Queen of Clean Marie Kondo Courts Controversy with Her New Online Store

Marie Kondo is known all over the world as the Japanese icon of tidying up, queen of organisation and empress of domestic decluttering, a pursuit that’s both liberating and gratifying. She has become a household name in America, Europe and Asia alike thanks to her ‘KonMari’ method. Her art of living has now achieved international reach, but Marie Kondo only became famous in 2011, following the release of her best-selling book ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying’, which sold over six million copies. Since then, her modern, minimalist vision of tidying up has only continued to become more prominent in all four corners of the globe.

This culminated in January 2019 with the release of her very own documentary series on Netflix, ‘Tidying Up with Marie Kondo’. Eagerly awaited by her thousands of fans, the five-episode series – which is reminiscent of reality TV shows like ‘Super Nanny’ – features five American families who are disenchanted with their intense daily lifestyle, which leaves them little time to tidy up. Then, like a real-life tidying up, household fairy, Marie Kondo intervenes to support and guide them towards optimising their inside space, encouraging them to get rid of any objects which ‘do not spark joy’. After a lot of prior work, the participants prepare to get started and declutter ‘internally’ before tackling the matter head-on.

Although the enthusiasm towards the method itself seemed to be unanimous, many people were quick to complain to Netflix. They believed that the platform was adding to the mental burden felt by women, who appear in the series as the main causes for this domestic disorder. The empress of minimalism herself was also criticised for this misstep.

At the end of 2019, the queen of tidying attracted the wrath of internet users once again when she announced the opening of her online store, selling items with a hefty price tag. This anger was understandable given that Marie Kondo constantly preaches a well-reasoned vision of tidying, but then went on to open an online store selling trinkets and other Japanese-inspired items. The decision was certainly a lucrative one, but also one which goes completely against her philosophy, which is supposed to be detached from materialism.

This huge philosophical discrepancy may have surprised some, but this ‘collection of items which spark joy for Marie and enhance your everyday routine’ is even more surprising due to the astronomical prices. For example, a fruit basket costs $84, a ladle will set you back $96, a candle is priced at $86 and a storage box (the holy grail of the ‘KonMari’ method) $75, no less!

Can we therefore say that the days when Marie Kondo declared that we should get rid of superfluous items are now well and truly gone? With the opening of her online store, Marie Kondo is bringing her entire method into question, and it now seems reserved to the wealthy. However, her manifesto addressed to everyone supports a completely different argument. Even if her economic activity seems to have taken the upper hand over her professionalism, her book remains inspiring and visionary with its method which aims to fight the growing trend of overconsumption by encouraging us to choose to surround ourselves only with necessary objects and items which ‘spark joy’.