What does a MINIMALIST think of Marie Kondo's Netflix Show? [Season 1 - Tidying Up]

so in honor of the new murray condo netflix series sparking joy that is airing later this week i thought that we could have a cozy little sit down together and i would share my feelings on marie kondo and her netflix show from my perspective as a minimalist because i'm gonna be honest i don't like marie condo i don't like her i love her fail that's what i get for trying to be clever that's embarrassing oh that is some good tea and i'm drinking green tea today this video is a long one so if you haven't got a cup of tea or a cup of coffee go ahead and grab one before we get started if we haven't met already hi my name is marissa and i am a recovering emotional hoarder turned minimalist mom and i am married to my handsome husband mr zen and we have two small boys i like to think that i know a lot about marie kondo because her book is one of the things that got me started on this minimalism journey five years ago but i think that it's important to know that marie kondo does not identify as a minimalist and indeed if you go on her website you'll find an article devoted to this very topic and here's a quote from her comparing the two many people have equated my tidying method with minimalism but it's quite different minimalism advocates living with less the konmari method encourages living among items you truly cherish it's definitely a small and subtle difference but i would argue that minimalism doesn't only advocate living with less but also surrounding yourself with items that add value to your life and i do think that it's important to point out that just because you declutter doesn't make you a minimalist nor does everyone's goal as they embark upon a decluttering journey need to be becoming a minimalist i think it's always important for you to find that balance of what works for you in your life so keeping that in mind let's move forward and there are eight episodes of the first season of tidying up with marie kondo but i'm only going to be focusing today on three and that's episode one with the friend family episode 2 with the akiyamas and episode 4 with margie hodges if you haven't already watched the netflix show i highly encourage you to do so because i'm confident that no matter who you are or what stage in your life you're at you're going to find an episode or something in an episode at least that resonates with you now let's move on and meet the friend family so in the first episode we meet the friend family and that's kevin and rachel and their two kids and kevin is working 50 to 60 hours a week and rachel also works part-time and stays at home with the kids and you can tell immediately that they're really stressed out about the state of their house and it's causing some problems in their family in particular the laundry seems to be a big pain point kevin even says and i quote we fight about laundry and it seems silly when i say it but it really pisses me off like a lot and then rachel counters with with him working more i'm home with the kids more and it's freaking chaos my kids are just running around and being crazy and we never get anything done so until this point they've been hiring someone to do their laundry because rachel feels already that there's too much on her plate she's stressed out with the kids and everything else in the home and they can solve this that is very important to kevin by hiring help but kevin feels like this is just something that needs to get done and that they shouldn't have to hire some help for it so this is a tough call one of my favorite parts of the first tour is when marie kondo comes to their house and then she goes into the kitchen and she comments on how big american kitchens are compared to the typical japanese kitchen and american homes on average are also much much larger than the typical japanese home which just goes to show you that size is relative everything is relative so it was just kind of a cool cultural moment and rachel at that point is sharing that she feels like the kitchen is really really stressful for her because she's always making the kids snacks and the dishes are piling up in the sink and just stuff is spilling out onto the countertops and everywhere else and there's visual clutter and she finds it very very stressful but she isn't really able to manage it very well at this point as a mom as a homemaker who was doing all the cooking and the cleanup for my family for a long long time i definitely resonate with this because it is so hard to keep the kitchen clean and then when you're spending a lot of time in there it's just really really frustrating there's a really interesting moment as well when marie kondo goes to greet the house and she gets down on her knees and has a quiet little moment and she has the friend family participate in that moment as well and i think that this is very different for people who are american who are maybe not familiar with japanese culture but kevin says that that was actually nice and they don't often take the time out of their stressful lives to appreciate how good of a house that this house has been to them and rachel at that point gets emotional and is crying and she says she doesn't even know why she's so emotional but she wants things to be better she wants things to be easier but she doesn't know how to fix it and i remember when i was watching rachel cry i actually started crying myself because i felt what she was feeling so much i felt it so acutely in the past before we decluttered before we became minimalist and i just know what those feelings are like and how heavy they are to press upon you like that and then moving on they're ready to get started with the decluttering sessions and as per the marie kondo method the khan mari method rather they are going to start with clothing and at first it seems like rachel is not quite sure what sparks joy and so marie kondo gives this little note of how to figure out what sparks joy and she talks about it's like the feeling that you get when you hold a puppy or when you're wearing your favorite outfit and i have to say that as a former emotional hoarder the beginning was very very hard for me because i think that my ability to look at things and be realistic and know what makes me happy is broken basically because everything became sentimental to me i was attached to everything i felt like i needed everything and so breaking away from this mindset that everything is a necessity everything makes me happy in the beginning it can be really really hard to do but that as you flex those decluttering muscles you're going to get better and better at it i do think that sometimes there are times when the spark joy concept can fail and fall short of what it needs to be in real life so if you haven't already subscribed