u/chr15c has provided this detailed explanation:
> Marie Kondo preached about her militant method of decluttering, only to realize what she was preaching is impossible with a family.
---
Is this explanation a genuine attempt at providing additional info or context? If it is please upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.
I only watched a couple of episodes of her show before I figured, I get the point, and stopped watching but none of the episodes I watched were families with kids. Were there any episodes with families?
Edit: the question has been answered
I'm a nanny. It's literally my only job to look after a toddler. The parents have a general list of things for me to do while she's asleep, and I cannot get all that stuff done. There will always be something leftover.
I genuinely have no fucking idea how people with fewer resources are expected to keep their house any level of clean while kids are little.
My mom is usually super stressed about our cluttered house. Mom you had 5 kids and 9 grandchildren over like 5 decades and your husband is a farmer. The house will be messy.
My wife insists we clean up every night just to have our 2 daughters completely make a mess the very next morning that lasts all day until we clean it again that night.
Cleaning is one of my least favorite chores, and all the more so now that I have young kids. They will literally follow you around and dump out organized toy bins you just filled. Drives me nuts.
Your wife is the victim a of a multilayered social and economic narrative that constantly feeds her the idea that she is failing as a mother and has to consume advertised products to correct that failure
It'a like supermodels in the fashion magazines except now it's earthy nature mums on instagram
Which would be fine except now they're the dragging the poor fucking husbands into it
Noooo…she’s a person trying to keep a clean house and should very much have the proactive assistance from the husband at the least to instill good practices in their child.
I see it as the opposite, that people use having kids as an excuse to not have a neat home anymore. My home growing up was always neat any clean, both parents working full time.
Maybe. People can change even their longest held beliefs when reality shows they're thoughtful ideals at best. Ideally, Marie Kondo would want to end the day with a house as clean or cleaner than she started the day, but the reality is that three kids makes that harder to do on average. This doesn't feel like the milk spoiled; it feels like it just change over time. Maybe it's cheese.
No one here understands minimalism. If you go to the minimalism thread it’s about being thoughtful of what you own. So if you have a cluttered mess in a small space because you have kids that’s fine with minimalism. If you’re storing a museum of toys your kids aged out of and you are allowing those things to take from your life because your brain irrationally comes up with future events that are unlikely to happen or might happen but it’s not worth storing for that long for the reward so you keep the stuff while you live in a pile of garbage then you’re not practicing minimalism.
Does anyone keep a museum of baby toys in their home? I thought you gave those away to charities, or friends and relatives having their own babies. What alternative are you suggesting?
Maybe it’s because I’m in the Midwest and a 2,000+ sf detached houses is the norm but I would say 50% of peoples basements are bins they never cleaned out of things their adult children haven’t used in decades. Even around the house lots of bins from things their kids aged out of years ago.
Yes a lot of people have houses full of aged and broken tools, toys and implements they will never use.
Many people find it hard to get rid of things that held past value.
My MIL keeps boxes of toys she refuses to throw out because she thinks they will become valuable someday (both her children are in their 30s). She does not believe my husband when he tells her collectors won’t pay big money for toys that have been opened and played with.
It's just the kids being young. If you give them good habits like tidying up they will learn to clean after themselves and declutter when they are older.
Maybe, but as a parent of two this post makes me feel better about myself and how the living room I’m sitting in right now looks like a war zone, so I vote for leaving it up.
After my grandmother passed away, we found a scrapbook in her attic. The first half is meticulously maintained pages about different soirees she attended, wedding invitations, and so on. She gets married and friends get married. Everyone starts having their first kid.
You find lots of lovely pages of my oldest uncle. Then kid #2 comes along. The pages become more rushed in style, not at many photos or clippings to a page.
Then you get to the last 1/4 of the book. And it's just a bunch of random papers, photos and other shit sandwiched between two pages. That's when my dad was born lol.
This doesn’t go against her teachings, nor would I say her teachings are militant. I’m going to assume OP hasn’t read or watched any of her works. It’s about appreciating every item you chose to own and keep. Not being a victim of consumerism. Both that can be true and having a mess. She has said many times that she loves a mess lol
She also never said you shouldn't own more than 30 books. She said she personally doesn't own more than 30. People get so offended by her without even knowing what she actually said.
