Trained to tidy

The urge to tidy up has rocketed during the pandemic in Singapore and around the world, says tidying expert Marie Kondo.

The Japanese organising guru, author and founder of KonMari Media, Inc, started a global decluttering blitz after the English translation of her first book, The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up, was published in 2014, selling millions of copies.

Her first show on Netflix in 2019, Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, was a big hit. Her second Netflix series, Sparking Joy With Marie Kondo, was launched at the end of last month.

In an e-mail interview with The Sunday Times, Kondo says her latest Netflix show has spurred growth in the consulting arm of her KonMari business. It saw about 700 consultants-in-training sign up during the pandemic.

After these trainees are certified as KonMari consultants, a process that can take a few months, the number of certified KonMari consultants worldwide will double to about 1,400.

There are now over 700 certified KonMari consultants in more than 54 countries around the world. These certified consultants are authorised to help people tidy their homes using Kondo's methods.

KonMari consultant training courses used to be conducted in places like Britain and the United States, but the Virtual Consultant Certification Course was introduced last year as a result of pandemic travel restrictions. Course fees start at about US$2,200 (S$2,970), with an extra annual licensing fee of US$500.

The growth in KonMari consultants worldwide is mirrored here too.

"In Singapore, we saw an increase in the number of course attendees in 2020 to 2021 - there were nine people who attended our courses in this time frame. A majority of them have completed the certification process," says Kondo via e-mail.

There are now 10 certified KonMari consultants in Singapore. The first got certified in 2019.

Interest in tidying could be attributed to a desire to exert control in these uncertain times.

Kondo says: "I think many people looked for answers to address their anxiety of the unknown and the KonMari Method gave people an opportunity to have control over something, which was their own space at home, and, more importantly, focus on the things that spark joy in their lives."

She ties this interest in home organisation to a pandemic surge in consumer spending on home supplies in the US, where she is now based.

A report by Rakuten Intelligence, which provides e-commerce data, shows that sales of home furnishings increased by 44 per cent and sales of home improvement supplies exploded by 92 per cent in September to December last year, compared with the same pre-pandemic period in 2019.

Singapore also saw a rise in consumer spending on home products.

A Department of Statistics spokesman says: "Excluding the circuit breaker period (April to June 2020), which saw large year-on-year declines as most physical retail stores were closed, retail sales of furniture and household equipment saw year-on-year increases in sales since February 2020, with people spending more time at home due to work-from-home arrangements."

This growth was 12.2 per cent this February, compared with 7.1 per cent in February last year, the Department of Statistics figures show.

Certified Singaporean KonMari consultant Martini Constance Lim, 40, adds: "With more people shopping online, more clutter is generated with more purchases. I'm seeing people who need to be better organised during the pandemic."

Dr Victor Seah, a senior lecturer in psychology at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, says the appeal of the KonMari movement, which struck a chord a few years ago - syncing with wider trends like the rise of minimalist design and worries about sustainability - taps the much-needed comfort of rituals and habits against the turbulent backdrop of Covid-19.

"There's a calm in such rituals, for example, the specific method of folding laundry, that fits in with this sense of wanting to be in control, where the KonMari Method presents itself as a solution," he says.

Much as pandemic hobbies are a way to destress and relax, they can also be a source of clutter and stress at home.

Certified KonMari consultant Esther Tan, 28, recounts how a client let her penchant for baking and bento-making take over her kitchen.

The client used to move all her cooking appliances - toaster, rice cooker and air fryer - from the kitchen counter to the dining room to make room for baking. Family dinners were confined to half the dining table.

Enter Ms Tan, who helped uncover underused kitchen space to store some of these appliances.

In similar fashion, a drawer was set aside to organise all the client's bento-box paraphernalia - toothpicks, seaweed cutters, decorative plastic "grass" and tiny sauce bottles.

This helped increase counter space, reduce clutter and restore order in the house.

"Not having a clear idea of what you have translates into more money spent buying things which you may already have. Making hobbies more accessible also gives you more time to enjoy them," says Ms Tan.

The organisation consultant founded her business, Your Tidy Half, last year after taking the KonMari training and certification course online.

She is married to a 31-year-old sales manager and works full time as an executive assistant and office manager. She works with her KonMari clients on weekends, charging $70 an hour for consultations.

Having worked in the hospitality industry before, she is drawn to "calm and inviting" spaces like hotel lobbies, and likens hiring a KonMari consultant to streamline the home to engaging the services of a personal trainer.

With more people squashed in at home for longer periods of time during the pandemic, she notes it can be challenging to reorganise a shared space.

Ms Tan says: "Some people make do with the space they are in, especially if they live with their parents.

"While you can't take over someone else's space and apply the KonMari Method for other people, I have had clients do their own room and it works even though it's a small space."

