You can now hire your own Konmari consultant in Toronto
Marie Kondo and her spark joy theory have seemingly put the world into a tidying frenzy since her TV show first aired on Netflix earlier this year.
It's only been a few months since Tidying Up With Marie Kondo folded itself neatly into 2019's list of things to be obsessed with, but the 34-year-old organizing consultant has become a certified celebrity worldwide.
If you're one of those people who's attempted to categorize and purge your home by picking up old socks off the floor, holding them to your chest, and sensing if they spark deep happiness in your life, you'll know the process is a lot harder than Kondo makes it seem on TV.
Luckily, there are actually a handful of people right here in Toronto that can help you clean your abode Marie Kondo-style.
Despite becoming wildly popular only recently, few know that the Japanese powerhouse has been spreading her tidying methods to enthusiastic organizers across the globe for years.
Since the English re-release of her best-selling manifesto The Life-Chaging Magic of Tidying Up in 2015, Kondo has actually been holding yearly courses on how to become a certified KonMari Consultant.
According to the KonMari website, there are now officially 223 certified consultants from all over the world guiding people how to clean their bachelor pads, detached homes, and even mansions.
Eighteen of them reside in Canada, and five of those professional organizers operate in Toronto.
One of those people is Ivanka Siolkowsky, a teacher-turned-consultant who is now the only certified platinum KonMari consultant in the country.
Siolkowsky was one of the few people to attend Kondo's first-ever three-day course in New York back in 2015. Three years and more than 450 cleaning sessions later, Siolkowsky will be on her way to New York this month to speak at the upcoming KonMari conference.
According to Toronto's roster, our city's list of consultants now ranges between Certified Green (newbies who have achieved 10 tidying sessions with at least two clients), Bronze (50 sessions, 5 clients), Silver (100 sessions, 10 clients) and Platinum (300 sessions, 30 clients).
We don't have any Certified Master consultants yet (that's 500 tidying sessions with 50 clients) since there's currently only two in the world, and both of them live in the U.S. But Siolkowsky says she's working on it.
She's even developed her own successful brand, The Tidy Moose, which uses a KonMari-inspired method to help parents teach tidying techniques to their kids at a young age.
As with all the other KonMari specialists in the city, you can book a KonMari cleaning appointment with Siolkowsky, which can last anywhere from a few days to three weeks, depending on how large your home is and how much stuff you own.
Prices range, and Siolkowsky says she charges by session, not by hour.
One thing that's for sure is that you'll be guided through the four essential categories of cleansing, which goes in order of clothing, books and papers, miscellaneous items, then sentimental objects.
Another inevitable factor: you'll probably cry.
"People always have a teary-eyed moment," says Siolkowsky. "I've only had one or two clients that didn't cry."
Other KonMari sessions in Toronto can be booked with ADDless Interiors, Modern and Minimalist, Organize That or Merchandised Maison.
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