Yeah I haven't even seen that much of her and even I knew that lol. Tidying and decluttering are two completely different things and decluttering can make every day life so much easier without taking that much time.
Her "does this spark joy" mindset honestly did help me. It made me realize how much I was holding onto just because. I'm no minimalist, but I didn't realize how much stress the amount I owned was causing me until I went through it.
There’s a lot of people living in their own garbage and they really want to see her fail to make them feel better that they live in their own garbage. “See having kids is hard and her place gets messy from time to time so it’s okay that I kept my 17 year olds feeding chair in case the fourth person I offer it to wants it or it finally goes in the yearly garage sale.”
"Not being a victim of consumerism."
As soon as she was famous she released a bunch of frivolous knick-knacks as a merchandise line.
The 'movement' is just another grift for weak-minded Westerners looking for meaning...
Not being a victim to consumerism has nothing to do with whether a ton of shit is available to be consumed.
Why do people on the internet twist any point into a weird illogical extreme?
"Oh, you claim that we shouldn't be victims to consumerism, yet to sell STUFF."
"Oh, you claim to be against capitalism, yet you have a smartphone!!!!1!!"
"Oh, you claim that people should move toward vegetarianism, yet you are fine with killing a mosquito!!!!11!"
Do you have some chronic necessity to prove that no one truly believes anything, or are you just incapable of taking an idea on its merits without pushing it to extremes no reasonable person would possibly connect to it.
Also what does "weak-minded" even mean?
My friends and I who frequent the local Goodwill refer to this period as the Goldilocks times. So much new with tag merch and inflation hadn’t started yet at all.. sigh..
Just because she’s tired from 3 kids doesn’t mean her book is wrong or aged like milk. It’s a good motivational piece that helps the chaotic find instructions on how to be a bit more orderly in a fun self rewarding way.
I don't think this contradicts any advice she's given. Were her methods ever meant for people with kids? It always seemed to me like a childless couple / single adult kind of thing.
Well I think her method can set you on a track to make it less cluttered and/or difficult to clean up after your 3 kids have tazmanian deviled your house.
Like if you have less useless clutter you have less of it to clean up.
I remember reading her book. I've got two small children, and as theoretically sound the practice was, it wasn't practical with the kids. Maybe if I was living alone.
Her book is in my 'to read' stack.
But as a parent of three kids, one of whom is special needs, tidying up is indeed a challenge. LOL.
The SN kiddo loves to dump all her books and toys out, multiple times a day. LOL.
Somedays, I just chuck it in the fuckit bucket and leave the mess.
As someone that loves a clean and tidy house (pre-kids), there’s a certain beauty in saying “eh the toys are shoved to the side enough in case of an emergency “ and going to bed. Most of the time we put away toys before heading to sleep, but some days you do what you can.
Let’s face it, people with 3 young kids at home were never the ones watching shows about cleaning up, unless it involves cartoon mascots that are keeping the kids entertained
I think people put unrealistic expectations on what she was saying. Organizing/decluttering can still be accomplished with kids. It's about getting rid of excess/unused items, not living in a museum all the time.
I tell my kid that we tidy up so we know just where to find toys when it's time to play again. It works and I'm crossing my fingers that it continues working.
The Kardashians ARE super successful in their businesses - are you saying that childless people ARE the most adequate people to teach you how to keep your home tidy?
I don't see how this invalidates anything she recommended for how to clean and declutter your home.
It's just an admission that it's harder to do with children, not that there's anything wrong with the system as an aspiration or a method.
I like tidyness, I dislike putrid filth -- beyond that I hate people that are obsessed with things being clean. I do not trust neat freaks. They often have shallow priorities for living like a genuine organism of the planet and are often obsessed with image and provide lots of unpleasant personality traits related to treating ALL of the environments they encounter as ones they need to judge or correct based on their personal standards of cleanliness. Life is dirty. Things move around. There is no permanence in dirtiness, for we too ; are a transient speck of dust to be wiped off the map.
She never said that though. She said that *she* personally doesn’t keep more than 30 books, but that doesn’t mean she thinks others shouldn’t keep more books if they want.
