When Marie Kondo revealed to the world last January that she had “kind of given up” on tidying now that she’s a mother of three, the quotes went viral—and understandably so. For a cleaning guru, whose book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and subsequent Netflix shows have given rise to a decluttering empire, the confession was pretty divisive. Some were left perplexed and even outraged by the admission, while others were frankly relieved. After all, if Marie Kondo couldn’t even live up to her own shipshape expectations, then surely the rest of us could be forgiven for our messiness?
Admittedly, the reality of parenthood was, Kondo tells Vogue via a translator, something of a shock; she didn’t realize quite how much it would impact her lifestyle, to say nothing of her work. Over the course of the last few years, she’s been trying to find alternative ways to operate while dealing with the reality of raising two beloved daughters and a son with her husband of 12 years, TV producer Takumi Kawahara. “Many people, they had families, and they would tell me: once you have children, everything is going to change… it’s going to be much harder. But hearing about this [versus] actually going through the process, I think, was quite different for me,” she explains. “Part of myself was like, ‘Wow, the change is this significant.’ It’s the extent to which we have to change our lifestyles. There’s so many components that you don’t have control over.”
For the most part, this realization has only made Kondo simultaneously more relatable and aspirational for her 4.1 million Instagram followers. “I think it almost feels like there’s a stronger connection there, perhaps, and that we are walking through this together.” And yet Kondo is clear that, when it comes to her work, there’s been less of a shift in her ethos than many people realize; her goal, she stresses, has always been to refocus people’s minds on what brings them happiness by eliminating the obstacles, physical or mental, preventing them from sparking joy. “Since having children, I think there’s this message that I’ve perhaps lowered the priority of tidying, but I want to say that’s not necessarily the case,” she clarifies. Rather, she’s recognized that spending time en famille “is now what sparks joy” rather than neat kitchen drawers, and decluttered her life of the things that distract her from her kids as much as possible.
“Nothing has changed with respect to my passion towards my job and what I do—assisting people, tidying up,” she continues. “I think more so than ever I feel this need to help each individual find the style of life and the type of life they want to live.” Her commitment to the KonMari method, in other words, remains as strong as ever, even if she approaches it with “more flexibility” now.
Instead of advising a client to empty every wardrobe in their house simultaneously and review the contents, for example, she might recommend they focus on a different “subcategory” of clothing every day, week, or even month—first blazers, then socks, then trousers, for example. Kondo recognizes that this is a “much more palatable” way for people with a different type of lifestyle to get on board with her way of doing things, without compromising on her ultimate goal: to help them “experience… every single moment” to the fullest and have time and space for “the smaller things that are part of our daily lives” yet bring so much pleasure (in her case, rituals such as “organizing flowers” and “placing them on the table in a vase”).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in the 14 years since Kondo first published The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and became a bestselling sensation in the process, she’s increasingly found that the biggest obstacle to “sparking joy” for both her followers and herself isn’t, in fact, physical clutter but rather digital distractions. “It’s not just your environment, it’s also important to tidy your mental state of mind,” she notes. “I think it’s important that… we re-examine how we spend and allocate the time through our digital devices.” And so, in a first for her brand, she’s teamed up with digital welltech company, Stolp, to release her own iteration of a product designed to “press pause on digital noise”.
Available from 20 May, the compact, streamlined tool is inspired by an “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” philosophy towards iPhones and their ilk. Physically, of course, the matte shell obscures your device and puts it temporarily beyond your immediate reach (helpful for anyone who finds themselves scrolling mindlessly through Instagram while trying to enjoy a film, say) but, more intriguingly, it also cuts its connection to signal, 4G and WiFi, meaning DMs and other distractions aren’t constantly streaming in. It’s a way for people to “reconnect with the space around them”, Kondo emphasizes. Yes, you could simply put your phone in Airplane Mode and turn off your WiFi signal, but it’s shocking how much of a difference ritually putting your smartphone into a Stolp actually makes in terms of your reflexive desire to use it.
Although Kondo admits she’s a “lighter user” of tech generally, she’s still reaping the psychological benefits of her own KonMari X Stolp Phone Box—enthusing about not being able to see her smartphone during family dinners, before she falls asleep, and when she has some rare time alone to drink tea and read quietly. “I’m not the kind of person who would use my cellphone all the time, but even for someone like myself, I think it helps me recognize and reaffirm how much time I’m spending looking at the screen,” she says. Like the aforementioned arranging of flowers, putting her phone into its casing has, in fact, become a ritual she looks forward to. And, let’s face it, it’s much easier than turning your house upside down, too.
The KonMari® X Stolp® Phone Box is available to preorder now before its release on May 20.