Clean Up Your Act: Revolutionary Gender Politics in Tidying Up With Marie Kondo

This past November, international tidying sensation Marie Kondo came out with a new book titled Kurashi at Home. It’s the latest piece of media espousing Kondo’s eponymously dubbed “KonMari” method, but, in my opinion, it’s less riveting than her 2019 Netflix show, Tidying Up With Marie Kondo. For me and millions of others, the eight-episode series sparked an appreciation for the life-changing KonMari system.

Recently, viewership of the years-old show increased significantly, and the renewed interest raises the question: is Tidying Up as life-changing as we are made to believe? And for whom is it really life-changing? While Kondo undoubtedly succeeds in changing her clients' relationship to possessions and cultivates an environment of empathy, as culturalist Laurie Ouellette argues, the method “presents pared-down, curated consumption as a lifestyle choice that depends on women’s work,” ultimately perpetuating the domestic burdens that many women face.

I believe the KonMari method is life-changing. In fact, I’d go so far as to call it one of the most revolutionary mainstream challenges to gender norms that I’ve seen. The best example of this comes up in the third episode, “The Downsizers,” which centers on Katrina Mersier and her family. At the beginning of the episode, Katrina is in a desperate state; not only is her new apartment untidy, but she’s shouldering the weight of singlehandedly undertaking the entire family’s domestic labor. By the end of the episode, though, the Mersier home has been completely revitalized. The apartment is tidier, sure, but a more important shift has also taken place in her husband Douglas and children Nolan and Kayci’s mindsets.

Douglas seems to be a completely new man thanks to Kondo’s influence, stating in an interview with the crew that “Before, I had the wrong mentality to not want to engage and help [with chores] and even not see the value [of Katrina’s housework] … But, now, I realize the responsibility should not be on Mom. It should be on the family.” And, truthfully, his actions speak for themselves: Douglas cooks, cleans, folds laundry, and even supervises Nolan and Kayci’s own tidying efforts.

What strikes me the most about this episode isn’t the message that housework shouldn’t be feminine work (because, frankly, that’s not exactly a new concept). No, what’s magical about this show is how it presents this idea. Marie never tells the audience, “Now folks, this is what feminism looks like in the home.” For that matter, she never even says the word “feminism”! Instead, she harnesses the power of showing rather than telling. Every time the topic of Katrina’s unjust domestic burden is broached, it’s by Douglas or Nolan.

Once Douglas begins to tangibly pitch in, it’s notable that he sees himself, and is seen by his family, as equally “manly” as before. While doing laundry, he calls himself a “champion,” a stark difference from the barrage of emasculatory remarks that might usually accompany a man doing traditionally feminine housework. Instead of viewing the shift in labor division as a loss of his birth-given privilege, Douglas treats the family’s new housework situation as a welcome change that benefits both Katrina and himself. In this way, Tidying Up normalizes the communal undertaking of housework as a more beneficial family model for everyone involved. For any fathers or husbands that might be watching, it could very well be the first urging to actually pick up a mop or sponge.

But how many men really are watching a “feminine” cleaning show? Turns out, it doesn’t matter as much as you’d think. While, yes, some people report their husbands watching the show with them and implementing KonMari of their own volition, such as this Twitter user, part of the impact of the show comes from raising women’s standards so that they can demand more from their partners, whether it’s help tidying up an apartment or more equal division of household chores. In showing that there’s a world out there where challenges to nuclear family roles are received by masculine figures in a calm, supportive manner, Kondo pushes women to look past the myth of male laziness and the weaponized incompetence that has been used to justify their inaction at home.

And it’s hard to overstate the effects of these types of mindset shifts. Empirically, freeing up time traditionally spent in domestic work has led to major successes in the women’s rights movements, best evidenced when the washing machine and plug-in kitchen appliances were first introduced. Going further, Italian feminist scholar Mariarosa Dalla Costa argues that the communal division of household chores is the only way to dismantle the imposition of patriarchal capitalism in the home.

So, you know what? Let’s take a page from Marie’s book and push men to do better and be better; let’s hold them accountable for contributing to domestic affairs; let’s encourage them to deconstruct the gendered biases they’ve developed toward certain tasks. After all, misogyny certainly doesn’t spark joy.