Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, Netflix

If you thought Theresa May and Olivia Colman were the women of the moment you haven’t been paying attention to the mountain of donations piling up in the country’s charity shops or the recent expressions of horror from outraged librarians. Both are a result of 2019’s first bona fide TV phenomenon, a clumsy and wilfully eccentric Netflix series in which Japanese de-cluttering expert Marie Kondo visits American homes with her interpreter in tow and ransacks their closets. And kitchens. And garages. And bookcases. All in the politest possible way, of course. Think Changing Rooms-meets-How Clean Is Your House?, only in suburban California.

The 34-year-old is already a publishing phenomenon thanks to edifying titles such as The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up, so on one hand Netflix wasn’t taking much of a risk commissioning what is essentially a TV adaptation of the book. Then again it’s hard for viewers to become excited by yet another shot of a suburban mom folding her t-shirts just-so, especially when there’s some paint drying somewhere which they could watch instead.

Three things keep it interesting and cause it to transcend its otherwise staid daytime TV format. First, much of it is subtitled due to Kondo speaking little English (hence the translator). In tandem with its over-arching theme of domesticity that gives it something of the feel of a classic drama by the great Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu. Well, it does if I say it does.

Second, the whole show is pleasingly bonkers. The petite Kondo, beatific smile never far from her face, tends to open her consultations with a ceremony in which she kneels on the floor to greet the house and introduce herself to it. Then she proceeds to explain her chucking out criteria, which requires participants to hug an object – a stinky old t-shirt, say – and determine whether or not they feel a spark of joy. If they do, the item stays. If they don’t – well that’s what has caused the surge in charity shop donations, apparently.

Third, and most interesting, the no-doubt carefully chosen participants use the exercise to re-examine their lives and their relationships with family, children, wives, partners. When Kondo visited young married couple Kevin and Rachel Friend and their toddlers Jaxon and Ryan, we learned about Kevin’s 60 hour weeks and his fears that his family weren’t getting (as he put it) “the best of him”. One neatly arranged house later, the couple were clearly living a more stress-free life. For young gay couple Frank and Matt, on the other hand, Kondo’s visit was a chance for them to re-visit their childhoods, and to re-appraise their relationships with their respective families, with work, with their belongings and with each other.

Folding is folding is folding. But it’s the human stories and the emotional de-cluttering that takes place below the surface of Tidying Up that gives it its ballast.

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