doesn't mean Kondo didn't take note of certain cultural differences while working on the show. "[Americans] are more likely to take large, drastic actions, and Japanese people often get so caught up in thinking about things that they get stuck," she told Vulture.

While Marie Kondo's entire method might be focused on throwing out things that no longer bring you joy, that doesn't mean she's forceful about it. Behind the scenes of homeowner Margie's Tidying Up With Marie Kondo episode, which featured the widow sorting through her late husband's belongings, Kondo was helpful while Margie went through the items, and the organizer made sure her client felt comfortable every step of the way. In fact, as showrunner Bianca Barnes-Williams told Vulture, Kondo has never really forced a client to get rid of something. "This is not like Dr. Phil, where you have to do this or that," Barnes-Williams said.

And Kondo herself offered Margie some words of wisdom during their time tidying up, telling her, "Don't force yourself to tidy," according to Vulture. She reportedly noted, "It's an experience in itself." Because Kondo is aware that there might be some items that are harder to part with, she doesn't push clients to say goodbye to possessions, even though organizing and throwing things out is kind of her specialty.

For fans of Marie Kondo, the Netflix star is fairly easy to spot in most scenes of her show, or just in general. Sure, it could partly be due to her signature stick-straight hair and ever-present style, but it probably has more to do with the fact that Kondo has a signature color: She always wears white. Whether it's a shirt, a jacket, or a sweater, Kondo makes sure to incorporate white into her wardrobe at all times. "It is part of my brand," she told The New Yorker, "my image color. It is easy to recognize me."

As the color white is often associated with cleanliness, this makes perfect sense. And those who have watched Tidying Up With Marie Kondo can attest to the fact that seeing Kondo on screen in her white jacket definitely brings a sense of calm, even if she's surrounded by piles of clothes taller than she is. Her signature look works for her, for sure.

The KonMari method of "sparking joy" and thanking items you give away for what they've done for you might seem odd to some people, and Marie Kondo herself is aware of this fact. Speaking to Vulture, Kondo explained that, while filming, there were a few clients who didn't entirely understand the need to talk to an item of clothing or old book. "Some people on the show questioned why they would thank an inanimate object for its service," she said. "This was a revelation. I know now that I must explain some aspects of my work more clearly." But thanking items you no longer want or need is all a part of her method.

According to her website, the method is fairly simple: "Keep only those things that speak to the heart, and discard items that no longer spark joy. Thank them for their service — then let them go." As confusing or strange as it may sound, it's appeared to work for the clients on the show and for the millions of fans and followers Kondo has amassed.

After Tidying Up With Marie Kondo hit Netflix — and more and more viewers learned about the KonMari method and began using it in their own homes — there was a bit of confusion. Because Kondo told clients to throw out their books that no longer brought them joy, Twitter users took it to mean that Kondo wanted everyone to throw away all of their books, and outrage, of course, followed. Twitter practically blew up when users thought about the idea of having to throw out all of their books, but, the thing is, that's not what Kondo meant.

Speaking to IndieWire, Kondo confirmed that you do not have to throw out all your books to follow her method. In fact, she said that if books were precious to you, you should keep them. "If the image of someone getting rid of books or having only a few books makes you angry, that should tell you how passionate you are about books, what's clearly so important in your life," she said. So, no, you definitely don't have to chuck all your old books to tidy up your home.

The world may now know Marie Kondo as a superstar on and off the screen, but before Tidying Up With Marie Kondo premiered, there was someone who predicted that Kondo would get all the success she now has. Back in 2010, Kondo won first prize in a publishing training course in Japan, and one of the judges of the competition told Japanese website Shin-bunka that he could see big things in Kondo's future. "She's going to be on TV and become famous," Tomohiro Takahashi told the site, according to The New Yorker. "I felt a mysterious energy around her that I had never experienced around other people," he continued.

Now, given Kondo's success, that quote seems nearly prophetic in its accuracy. Kondo has taken the world by storm, first with her books and now with her hit show, and everyone can't help but fall in love with her charming personality. Tidying Up With Marie Kondo is a smash hit and for good reason. There really is no denying Kondo's own star quality, as Takahashi said, and no one has ever made organizing your closet as fun and joyful as Kondo has.