If you don’t understand why we should wonder about the “MARIE KONDO EFFECT”, then let me first explain who Marie Kondo is.
Ms. Kondo is a Japanese organizing consultant, author, and founder of the brand and website konmari.com
From KonMari.com:
Enchanted with organizing since her childhood, Marie began her tidying consultant business as a 19-year-old university student in Tokyo. Today, Marie is a renowned tidying expert helping people around the world to transform their cluttered homes into spaces of serenity and inspiration. In her #1 New York Times best-selling book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” Marie took tidying to a whole new level, teaching that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you’ll never have to do it again.
What is the KonMari Method?
The KonMari Method™ encourages tidying by category – not by location – beginning with clothes, then moving on to books, papers, komono (miscellaneous items), and, finally, sentimental items. Keep only those things that speak to the heart, and discard items that no longer spark joy. Thank them for their service – then let them go.
In each NETFLIX episode of “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo”, Ms. Kondo helps a family, couple or individual with a clutter situation. Her strategy involves reducing items by category, rather than by room, and only keeping items that “spark joy.”
The best-selling author of “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” preaches an approach some call “Draconian,” while others credit her method with changing their lives.
So you are ready to declutter and find your joy now right? Well us having more joy is causing a lot more work for people who are receiving our unwanted stuff that Marie made us get rid of. Namely, thrift stores.
From CBS San Francisco:
The Hospice Thrift Shoppe in Walnut Creek and thrift stores all around the Bay Area are being inundated with donations. What’s being called “The Marie Kondo Effect” is making it hard for some stores to deal with all the incoming material. Many have begun limiting when, and how much, they will accept. “There will be sometimes where somebody’s going to have to put a sign out, you know, just for the day, or they’ll limit per box per person so they don’t have to turn everybody away,” said Nicole Kannier, manager of the Hospice Thrift Shoppe. The Marie Kondo show just debuted on January 1st, but thrift stores say it is already causing donation levels they usually only see during the “Spring Cleaning” months.
If this trend continues, will the next problem be less shoppers at those same thrift stores? Hmmmmmm.
Susan Saunders 1/31/19