One such client rearranged her work-from-home set-up and even demarcated an area with cushions for guests to come over to hang out in her room.

Ms Sharon Chan, who engaged Ms Tan's services last year, found the KonMari process akin to "a love-hate relationship".

The 38-year-old charity sector manager says: "The first emotion I felt was vulnerability."

She felt this while sorting her items by categories, including her clothes and undergarments, in the presence of someone else.

It was also hard work to think where each item should belong. But her efforts paid off. Things no longer threaten to fall on her when she enters her storeroom. Even her two-year-old son knows where his building blocks are stored.

"It's liberating to know exactly where your items are, and how many of them you have," says Ms Chan, who is married to a 40-year-old tuition agency operations manager. The couple also have a five-year-old daughter.

These days, she succumbs less to the lure of buying cheap and cheerful things from Daiso, and questions if she needs something when it catches her eye.

"The whole journey has prompted me to buy fewer things, be less consumerist and enjoy the things we already have," she says.

Think seriously about what you want to do with a space. Consider, for example, whether working from the dining table is a temporary set-up or something that has become permanent.

Ms Martini Constance Lim did not expect that most of her customers wanting to declutter would be men, rather than women.

One retiree in his 70s told her: "My wife said I could do it by myself, but I can't."

The expatriate had wanted to sort his belongings and gadgets before relocating overseas. He needed help to sift through the many cables he had, some of which no longer worked.

Wanting to get organised but not knowing how and where to start is far from uncommon among men and women, says Ms Lim.

"With more people working and studying from home, it's also challenging to know when might be a good time to start tidying," she adds.

Electronic and digital clutter is another common concern she is often enlisted to address as a KonMari consultant.

"Spending less time socialising and more time on our laptops and mobile phones has led to more digital clutter, such as apps that we don't frequently use," she says.

The 40-year-old, who works by day as a project manager, has long been interested in the business of tidying up.

Keen to start a concurrent career, she qualified as a KonMari consultant and registered her business Minimize With Joy last year, charging $50 an hour for consultations.

In these fraught Covid-19 times, she notes that tensions can run high at home, with high-stress work calls coupled with children chucking home-based learning in favour of computer games.

The tidying consultant can be a neutral party who can de-escalate domestic situations, says Ms Lim.

Once, a couple who engaged her services were debating where to store onions in their kitchen.

The husband felt the alliums should not be stored in an open space like the wife wanted, because he found them visually unappealing. Ms Lim agreed with the wife that onions should not be stored in an enclosed drawer.

"It was a solution they both accepted because it came from a third party. They did not take it as personally coming from me. They viewed me as a professional who is not siding with anyone, and were more receptive," she says.

She has encountered similar disagreements like where to place the handwash or coffee stirrers.

"Most of the conflicts arise with tidying areas and items that are used in common... I do what I can to help them build a system they feel comfortable with."

She is impressed when clients make the decision to improve their quality of life, even those who regress along the way.

One client told Ms Lim, apologetically, that she kept "accidentally" buying things online, adding to the mess at home, in between their decluttering consultation sessions.

"Having self-awareness is a good start," says Ms Lim.

Reduce the visual clutter on your mobile phone by grouping apps, such as food delivery and banking ones, by folders.

For 10 years, Ms Eve Wee-Ang toted seven boxes of mementos with her as she moved house four times.

Ever since she left her childhood three-room Housing Board flat for her first marital home, she would "sentence these items to imprisonment in the storeroom" in all the homes she found herself in.

The boxes included photographs, keepsakes from friends and a delicate Tiffany bowl - a wedding gift. These travelled with her even to Shanghai, where she moved to for her husband's job 13 years ago.

"Those items, which I had accumulated while growing up, had so much sentimental value, even though, deep down, I knew I wouldn't look at them again," says Ms Wee-Ang.

The 45-year-old writer is married to the vice-president of a sports company with offices in China. The Singaporean couple, who have a daughter, 13, and son, 12, have lived in three homes in the Chinese city.

It was only in 2014, after reading tidying guru Marie Kondo's breakthrough book, The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up, that Ms Wee-Ang was able to jettison this physical and psychic load.

"I read the book in one sitting. I felt like I was wearing glasses for the first time," she recalls in a phone call with The Sunday Times from Shanghai.

She realised the storeroom boxes and other unwanted items in her life that did not "serve" her had "buried" her.

She says: "The KonMari Method is very forgiving. I learnt that letting go of things which no longer give us joy gives us permission to forgive ourselves. We don't have to punish ourselves by keeping such items or feeling bad about donating them.

"We can say, 'Thank you for coming into my life; you are free to go.' "

The method of organisation devised by Kondo famously involves keeping only possessions that "spark joy".

Ms Wee-Ang discarded the boxes and proceeded to KonMari the rest of her home.

