Prior to her show on Netflix, I’d heard of Marie Kondo. Her book about tidying up and minimalism sparked a little bit of a firestorm from the literary world, citing inspiration to people to basically purge all the unnecessary shit they’ve hoarded over their lives, but from a holistic, Japanese approach; and if there’s one thing white people love, it’s exotic lines of thinking from the wise and progressive Orient.
Now, I use the phrase white and white people ironically, if that’s not obvious; the actual color of the people is widely irrelevant, as the mentality to rely on books and television to serve as inspiration to seek out enlightenment and happiness is a pretty white people thing, regardless of what color a person actually is.
And Netflix has clearly gone through the effort to make sure that the spectrum of people that Marie Kondo helps in her series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, checks all the boxes of diversity, from the aforementioned whiteys, a black family, a gay couple, some ambiguously possibly Asian people, Hispanics, and then more white people in each respective episode.
I used to think that the shows on HGTV of a bunch of white people looking for real estate in South American countries were the whitest shows on television, but that was before I watched Tidying Up. The HGTV shows are all about affluent rich white people, to which doesn’t actually apply to all white people; but the people all featured on Tidying Up are peak white people (again, regardless of actual race), in the sense that they’re all fairly upper-middle class households with the very relatable scenarios of just having way too much shit, and feeling overwhelmed and stressed out about, clutter.
They’re not worrying about jobs, income inequality, bills, or whether or not their next meal is guaranteed. They’re worrying about the fact that they’ve accumulated a lot of material shit in their homes, and it’s stressing them out.
Peak white people problems.
Personally, I found the show kind of stressful, and more anxiety inducing that Bird Box was. There’s something about watching metaphorical white people argue and bitch about white people problems that makes me feel anxious, because they’re fights that I could easily envision having with my own future wife and dealing with in my future household.
I am clearly whiter than I care to have to admit, but hey if I want to box, I need to know how to take a punch too.
But the thing is, the KonMari method isn’t really that new of a concept to me. Granted, I’m not nearly as spiritual and holistic about judgment of my belongings, and I probably hold onto way more shit than I really should, but at the same time, I can be downright ruthless when it comes time to purge things. That said, the general sentiment when watching the subject matter of Tidying Up is that this is all stuff that I already know. It’s like when my late brother-in-law got me a copy of Dave Ramsey’s book about getting out of debt, it annoyed me, because the entire book was describing concepts that I not already knew, but already practiced, and I didn’t really have any debts other than a mortgage.
I know how to clean shit. I’m already a tidy person. White people finding revelations in the concept of staying on top of chores so that they’re small an inconsequential when done immediately, before they become problematic when put off is kind of annoying to me, and it triggers my cleanliness OCD, seeing all these plebes slacking off and acting like it’s some sort of revelation when they learn how to, not be lazy.
For what it’s worth, if Tidying Up is going to actually help the world be a somewhat neater place and (hopefully) make people not quite so materialistic, then there are worse things in the world out there. Plus, Marie Kondo is cute as can be, and I like to hope that her television persona is as sweet, thoughtful and genuine off the screen as she is on it.
But there’s no mistaking that Tidying Up is basically the peak of white people television, and it’s just not really for me.
