The superstar tidying guru who transformed our homes: How Marie Kondo's 'Life-Changing Magic' cast its spell

Her best-selling book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up was a global phenomenon, changing our thinking about material excess. Lifestyle and decluttering star Marie Kondo tells the BBC about the KonMari method, magic, minimalism and how being a Shinto maiden shaped her.

It was October 2014 when the buzz started, online and in print – a whisper that was about to go viral. There was a Japanese author, a diminutive woman with a quiet, charismatic presence. And her debut book, intriguingly, was about one of the most mundane subjects imaginable: tidying up.

An early review described the book's author as "like a kind of Zen nanny". Examining her "obsessive" techniques for decluttering helped the writer of the article discard two vast bags of "miscellaneous garbage" from their home, but the tongue-in-cheek tone of the story seemed to be asking "Can we take this person seriously">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });