Since “Tidying Up” came out on Netflix, my roommates and I have been obsessed. Not so much with the actual show as with Marie Kondo, or Marie K as we call her.
We have “Marie K’d” the room. Our room has always been pretty neat. If there is a mess, it’s that special kind of contained disaster where you have a small pile of clothes hidden under your bed or a pile of shoes that you tell yourself you’ll put away before you go to bed. An exposed mess quickly snowballs into a crazy looking room, especially in a one-room Hillside triple. We take pride in people commenting with no hidden surprise on how nice our room is. And a large part of this impression is because we keep it neat and tidy.
Photo by Addy Seeman
But who knows the mess you would have found if you opened one of our drawers. My top drawer is my junk drawer: for the first 4 months of the school year it held everything from my hairbrush to my school books. And I did not enjoy it. My top drawer definitely did not spark joy. One of my roommates would just shove all her clothes into her drawer. Now, these things definitely aren’t big problems, but we wanted to be better and were inspired by Marie. I went out and bought some small bins to fit in my drawers to organize my little junk trinkets — just like Marie K teaches. My roommate now folds her clothes Marie K style.
We recently hosted a game night, and for fun we made a formal invite list on our whiteboard because why not. Of course Marie K was on the list. We went out and bought snacks for the night. Of course we Marie K’d the snacks.
Anyway, this is kind of just a funny story about how obsessed we are with Marie K and how we turn a small funny into a big funny. But honestly, it’s fun to be neat and fold your clothes and feel like you have your life in order even if it’s only your room.