The queen of spring cleaning has lost the spring in her step.
“Up until now, I was a professional tidier, so I did my best to keep my home tidy at all times,” she said in a recent webinar via an interpreter, the Washington Post reported Thursday.
“I have kind of given up on that in a good way for me,” she added. “Now I realize what is important to me is enjoying time with my children at home.”
Cue the sigh of relief — the authority on neatness admitted that even she has trouble keeping up with clutter.
The 38-year-old organizational guru, who gave birth to her third child in 2021, is known for the Netflix series “Tidying Up,” where she instructs eager cleaners to keep what “sparks joy” and trash the rest.
But that Kondo-like minimalism has fallen to the wayside now that maximalism is en vogue.
“People want to capital-D decorate now, because they’ve spent all this time working from home, and saw that Marie Kondo thing stripped out all the character,” interior designer Hugh Long, who has found fame on TikTok, told The Post last year.
The styling trend, which has drawn over 800 million views under the hashtag “#maximalism,” has an iron-clad grip on the internet. Abandoning “less is more,” users are scrambling to collect knick knacks, decor and accessories that catch the eye with vibrance or quirky style.
Kondo, it seems, has succumbed to something similar, though probably not on purpose. In a shocking twist, she admitted her home is “messy.”
“My home is messy, but the way I am spending my time is the right way for me at this time at this stage of my life,” she said during the webinar, emphasizing that her focus is on her family, not her physical household.
Her latest novel, “Marie Kondo’s Kurashi at Home: How to Organize Your Space and Achieve Your Ideal Life,” details such lifestyle changes.
She emphasizes the Japanese idea of “kurashi,” or “way of life,” which strays from her once hard-fast rule to eliminating clutter and junk. Instead, her goal is to “spark joy” in other ways: Finding what makes her happy every day, even if there are dishes in the sink.
While the ultra-tidy author probably doesn’t have a designated junk drawer like the rest of us, it seems that her growing family has humbled her enough to leave a few things askew.
“Tidying up means dealing with all the ‘things’ in your life,” Kondo says in her book. “So, what do you really want to put in order?”
The Post reached out to a Kondo rep for comment Friday.