to my channel please make sure to go down and hit that little red subscribe button and turn on the bell for all notifications because i'm going to talk about this a little bit more in some future videos okay so now we're back to rachel who is going through her clothing and marie kondo says first you have to hold every single item see if it sparks joy and then if you decide that something doesn't spark joy at that point you're going to think it and let it go and the thinking and letting go part is something that a lot of people tend to roll their eyes about and there's been articles about it like oh my gosh you kiss your socks before you throw them away again as someone who was an emotional hoarder who had trouble letting go of things because everything was very very sentimental to me this step was really key by expressing the gratitude to the thing that you're letting go that helps you break the relationship with that item and it makes letting go much much easier i think it's really really funny at the point where kevin is sorting his clothes in like the other room across the hall from rachel and he gets hung up on this comfy old shirt of his and rachel hollers from the other room but when was the last time that you wore that shirt and marie condo at that moment gently scolds rachel and says rachel focus on what you're doing pay attention to your own clothes and kind of let kevin focus on his own stuff and that's another point that i had recently shared in my video about 10 lessons that i learned in the past five years as a minimalist is you can't really force other people to declutter things that they don't want to only you can decide what sparks joy for you and you don't get to decide that for someone else but then as a minimalist i would also say if you haven't worn a shirt for something like five or ten years and you're keeping it just because it's comfy or because it reminds you of college or something else maybe you need to take a closer look and ask yourself does this thing really spark joy or am i keeping it just because after they're done decluttering their clothing then marie kondo gives them a little lesson on how to fold clothing with the vertical konmari method of folding so that they can put it back in the drawers and have it vertically facing which saves space and it allows you to see everything easily at a glance and i can say that this is really a great way to fold and store your clothes if you have the correct kind of dressers because it works in our wardrobe but it doesn't currently work for the dressers that we have in our kids room i really liked the moment where rachel wants to keep the hangers and she's like we'll put them in the garage and kevin's like when are we going to need 200 extra hangers and she's like but we paid money for them and i think that so many people can get this moment and money can be something that really trips people up the financial guilt that you feel and getting rid of these things everyone feels that at some point and then when they're ready to tackle the kimono which is basically the japanese word for everything else in the home i like that marie kondo brings this box that's filled with other small boxes and she's like this is going to be really helpful for organizing your drawers and i love that she reinforces that it is absolutely not necessary to go out and buy special organizing equipment to get your drawers and your closets or wherever in order if you want some special lingerie boxes for your underwear in your drawer knock yourself out right i use those and then i also use shoe boxes and i use them in my wardrobe and i also use them in my entryway so make it a point of using what you already have before you try to go out and buy something else that's a really minimalist philosophy there i think going back to the kitchen which was one of rachel's most stressful pain points that we saw earlier in the episode she's gotten a lot of stuff out of the cupboards but then she's kind of stuck on how to store containers and what i like is that murray condo has her put the lids on the containers and then store them vertically i always encourage people to store the containers with the lids on so that they're not floating everywhere and creating this huge mess and storing them vertically i can see how that could work for some containers but not others i currently stack my glass ones on top of each other but do what works for you later on in this episode they have a kind of funny moment where rachel shares that this has really been a great bonding experience for them and the relationship has been improving between her and kevin and he even said that cleaning is sexy and murray condos just like this is such an american way of thinking about it they say that life is better they're talking more they're happier they're really working together as a team and huge moment where they were able to stop hiring help for the laundry which was kind of a celebration moment for her kevin and marie congratulations to the friend family for getting that done next we meet ron and wendy akiyama and they are an absolutely adorable couple whose children have left the home so they're empty nesters but they kind of have a lot of clutter left behind and they're ready to have things calm so that they can enjoy their retirement honestly when i watch this episode i felt like it was a glimpse into my own future with my husband because like wendy is you know super chatty and outgoing and then ron is sitting there like yup and he even says later that he's kind of a macho guy and this isn't normally the kind of thing that he would do but he subscribes to the saying happy wife happy life and he's really going along with it so that wendy can feel at peace and happy in her home and then wendy is definitely agreeing with him she says that ron if it was up to him he would be perfectly happy just to maintain the status quo and leave things as they are but it was really stressing her out and i will link to my video on the benefits of minimalism where i cited multiple research studies that discuss scientifically that women are more stressed out and anxious by clutter in their home as compared to men so moving on we start to see the rest of the house and in the master bedroom there are baseball cards in one corner that are stacked up to the ceiling and then wendy's clothes not only take up the closet in that bedroom but then they are also in multiple other places throughout the home and they're just kind of spilling out everywhere and also we find out that wendy loves christmas i would love to know how many nutcrackers she had i don't think that they did a count i would love to know and over the years they've just been collecting things and collecting things but not getting rid of anything to the point where now they have three