The “Tidying Up” decluttering guru responds to the KonMari Method backlash in an interview with IndieWire.
Book lovers, calm down. When “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo” hit Netflix Jan. 1, America embraced her little folded T-shirt rectangles and shoeboxes reused to organize small items. But when it came to tossing out books — well, those were fighting words.
Do NOT listen to Marie Kondo or Konmari in relation to books. Fill your apartment & world with them. I don’t give a shite if you throw out your knickers and Tupperware but the woman is very misguided about BOOKS. Every human needs a v extensive library not clean, boring shelves
— Anakana Schofield (@AnakanaSchofiel) January 3, 2019
Others were more levelheaded, noting that the KonMari Method was not tantamount to book burning.
WHAT MARIE KONDO SAYS: Think about getting rid of books you aren’t going to read or reread.
WHAT TWITTER HEARS: Let’s burn all books and slay the writers! Let the streets run red with their blood as our literary pyre’s smoke blocks out the sun! FUCK BOOKS.
— Kevin Church 🖖🏻 (@Kevin_Church) January 5, 2019
IndieWire spoke to Kondo to set the record straight and, no, she doesn’t want people to get rid of all (or even most) of their books.
“The most important part of this process of tidying is to always think about what you have an about the discovery of your sense of value, what you value that is important,” she said through interpreter Marie Iida, who also appears on the series. “So it’s not so much what I personally think about books. The question you should be asking is what do you think about books. If the image of someone getting rid of books or having only a few books makes you angry, that should tell you how passionate you are about books, what’s clearly so important in your life. If that riles you up, that tells you something you about that. That in itself is a very important benefit of this process.”
