Marie Kondo's Origin Story: A Teen Collapse, a Shinto Shrine and Joy

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Marie Kondo was born in 1984 in Osaka, and at about age five in Tokyo she decided her mother's attempts at fusui, the Japanese counterpart of feng shui, were not tidy enough and took over the household's organizing. In junior school she skipped play during physical education to rearrange the classroom bookshelves and wanted only to be the bookshelf manager. As a teenager her constant hunt for things to discard led to a breakdown in which she fainted and lay unconscious for two hours. She said she woke hearing a mysterious voice telling her to look at her things more closely, and shifted from choosing what to throw away to choosing what to keep.

At 19 she studied sociology at Tokyo Woman's Christian University and began a consulting business, writing a thesis on tidying through the lens of gender. She also spent five years as a miko, an attendant maiden at a Shinto shrine. Her 2011 book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, sold millions and was translated into more than 30 languages, leading to a 2013 Japanese TV drama, Time's 100 most influential list in 2015, and Netflix's Tidying Up with Marie Kondo in 2019. After moving to the United States and having three children, she announced she had relaxed her tidying standards to prioritize family time.

• The KonMari method sorts by category in a set order: clothes, books, papers, miscellany, then mementos.
• Before discarding an item, the method asks you to hold it and thank it for its service, a practice linked to Shinto ideas of kami.
• The Japanese word behind spark joy is tokimeku, which suggests a flutter or thrill.
• Her husband Takumi Kawahara left a sales and marketing job in Osaka to manage her and became CEO of KonMari Media.
• Her line I love mess was named one of the 10 best memes of 2019.