The article to me seemed like paint-by-numbers cultural criticism.
KonMari is for people who own way too much, who have stuffed closets and drawers and are suffocating in a heap of useless junk.
It's not for the poor person who owns a single winter coat or a single pair of shoes. That person might have problems, but not this particular set of problems.
Yes, the KonMari target audience is more privileged than people who can barely afford the basic necessities, but using that as a core criticism of the show just seems silly. It would be like saying diet advice targeted at Americans who want to lose weight is privileged because there are people starving in other parts of the world. Like, wow... such a "woke" observation.
No negative vibes intended toward the OP who started this thread. The article is just part of a broader trend of click-bait commentary that has started to annoy me with its shallowness.
I wouldn't at all say that KonMari is only for wealthy people or for people who only have way too much stuff.
I've known plenty of poor families with kitchen junk drawers, messy closets/dressers, and kid's stuff on the floors. Poor families may not have hundreds of pairs of unworn sneakers in their guest room closet, but they also don't tend to have tons of space, so to assume that strategies for organization and tidying are only for the wealthy is a bit...rich.
The vast majority of her advice is regarding *how* to organize things. I'm pretty sure rich and poor can both benefit from strategies for organizing kitchen drawer items by size instead of by use, or how to fold clothes so that you can easily see them in a drawer.
KonMari *isn't* primarily about getting rid of piles of stuff, that just happens to be the part that gets focused on because it's an ultra common problem. North Americans are hoarders who love watching worse hoarders, so that's what the TV show focuses on.
For Kondo though, she doesn't care how much stuff you have. If it makes you happy and it's tidy, she's happy.
You could make an entire show about actual minimalists using KonMari method to better organize their few possessions, but it wouldn't be very compelling television.
That's what I dislike most about the prof's criticisms, they are intellectually lazy because they don't account for the actual source material. I feel like the prof lazily watched a few episodes and decided they understood everything from there, but meanwhile, they're spouting pseudo intellectual BS.
The only valid argument is that there is a consumerist element to possessions"sparking joy" specifically because Tidying Up is NOT a minimalist philosophy, nor has it ever claimed to be, and Kondo specifically reminds people of that on the show regularly.
Kondo has never ever claimed to be an anti-consumerist minimalist, so criticizing her for failing to live up to anti-consumerist, minimalist values is just absurd.
It's makes as much sense to describe the show "What Not To Wear" as being about minimalism just because they throw away the vast majority of people's clothes and make them only buy what they love.