In 2019, she flew to London to take a course to become a certified KonMari consultant, the first Singaporean to do so.

She has been giving KonMari courses to the expatriate community in Shanghai, as well as webinars and virtual consultations in Singapore. She charges private clients $50 to $80 an hour for virtual calls, and companies and their staff about $600 an hour.

During the pandemic, she has been getting requests from people who ask, for instance, how their family of four should use the only table they have to accommodate everyone's remote working and learning needs.

Corporate clients ask her to give Zoom workshops on decluttering and mental well-being.

One client in Shanghai seemed ambivalent about the sexy dresses in her wardrobe. She had worn those dresses before she became a mother of two and wanted to be inspired to slim down.

Ms Wee-Ang asked her: "If you can fit into all these dresses you have kept, will you wear them out today?"

Looking at a tight-fitting mini dress in her closet, her client said: "I wouldn't want to be caught dead in this."

She added: "Thank you for making me beautiful, but I have moved on."

For those who find it wasteful to throw out anything that can still be used, simply donate what you do not want to keep.

Children's toys "exploding from every nook and cranny" are the tipping point for many clients seeking the help of certified KonMari consultant Aparna Chari Sundar.

Working from home while feeling unable to maintain a tidy household is a common sentiment, says Dr Sundar, 35, who went through medical school in India and once worked as a hospital administrator here.

The Singapore citizen, who was born and raised in Bangalore, says: "There's been a big need for tidying during the pandemic. People are opening cupboards and looking around their homes a lot more. Before, they probably didn't take notice of what was going on at home until the weekend."

Yet, for all the parental angst surrounding kids' belongings strewn across the home, she has noticed that parents are sometimes guilty of the same offence.

She has encountered "200 pairs of shoes", bomb shelters stuffed to the gills, and barely touched kitchen appliances.

"If the parent has not decluttered, there's a low chance the children will want to cooperate, and they may act up with tantrums and talk back," says Dr Sundar.

"We always start with the adult. Our spaces should be an example. Like any other parenting strategy, parents are the role models."

Combining the KonMari Method with a Montessori perspective - which emphasises focusing on what children need and fostering their independence - is a natural fit, she says, because children crave order and want to feel part of and contribute to their home.

"I've seen so many homes where the school uniforms are placed on a higher rod on the clothing rack, compared with the adults' clothes," says Dr Sundar.

One way to encourage young children to be more independent is by asking them to pack their snacks and water bottles and lay out their uniforms before school the next day.

Besides being a professional home organiser, Dr Sundar is a Montessori assistant certified by the Association Montessori Internationale. She took online courses to achieve both sets of accreditation last year. She offers consultancy services under her company, Global Mindful Journey, though she declines to reveal her fees.

Her daughter Alisha, seven, and son Aryan, nine, started helping around the house when they were each about four years old, by folding their socks according to KonMari techniques she taught them, arranging the socks vertically in a drawer for easier access.

Dr Sundar is married to a 37-year-old consultant in medical oncology at the National University Cancer Institute.

Decluttering is not about focusing on pretty containers and a Pinterest-perfect apartment, she says.

"Once you KonMari your home, once you have visual clutter out of the way, you start to have the mental space to think about things like whether the relationships around you are working out, and whether you are being honest and truthful about your passions," she says.

Stay-at-home mother Reema Mehta describes Dr Sundar's tidying services as "interior design for the inner parts of the home".

Decluttering these frequently used but less visible spaces - closets, storage areas and kids' drawers - "has a transformative feeling that affects every other aspect of life, whether it's how we raise our kids or my relationship with my husband", says Mrs Mehta.

"It can sound too good to be true. I'm aware of that. Somehow, the whole is much larger than the sum of its parts."

She and her husband, who runs his own technology start-up, are in their late 30s. They have three sons - an eight-year-old and twins who are five.

Dr Sundar guided Mrs Mehta in practising the KonMari tenet where everything - even sewing items or phone accessories - has its own "home".

Her eldest son, who once could not find his schoolbag at home, now has a designated space for his textbooks. Supervising his homework has thus become less fraught for Mrs Mehta, who would previously have to devote 20 minutes to finding and gathering the assessments he had to do.

She also used to not be able to find things easily because she did not know where she put them.

Finding her mascara took ages, leading to slight but simmering tensions on date nights with her husband, who waited longer than expected for her to put on her make-up and get ready.

A "clutter island" on her bedside table would also regularly coalesce following a spurt of tidying, comprising random items she picked up: freebies, documents, two tubs of skin cream.

The "island" has since disappeared.

"We've freed up a lot more family time," says Mrs Mehta.

Moving out? KonMari your home first. You're not forcing your new home to fit your belongings. You design your home knowing what you are bringing over.