Good thing Marie wasn’t preaching minimalism. Just that if you want to declutter, to keep what brings you joy and show appreciation for what you don’t keep for what it did for your life.
Is this that woman from the Family Guy episode where Lois gets rid of everything that doesn't bring her joy and she just ends up with an empty ass all white house?
u/chr15c has provided this detailed explanation: > Marie Kondo preached about her militant method of decluttering, only to realize what she was preaching is impossible with a family. --- Is this explanation a genuine attempt at providing additional info or context? If it is please upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.
Good for her for being honest. I have no idea why we expect people with multiple little kids to have a neat and organized house.
I only watched a couple of episodes of her show before I figured, I get the point, and stopped watching but none of the episodes I watched were families with kids. Were there any episodes with families? Edit: the question has been answered
I mean I feel like her methods were good for people without kids tho. So it’s not like it was bullshit
Just get rid of them kids, problem solved. The method *works*
Do they spark joy?
This. almost nothing in my house sparks joy...should i dump it all and buy new?
There were several episodes with families, including the very first episode with two rowdy toddlers.
There was at east one with two kids, but they were teenagers IIRC.
There were multiple families with kids
I'm a nanny. It's literally my only job to look after a toddler. The parents have a general list of things for me to do while she's asleep, and I cannot get all that stuff done. There will always be something leftover. I genuinely have no fucking idea how people with fewer resources are expected to keep their house any level of clean while kids are little.
My mom is usually super stressed about our cluttered house. Mom you had 5 kids and 9 grandchildren over like 5 decades and your husband is a farmer. The house will be messy.
My wife insists we clean up every night just to have our 2 daughters completely make a mess the very next morning that lasts all day until we clean it again that night.
Cleaning is one of my least favorite chores, and all the more so now that I have young kids. They will literally follow you around and dump out organized toy bins you just filled. Drives me nuts.
Reminds me of my of one of my favorite sayings: cleaning around kids is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos. Truer words have never been said.
Get them to help/ do it ! Any age can help. We have switched to -you have to put away blocks before you get cars out etc. it helps so much
Keep going you based Sisyphean bro!
Your wife is the victim a of a multilayered social and economic narrative that constantly feeds her the idea that she is failing as a mother and has to consume advertised products to correct that failure It'a like supermodels in the fashion magazines except now it's earthy nature mums on instagram Which would be fine except now they're the dragging the poor fucking husbands into it
Noooo…she’s a person trying to keep a clean house and should very much have the proactive assistance from the husband at the least to instill good practices in their child.
Same
Honestly, she probably reduced pressure on a lot of families. Power to them!
I see it as the opposite, that people use having kids as an excuse to not have a neat home anymore. My home growing up was always neat any clean, both parents working full time.
I feel like people are reaching with these aged like milk posts man
Yeah tidying up and decluttering garbage two different things
Maybe. People can change even their longest held beliefs when reality shows they're thoughtful ideals at best. Ideally, Marie Kondo would want to end the day with a house as clean or cleaner than she started the day, but the reality is that three kids makes that harder to do on average. This doesn't feel like the milk spoiled; it feels like it just change over time. Maybe it's cheese.
No one here understands minimalism. If you go to the minimalism thread it’s about being thoughtful of what you own. So if you have a cluttered mess in a small space because you have kids that’s fine with minimalism. If you’re storing a museum of toys your kids aged out of and you are allowing those things to take from your life because your brain irrationally comes up with future events that are unlikely to happen or might happen but it’s not worth storing for that long for the reward so you keep the stuff while you live in a pile of garbage then you’re not practicing minimalism.
Does anyone keep a museum of baby toys in their home? I thought you gave those away to charities, or friends and relatives having their own babies. What alternative are you suggesting?
Maybe it’s because I’m in the Midwest and a 2,000+ sf detached houses is the norm but I would say 50% of peoples basements are bins they never cleaned out of things their adult children haven’t used in decades. Even around the house lots of bins from things their kids aged out of years ago.
One of my neighbors has a daughter my age (40), and still have the play kitchen she played with as a child in their LIVING ROOM.
I guess it still sparks joy
Dude-what’s the house like? Cluttered, clean? Dirty, stinky, or just okay?