generations of stuff from their parents from them and then from their children i love that everyone sits down together in this episode to thank the house for protecting them and to let it know that they're going to be decluttering and by the way in case you didn't know this position of sitting in japanese is called seiza and basically it's the way that you're going to sit in traditional formal occasions and it's considered the respectful way to sit in the presence of your superiors or elders unless otherwise permitted so again that's just a little interesting cultural snippet for you there okay so now we're on to tackling clothing and marie again reiterates why it's important for you to get everything in one big pile so that you can really just evaluate the size and kind of get this shocked feeling and sometimes for people that shock is necessary to be able to come to terms with how much stuff they have actually accumulated over the years and i think wendy was definitely shocked when she saw everything piled up on her bed what i love about that moment is that marie kondo is not judgmental she doesn't try to make it dramatic or crazy like maybe some american shows would do but she just kind of looks at it and says i'm gonna be honest this is the biggest pile that i've ever seen and wendy is so cute she's like yay like i win so i really really love how kind and still marie kondo was in these moments and you know dealing with these things that can people can feel very insecure about and you find out that wendy feels like clothing shopping is a little bit of addiction for her she says that when she was growing up she loved dressing up paper dolls and then when she became older she became the paper doll and she loved to dress up her stuff and there's so much stuff with tags even still on it in her closet but i really appreciate her sharing that part of her story with us emotional spending and impulse buying is a real problem for many people nowadays thank you wendy for being brave enough to share that with us and then after she's done decluttering her clothing marie kondo comes to check on her and wendy says you would be so proud of me like i get emails from all of my favorite brands and i don't even open them i just delete them and i think that as a minimalist this is a really important moment no matter how well you declutter if you don't change the habits that led you to accumulate the clutter then your home will just go back to being a cluttered mess again and then as far as ron i really loved how when wendy went to check on him at one point then we saw that he had actually fallen asleep in his chair as he was tackling his baseball cards and i think that that is another important thing to talk about is just how exhausting decluttering can be for people it's physically exhausting when you're sorting through so much stuff and it's also emotionally exhausting all of these micro decisions just pile on top of each other to the point where at the end of the day after you've made so many decisions you are totally exhausted and then later as we progress through you can tell that they've really come together as a team and ron has totally gotten on board with this whole thing and they're noticing how well they're communicating how much better they've gotten that working together as a team and the decisions are no longer as hard and ron realizes that it's much better for him to have 10 special baseball cards than it is to have you know 10 000 that are just so-so and i think that's definitely a minimalist perspective as well is quality over quantity and feeling that if you say that everything is special then really nothing is special and at the end of course they share those amazing before and afters especially the rumpus room when wendy has her christmas stuff cleared out you can see a big difference and if you're just now starting a decluttering journey i would encourage you to take a before shot or a before video just so you can look back after you've done your work and you can really see the difference i have people on my instagram send me their before and after pictures all the time and i really cheer them on and celebrate with them and then there's this really sweet moment where ron and wendy are talking at the end and they talk about the experience and how transformative it has been for them and wendy says that she feels like there is absolutely nothing that they can't do now that they've done this together and i agree high five wendy now we're moving on to episode four and i just feel like this episode was the most important decluttering video i've ever seen in my entire life because until i saw this video i had never felt that decluttering or minimalism videos were very relatable to my personal experience okay anytime i need to come down i'm going to just take a sip of tea and this episode follows marihe hodges who is ready to declutter after the passing of her husband and she has a home filled up with stuff that's reminding her of the past but it's not sparking joy for her anymore because so much of it is his and he isn't there anymore and there's this point where she sits down with her kids and she talks about how this is an important step for her going forward but she wants to be really thoughtful about it and not get rid of anything that she might regret getting rid of later i know exactly how she feels after my mom died when i was nine we started putting things into boxes and then i just got used to that is just put things in boxes for later just in case and i think that that fear that mark feels we've all felt that at some point and honestly i just want to say a big thank you to margie because her sharing her experiences was truly one of the things that helped me muster up the courage to start my own youtube channel including the video where i recently shared my 30 year journey that now has over 1 million views because until that point i'd only ever written about my experiences and the idea of getting on a camera to talk about it was completely overwhelming and terrifying being like this like i am it's happening guys it's go time i'm not gonna cry i'm not gonna cry a few minutes later i can't stop crying and i thought about how much she had helped me and maybe how my story would help other people who had the same experiences so thank you to margie i don't know if you'll see this video but it meant the world to me i'm gonna ruin my makeup here so moving on when we start the tour we see that margie has a whole bedroom full of her kids stuff and everyone says that they want to do it but then they're also too busy to come and do it and i think a lot of us can all relate to this feeling that we are too busy we don't have time to declutter but what i always say is that there is no perfect time to declutter and if you wait for the perfect time to