10 Spring Cleaning Lessons We Learnt From Marie Kondo’s Netflix Show — Just In Time For Chinese New Year

The eight-part Netflix hit series sees the 34-year-old Japanese declutter guru go into the homes of hapless folks knee-deep (sometimes, literally) in mess to help them purge. For the millions around the world who’ve lapped up Marie Kondo’s #1 New York Times bestseller, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, the KonMari method of organisation isn’t new. “The ultimate goal of tidying is to cherish everything that you have, so that you can achieve happiness for your family,” she coos in one episode.

Organise by categories — not location — in this sequence: clothing, books, paper, komono (ie. kitchen, bathrooms, garage and miscellaneous), and finally, sentimental items. We’ll get to the specifics in a bit. But it’s important to note that once you’ve decided to KonMari your home, you have to religiously adhere to it and finish what you started.

The first step, regardless of which group of items you’re tackling, begins with the same ritual: Take everything in said category out, lay it all out in one big heap. People are often get a rude shock in the first step of the process, when they’re confronted with a Mt Fuji-esque mountain of clothes. If that isn’t the best kick in the derriere to get you to tidy up, we don’t know what is.

This is the key philosophy in the KonMari method. After you’ve gathered all your stuff in an enormous pile, it’s time to decide what you’re keeping based on one question: Does this item spark joy in you? What on earth does that mean anyway? “When you hold an item that sparks joy for you, you feel a warm and positive feeling,” Marie genially explains repeatedly to families on the show. Don’t worry if you don’t get it at first. As you go through this journey, “your sensitivity to joy will be honed”. And once that’s achieved, it makes the final step of the process — that is, sieving through sentimental items — a lot easier.

Okay, so you’ve whittled down your wardrobe to a fairly manageable stash. Now, how to store them? Here’s where it gets fun (wait, there’s fun involved?). The KonMari unique technique of folding has inspired many a Netizen to sacrifice precious Instagram time to re-fold everything in their closets. The trick is to aim to fold your clothes into neat, uniform rectangles, then place them in drawers standing up so it’s easy to see everything at a glance, as Marie deftly and delightfully demonstrates over and over in Tidying Up.

Moving on to the second category: Books. In one episode, Marie cheerily taps stacks of books to “wake them up”. Cute? Yes. Strange? Slightly. But it’s precisely this personal connection to one’s belongings that’s a driving force behind the KonMari method. “Ask yourself a question: By having this book, will it be beneficial to your life, moving forward?” she advises.

Paper, the third segment in the process, encompasses bills, forms, letters, contracts cards, old school essays, drawings, etc. The aim: to get rid of everything. Whatever you decide to keep should be divided into three categories: A) documents pending action, such as letters and bills; B) important documents that you need to keep, like contracts; C) miscellaneous documents that you often refer to like seminar notes or recipe cut-outs from magazines. Pro-tip: Store all paper items in one designated spot in the house.

Brace yourself for komono, the fourth and biggest category in this journey, which includes everything in the house except clothing, books, paper and sentimental items. Sounds like a massive task? Fret not. It is possible to get through this. At this point in the show, Marie always comes bearing gift boxes — empty ones — which she insists makes things look neater when you’re storing stuff.

Kitchen: Store everything upright, similar to your clothes, so that you can easily see how much stuff you have. Similar-sized items should be kept together in smaller boxes that partition the drawer space. Disposable items for parties should be placed together in a box so that it’s easily accessible.
Garage (or, er, store room): Haul everything out, lay it all out, then sort them into categories. If you come across sentimental items, set them aside and deal with them last.

Only when you’ve mastered what it means to spark joy, and are confident in your decision-making skills, are you ready for the last step in this journey: sentimental items. We’re talking physical photos and albums (remember those?), love letters, gifts… you get the drift. Marie recommends going through Every. Single. Photo. For multiple photos of the same shot, keep only the one that sparks the most joy. It’s best to display them nicely in albums and store the albums in your happy place, like at the coffee table or living room shelves, rather than chuck them in the dark dusty corners of your store room.

Yep, even toddlers have to pitch in. Marie reveals that in her household,“folding clothes has become a habit with my kids”. Involve the little tykes in the decision making process and get them to choose which toys and clothes to keep. Of course, these cheeky munchkins will probably insist that every single toy sparks joy in them. Instead, get them to rank their favourite toys and decide from there. It also pays to assign each person in the house a space that they’re responsible for.

It took anything from 28 days to one-and-a-half-months for the folks on Tidying Up to complete this dramatic transformative journey. By the end of it, they not only emerged with a neater, more inviting home, but couples in strained marriages rediscovered the spark (pun unintended), retired empty nesters had learnt new things about each other even after a 42-year marriage, and young children had begun to feed off their parents’ newfound positive energy and new habits and were helping out with the house. “[We] realised we do not need a lot of things to be happy,” confessed a mother of two after completing the month-long overhaul. So who says it’s just about tidying up and getting rid of stuff? By the way, it’s less than a month to Chinese New Year. Just saying.

Tidying Up With Marie Kondo is streaming on Netflix.

Photos: Denise Crew/Netflix and screenshots via Netflix