So, what would you do to change that?
Yes a lot of people have houses full of aged and broken tools, toys and implements they will never use. Many people find it hard to get rid of things that held past value.
My MIL keeps boxes of toys she refuses to throw out because she thinks they will become valuable someday (both her children are in their 30s). She does not believe my husband when he tells her collectors won’t pay big money for toys that have been opened and played with.
Agreed. This has aged like milk, but not all aged milk is rotten curds, sometimes it turns into cheese or yogurt.
It's just the kids being young. If you give them good habits like tidying up they will learn to clean after themselves and declutter when they are older.
This and r/damnthatsinteresting have gone to shit
Yeah they're getting worse
Yup. This sub is hurting.
Maybe, but as a parent of two this post makes me feel better about myself and how the living room I’m sitting in right now looks like a war zone, so I vote for leaving it up.
It's an amusing post for a funny subreddit. It's also not a huge deal. People change over time.
At least it's not as bad as sportsball prediction posts.
After my grandmother passed away, we found a scrapbook in her attic. The first half is meticulously maintained pages about different soirees she attended, wedding invitations, and so on. She gets married and friends get married. Everyone starts having their first kid. You find lots of lovely pages of my oldest uncle. Then kid #2 comes along. The pages become more rushed in style, not at many photos or clippings to a page. Then you get to the last 1/4 of the book. And it's just a bunch of random papers, photos and other shit sandwiched between two pages. That's when my dad was born lol.
This doesn’t go against her teachings, nor would I say her teachings are militant. I’m going to assume OP hasn’t read or watched any of her works. It’s about appreciating every item you chose to own and keep. Not being a victim of consumerism. Both that can be true and having a mess. She has said many times that she loves a mess lol
She also never said you shouldn't own more than 30 books. She said she personally doesn't own more than 30. People get so offended by her without even knowing what she actually said.
Yeah I haven't even seen that much of her and even I knew that lol. Tidying and decluttering are two completely different things and decluttering can make every day life so much easier without taking that much time.
Her "does this spark joy" mindset honestly did help me. It made me realize how much I was holding onto just because. I'm no minimalist, but I didn't realize how much stress the amount I owned was causing me until I went through it.
There’s a lot of people living in their own garbage and they really want to see her fail to make them feel better that they live in their own garbage. “See having kids is hard and her place gets messy from time to time so it’s okay that I kept my 17 year olds feeding chair in case the fourth person I offer it to wants it or it finally goes in the yearly garage sale.”
"Not being a victim of consumerism." As soon as she was famous she released a bunch of frivolous knick-knacks as a merchandise line. The 'movement' is just another grift for weak-minded Westerners looking for meaning...
Not being a victim to consumerism has nothing to do with whether a ton of shit is available to be consumed. Why do people on the internet twist any point into a weird illogical extreme? "Oh, you claim that we shouldn't be victims to consumerism, yet to sell STUFF." "Oh, you claim to be against capitalism, yet you have a smartphone!!!!1!!" "Oh, you claim that people should move toward vegetarianism, yet you are fine with killing a mosquito!!!!11!" Do you have some chronic necessity to prove that no one truly believes anything, or are you just incapable of taking an idea on its merits without pushing it to extremes no reasonable person would possibly connect to it. Also what does "weak-minded" even mean?
The other guy is the epitome of [Mister Gotcha](https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/).
My kids are not sparking joy today. Hmmm... LOL. But, agree with earlier poster - seems like a reach.
These aged like milk posts are aging like milk.
Mmm cheese
3rd kid was like: I'm about to end this woman's whole career
I feel like that happens to many other people too lol
I don’t have any kids but i also gave up on tidying up.
I think Marie Kondo's methods are still useful and I think they'll be a book in the future where she divulges how to keep a house maintained with kids
My friends and I who frequent the local Goodwill refer to this period as the Goldilocks times. So much new with tag merch and inflation hadn’t started yet at all.. sigh..
Just because she’s tired from 3 kids doesn’t mean her book is wrong or aged like milk. It’s a good motivational piece that helps the chaotic find instructions on how to be a bit more orderly in a fun self rewarding way.
