Entropy, that unpleasant byproduct of consumerism, has been a subject of reality TV almost since that genre’s genesis. From “Clean House” to “Hoarding: Buried Alive,” we’ve seen how pathological our relationship to stuff can be, and how powerless so many of us are to dig out from under it all. The home purge show is now as rigorously structured as the hero’s journey or a Petrarchan sonnet. In it we see the act of decluttering as a quest, and the tidied home as a proxy for our reborn selves.

It’s a form wonderfully suited to the animistic methods of Marie Kondo, the Japanese tidying guru who taught the world to kiss its socks goodbye with a novel organizing principle: If your belongings don’t spark joy, thank them for their service and show them the door.

Her first book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up,” published in the U.S. in 2014, made her a superstar — maybe the world’s first decluttering celebrity — and a publishing behemoth; it is still a best-seller, with over 8.5 million copies sold in over 40 languages. Her third and latest book, “Joy at Work: The Career-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” written with Scott Sonenshein, a professor of management at Rice University School of Business, out in spring 2020, was bought at a competitive auction for seven figures by Little, Brown, said her American agent, Neil Gudovitz. (The executives at that publishing house seem to have been inspired enough by her tenets to name an imprint for them, though it was created before this last acquisition: Little, Brown Spark will print “Joy at Work,” and other health and lifestyle titles.)

No word on what lucky Netflix paid for “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo,” in which Ms. Kondo visits the clutter-addled homes of a cross-section of Southern Californians over eight episodes that have been streaming since New Year’s Day.