Marie Kondo

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2011, Japanese tidying expert Marie Kondo’s first book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up was published.

Overnight she went from tidying other people’s homes to being known around the world for her KonMari method.

It encourages people to only keep items that spark joy and to sort by category, not location.

Now a best-selling author with hundreds of her consultants decluttering homes around the globe, Marie speaks to Megan Jones.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.

(Photo: Marie Kondo. Credit: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic via Getty Images.)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I'd like to quickly tell you about some others.
0:05.1	My name's Andy Martin and I'm the editor of a team of podcast producers at the BBC in Northern Ireland.
0:11.3	It's a job I really love because we get to tell the stories that really matter to people here,
0:16.2	but which also resonate and apply to listeners around the world.
0:19.6	And because the team has such a diverse
0:21.1	range of skills and strengths, we've trained journalists, people who love digging through
0:25.9	archives, we've got drama and even comedy experts, we really can do those stories justice. So
0:31.6	if you like this podcast, head to BBC Sounds where you'll find plenty more fascinating stories
0:37.0	from all around the UK.
0:43.4	You're listening to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Megan Jones.
0:49.6	Today we're going back over a decade to when a book about tidying up changed millions of lives and sparked
0:56.4	a global movement. I've been speaking with the woman behind it all, Maricondo, a best-selling
1:01.5	author, an organizing icon and a household name. Now it's a good opportunity for you to tidying
1:08.4	and I wish I could be there to help you tighten up your home.
1:13.3	It's May 2010, Amarim Marikondo's small studio apartment in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo, Japan.
1:21.8	She's just got home from her day job of tidying people's houses and is now sitting in front of a very low table typing away on her
1:29.6	laptop. I started writing coming back from my tiding session which ran up to midnight. At the time,
1:38.5	I had five hours tidings session three times a day.
1:45.0	That's 15 hours, if my maths is correct.
1:49.0	As you can imagine, she's exhausted.
1:53.0	I slept a bit after coming back from work and wake up at 2 a.m. to write.
2:00.0	There isn't much time for sleep as she's writing her first book.
	...

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