declutter you will be waiting forever so the best time to start decluttering was yesterday and the second best time is today and then we tour the rest of the home and we see the master bedroom closet where margie still has all of her husband's clothing hanging in the closet and he she has his books on the shelf his office full of business stuff and it really feels like she's living in this past where it was all of their dreams and hopes for the future together and margie says i have to make room going forward i can't keep living in the past and this concept of focusing on the future and not dwelling too much in the past has been really healing for me as a minimalist and on my entire decluttering journey another thing that i love about this episode that they didn't show in either of the other episodes is they sit down at a table and marie kondo asks margie what is her vision for what her future wants to look like and this is such a good strategy strategy anytime you have a goal to do something big in your life have an idea of what you're working towards and visualization is so so powerful every year i write goals for myself i even created a vision board this year that's really helped me a lot staying focused on my goals and having a clear image of what you want your future to look like can help keep you moving forward especially in the times that you need it most which is when things get tough and overwhelming which let's face it are going to happen to anyone anytime anywhere so then when they're ready to start the decluttering of course they start with clothing as they always do for the konmari method but mari seems to have a really hard time getting started and marie kondo says okay if you are having trouble getting started start with something that you know is like an absolute key in my own process i found myself thinking of these as like finding your north star what are those north star pieces that are going to guide you going forward and once you have those identified it becomes easier to think about how you're going to sort things and declutter them going forward so margie finishes up her own clothing and the next stage is supposed to be books and originally marie kondo wanted to save margie's husband's clothing for last because it's now considered a sentimental item but margie found herself really having this mental block because she was mentally prepared to start doing his stuff and to move forward onto something else she just didn't feel like that was working for her and that just goes to show you that what works for one person isn't necessarily going to be the best way for another person and you just need to keep up the momentum so you can keep moving forward and then when margie is in the closet she's going through her husband's clothes and she kind of breaks down and she says how hard this is for her to see all these clothes that he had think about the stages that represented their lives together and then that all of those things were now in a pile on the floor it was a deeply personal and moving experience and i don't think that anyone who watched that episode could have a dry eye after watching it i certainly don't even just talking about it these are moments that so many of us go through and yet we do not talk about them we don't show them to the outside world and i wish it wasn't that way i wish that we could all share these feelings and our sadness and difficulties with more openness so that's what i always try to do on this channel with you guys and then moving on we see margie tackle her crafting stash which is admittedly quite large and she has tons of bags and ribbons and bows and tags and other things that she's just been sashing for a really long time and kind of just put them in this one room and at that point marie condo gives her the advice when she gets stuck again is don't focus on what you're getting rid of focus on what you want to keep because when you focus on what you're keeping the getting rid of part becomes much much easier and then later when they're going through some more photos and sentimental items marie condo suggests that margie make her own special box for her kind of sentimental keepsakes and i love this we call them memory boxes or keepsake boxes or even treasure boxes i have a memory box for myself and my kids have been begging me to start one for them as well so i plan on doing a video very very soon on how to create your own memory box that will work for kids or adults from a minimalist perspective and then another cool thing that they show in this episode is that margie had a yard sale to help get rid of some of her items and i think that they should have talked about this more i really found selling my clutter in person and online or giving it away directly was immensely healing i knew that my things were going on to someone who would care about them and treasure them and then it also helped me alleviate some of the financial guilt that i felt getting rid of so much stuff and then when marie kondo comes to check out the end there are some super satisfying before and after pictures and the biggest change was in that craft room and there was a really cute moment where marie gets down on the floor and rolls around and she's like i never imagined it could look like this and it was just so light-hearted and special to feel that openness and spaciousness and really that sense of freedom that i know everyone was feeling when they saw that episode i love how they closed it with such a positive feeling that margie is ready to move forward with gratitude for the past and also excitement to see what the future holds for her there's a quote that i love that says everything that you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear and once i got past that hurdle of how hard and how emotional decluttering was going to be for me i found so much freedom and joy so do i recommend the konmari method of decluttering yes am i excited for season two yes if you haven't already make sure to like this video and definitely tune in next week because then i'm going to be talking about my reaction to season two of sparking joy with marie kondo until then take care see you soon bye bye you

Channel: A to Zen Life

Views: 159,557

Keywords: marie kondo netflix, tidying up netflix, tidying up show netflix, marie kondo show netflix, marie kondo reality show, konmari show netflix, tidying up with marie kondo, spark joy, tidying up with marie kondo netflix, life changing magic of tidying up, konmari method, minimalism, minimalist, minimalist reaction video, marie kondo, what does a minimalist think of marie kondo’s netflix show, minimalist marie kondo, minimalist mom, ashlynne eaton, tidying up, konmari, marissa zen

Id: I8Nz2abNJjE

Length: 27min 43sec (1663 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021