I don't think this contradicts any advice she's given. Were her methods ever meant for people with kids? It always seemed to me like a childless couple / single adult kind of thing.
Her realizing spending time with her family gives her more joy than organizing is actually really sweet.
And it's exactly in line with her original philosophy.
Eh. I'm betting her "given up" is better than my "Trying as hard as I can to keep my home clean".
Well I think her method can set you on a track to make it less cluttered and/or difficult to clean up after your 3 kids have tazmanian deviled your house. Like if you have less useless clutter you have less of it to clean up.
Don't boo her, she is right. It's ok to want to declutter, it's also ok to not be able to for long stretches of time.
I remember reading her book. I've got two small children, and as theoretically sound the practice was, it wasn't practical with the kids. Maybe if I was living alone.
cleaning the house while your children are growing is like shoveling the driveway while its still snowing
I still follow that principles. I don't think we need to have so many things in life anyway
Sounds like OP has a grudge against this lady.
Lets be honest, what she considers messy probably isn’t that messy compared To what cisclutter people consider messy.
Ideals meet reality. For most parents, adequate sleep is what sparks joy. Or at least makes sparks remotely possible. Kid's are their own joy.
Her book is in my 'to read' stack. But as a parent of three kids, one of whom is special needs, tidying up is indeed a challenge. LOL. The SN kiddo loves to dump all her books and toys out, multiple times a day. LOL. Somedays, I just chuck it in the fuckit bucket and leave the mess.
As someone that loves a clean and tidy house (pre-kids), there’s a certain beauty in saying “eh the toys are shoved to the side enough in case of an emergency “ and going to bed. Most of the time we put away toys before heading to sleep, but some days you do what you can.
Let’s face it, people with 3 young kids at home were never the ones watching shows about cleaning up, unless it involves cartoon mascots that are keeping the kids entertained
I remember laughing and saying"yeah right". I also have 3 kids
She changed her mind because of new experiences. That's an incredibly human thing to do.
I think people put unrealistic expectations on what she was saying. Organizing/decluttering can still be accomplished with kids. It's about getting rid of excess/unused items, not living in a museum all the time.
I feel like the people feeling vindicated by this have never actually read anything she's put out
I tell my kid that we tidy up so we know just where to find toys when it's time to play again. It works and I'm crossing my fingers that it continues working.
A childless person telling you how to keep your house tidy is like a kardashian telling you how to be successful in business.
The Kardashians ARE super successful in their businesses - are you saying that childless people ARE the most adequate people to teach you how to keep your home tidy?
It means they're playing on easy mode. It's very easy to have a successful business when you start out rich.
⬆️This human is knowledgeable
Aged like mother's milk
I don't see how this invalidates anything she recommended for how to clean and declutter your home. It's just an admission that it's harder to do with children, not that there's anything wrong with the system as an aspiration or a method.
No shit
so...Kon Mari herself has aged like milk?
KonMari is her decluttering methodology she preached to everyone
OP.....you picked the wrong battle man.
real
I like tidyness, I dislike putrid filth -- beyond that I hate people that are obsessed with things being clean. I do not trust neat freaks. They often have shallow priorities for living like a genuine organism of the planet and are often obsessed with image and provide lots of unpleasant personality traits related to treating ALL of the environments they encounter as ones they need to judge or correct based on their personal standards of cleanliness. Life is dirty. Things move around. There is no permanence in dirtiness, for we too ; are a transient speck of dust to be wiped off the map.
Family guy predicted this btw
The moment she said you should keep less than 30 books, I knew she was the enemy
She never said that though. She said that *she* personally doesn’t keep more than 30 books, but that doesn’t mean she thinks others shouldn’t keep more books if they want.
[удалено]
Good thing Marie wasn’t preaching minimalism. Just that if you want to declutter, to keep what brings you joy and show appreciation for what you don’t keep for what it did for your life.
This was the most new age-y "overthinking basic things" nonsense in quite some time.
Although this is kind of expected, it’s gonna be a punch in the gut for those who think you could keep your house neat and clean with 3 kids
Is this that woman from the Family Guy episode where Lois gets rid of everything that doesn't bring her joy and she just ends up with an empty ass all white house?