'Now I realize what is important to me is enjoying spending time with my children at home,' said Kondo.
We all end up creating messes in our houses and often only get around to cleaning them on weekends. For most people, a little mess isn't anything to get too bothered about. But you would be amused to know that Marie Kondo, the queen of tidiness, has also now embraced mess. Kondo revealed that she has "kind of given up" on keeping her house neat and clean at all times since having her third child.
Marie Kondo, tidy no more. "Up until now, I was a professional tidier, so I did my best to keep my home tidy at all times. I have kind of given up on that in a good way for me...what is important to me is enjoying spending time with my children at home." https://t.co/Cdt3L3savc
— Variety (@Variety) January 27, 2023
She believes that this is the right way to live her life at this point in time as a mother of three. "My home is messy, but the way I am spending my time is the right way for me at this time at this stage of my life," Marie said in a webinar, as reported by Washington Post. Kondo has realized that there is something more important to her today than tidying her house. She said: "Up until now, I was a professional tidier, so I did my best to keep my home tidy at all times. I have kind of given up on that, in a good way for me. Now I realize what is important to me is enjoying spending time with my children at home."
In a blog that she wrote in 2019, Kondo spoke about her struggles of tidying up with younger children in the house. "When I first became a mother, I felt frustrated when I couldn’t tidy my home exactly the way I wanted. Then, after having my second child, I didn’t even have the energy to consider some of my former practices around the house! Motherhood taught me to be more forgiving of myself. The joy that comes from parenting exceeds any satisfaction that could have come from a perfectly neat home," she wrote. While pregnant with her first child in 2017, she told The Wall Street Journal: "When we found out we were having a child, my husband and I went through a decluttering festival by reviewing things we had. And we discussed how much space—for example, how many drawers—we could give to our daughter."
When she had her second daughter, Kondo thinks she "became more forgiving" about her tidying, "especially because I'm so much more limited in time and [given] the sheer number of things that increase."
The main thing Marie Kondo ACTUALLY told us was if something in our possession no longer brought us joy, we should thank it and let it go.
— Jody Houser ✒️🗯️🎲 (@Jody_Houser) January 28, 2023
If spending time with her kids now brings her more joy than tidying does, she's really just living by the same ethos she always has. pic.twitter.com/ykj4EUtxie
The Japanese organizing consultant rose to fame after her 2019 Netflix series called "Tidying Up." In the show, she helped people declutter their homes and attempted to "spark joy" in their lives. In her latest book, "Marie Kondo's Kurashi at Home: How to Organize Your Space and Achieve Your Ideal Life," Kondo has written about the importance of cleaning up mental and emotional spaces. She said that keeping the house tidy is as important as spending time listening to music or spending time with children, reports Variety. "Tidying up means dealing with all the 'things' in your life," Kondo writes in the book. "So, what do you really want to put in order?"
However, Kondo does encourage her kids to keep their houses tidy. She said in 2018: "I try to teach them how to fold clothes. Children are very close observers so I try to make it so they can watch me folding clothes. From time to time I do feel anxious. It's not 100 percent. It's not perfect." After eight episodes of "Tidying Up," Kondo went on to create a second Netflix series in 2021 called, "Sparking Joy With Marie Kondo."