It is with some chagrin that I see Marie Kondo making international news with the bombshell that she’s pretty much stopped tidying at home since the birth of her third child: “Up until now, I was a professional tidier, so I did my best to keep my home tidy at all times,” she told the Washington Post. “I have kind of given up on that, in a good way for me. Now I realise what is important to me is enjoying spending time with my children at home.”
You could almost hear the world exhale in relief at this change of heart: Kondo is perhaps the leading evangelist for order and decluttering, author and Netflix poster-woman for the good life. If she can’t make tidying work with three kids around, when it’s her brand, her identity and her life’s work, the rest of us are just fine. It’s like if anti-cigarette guru Allen Carr had started smoking again. On the one hand, shame, but on the other: what a stunning vindication of human frailty.
