Decluttering guru Marie Kondo has admitted even she has trouble keeping up with junk.

“Up until now, I was a professional tidier, so I did my best to keep my home tidy at all times,” the Japanese Netflix star said in a recent webinar, the Washington Post reported last week. “I have kind of given up on that in a good way for me. Now I realise what is important to me is enjoying time with my children at home.”

The 38-year-old, who gave birth to her third child in 2021, is known for the series Tidying Up, where she instructs cleaners to keep what “sparks joy” and bin the rest. But that Kondo-like minimalism has fallen to the wayside now that maximalism is en vogue. Interior designer and TikTok star Hugh Long says people now want to “capital-D decorate”, because while working from home during Covid they saw that “Kondo thing stripped out all the character”.

Kondo, it seems, has succumbed to something similar, though probably not on purpose.

“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,” she said, emphasising her focus is on her family, not her household.

Her latest book, Marie Kondo’s Kurashi at Home: How To Organise Your Space and Achieve Your Ideal Life, details such lifestyle changes. She emphasises the Japanese idea of “kurashi,” or “way of life,” which strays from her once hard and fast rule for eliminating clutter and junk. Instead, her goal is to “spark joy” in other ways: finding what makes her happy every day, even if there are dishes in the sink.

New York Post