heck

you should experience this. via

“In a 2016 feature for The New York Times, Taffy Brodesser-Akner took note of this palpable dislike American women seemed to have simmering under the surface at a conference for the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO). While the women all had varying organizational methods, they were “fairly unified in their disdain for this Japanese interloper.” One member told Brodesser-Akner that Tidying Up is a good book only if “you’re a 20-something Japanese girl and you live at home and you still have a bunch of your Hello Kitty toys and stuff.” Brodesser-Akner notes this was not the only statement she heard during the convention that displayed an “aggressive xenophobia and racism” towards Kondo, but it was the only one appropriate enough to publish in the NYT.

Brodesser-Akner noticed many of the women felt they could’ve easily come up with Kondo’s methods, and were a bit begrudging about giving her her full due. It’s easy to see this thinking reflected today. Sarah Knight, author of the book The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k, has made a lucrative platform off of being the antithesis to Kondo, copying everything from Kondo’s naming convention to cover design. “I too enjoyed Kondo but *mental* decluttering was largely unrepresented in her book,” wrote Knight on Twitter, ignoring that mental decluttering is the central tenet to Kondo’s ideology. Peter Walsh, from TLC’s Clean Sweep, went on the Rachael Ray show alongside Kondo to demonstrate his methods; the audience, a majority white women, seemed distinctly unimpressed with Kondo (needing to be coaxed to applause by Ray), but gave Walsh a wave of ecstatic sighs when he suggested you can store belts in a paper organizer.