If there's anything Marie Kondo exudes, it's effortless perfection.

The Japanese woman's surname has become a verb in English - so many people are fascinated by Kondo's tidy doctrine, in which every item must have its place.

Sarah Obertreis

Editor in the “Society & Style” department.

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But in her new book, Kurashi, Kondo admits that this urge for absolute order doesn't always fit the reality of life, even her own now affluent California lifestyle.

"As a professional cleaner, I sometimes put myself under pressure to keep my house absolutely tidy," writes the 38-year-old.

The Washington Post now quotes from a virtual tea ceremony in which Kondo admitted: "My house is a mess right now, but the way I organize my time is just right for me at the moment." With the help of a translator drove She continued, "I've just kind of given up on keeping my house tidy."

The queen of tidying has given up?

This may sound shocking at first: The queen of tidying up herself has given up?

How are we supposed to keep our apartments tidy when even Kondo can't do it?

In fact, Kondo only shared one thing with us that everyone who is raising or has raised a child has long understood.

Namely, that order is not the most important thing in life.

That greasy fingerprints on window panes and Tupperware lids on living room floors can sometimes wait without life losing its rays of joy ("spark of joy" - one of Kondo's favorite expressions).

Kondo and her husband Takumi Kawahara welcomed their third child in 2021.

“After our first child was born, I first aspired to be a mother who balances parenting, housework and work with ease.

Instead, I was just exhausted,” Kondo writes in “Kurashi,” telling of the insolvency of the modern compatibility issue.

Her husband gets up at four in the morning

What follows?

Clearly, giving up means something different to Kondo than it does to most moms.

With the opening of her online shop in 2019, the Japanese woman has increasingly developed into a furnishing expert.

Now she's trying to recommend the right routines for her $65 meditation bowls and $40 incense sticks, which she calls a "joy routine."

While her husband goes to sleep with the children at the same time so that he can get up at four in the morning, she sleeps a little longer.

But her day is also said to be filled with fixed rituals, and everyone has to decide for themselves whether they make sense or not.

Kondo opens the windows wide when she gets up, lights incense sticks and polishes the soles of her shoes every evening to thank them for getting them through the day.

One of her favorite activities is scrapbooking: she sticks magazine clippings, pictures of cakes, crockery and beautiful kitchens into a notebook.

When she wants to relax, she told the Washington Post, she looks at the pages of photos and drawings of green objects.

She also recommends this to all readers.

In "Kurashi," Kondo advises "to visualize the ideal life from the time you wake up until the end of the day."

Reading all of this, one cannot help but think of "That Girl," an Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok trend that's now infamous.

In videos with millions of views, young women describe their absurd morning routines: get up at four in the morning like Kondo's husband, then meditate for half an hour, do yoga for half an hour, then write in a journal for ten minutes and read your current favorite book for twenty minutes.

Then, just in time for sunrise, they sit at their desks and tell the camera how rested they are and at the same time how motivated they are for the day.

The accounts deliberately ignore how quickly this striving for balance and inner and outer order can turn into the opposite: into a state of total exhaustion, dissatisfaction and fear - as Marie Kondo describes it.