I see Marie Kondo is at it again. If you recall, she’s the Japanese lady who, a few years ago, published a book preaching a household gospel of bleak minimalism, obsessive order and tidiness, encapsulated in the phrase, “Keep only the possessions that spark joy,” with ancillary tips on how to store what little you’ve left by re-organising your drawers and cupboards and rolling and folding your clothes.
Women everywhere did their heads in, dismantling their carefully curated homes and wardrobes – and charity shops were inundated with a tsunami of discarded stuff.
I had a half-hearted go at her system myself – removing the knick-knacks and little touches from the living room, which transformed instantly into a corporate waiting room for interviews. So I put everything back.
Feeling I hadn’t given Ms Kondo a fair trial, I tackled the haphazard chaos that is the airing cupboard. A guest once mistook it for the bathroom and was nearly smothered by an avalanche of towels. An entire afternoon was spent rolling a married lifetime of towelling into neat cylinders and organising my unironed bedlinen back into matching sets. Did I get satisfaction from the exercise – apart from re-discovering two duvet sets for the baby’s first ‘big girl’s bed’? Since they ‘sparked joy’, I kept them. The baby is 37.
I confess to being a passionate devotee of ‘stuff’, reared on the principle, “if you’ve got it, display it, or people will think you have nothing.” My problem is, nearly every item in my house sparks, if not joy, at least memories, meaningfulness, or association with people, places and events.
A house isn’t a home until you stamp your own character on it. It’s probably a generational thing. In my parents’ day a suite of furniture was destined to last a lifetime. Inherited pieces sat alongside wartime ‘utility’. My mother, in the sixties, underwent a Damascene conversion, dumped the lot and in came G-plan and a winged-back Parker Knoll. The ‘good’ china and cutlery however, only came out for visitors and Christmas. Millennial Daughter Dear uses her good stuff daily because, “What would I be saving it for?” and has no interest in great-grandma’s bone china.
It’s obvious that Ms Kondo’s philosophy is a flawed one. Never have antiques shops, auctions, car boot sales and ‘vintage’ been more popular. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. Daytime television schedules are saturated with antiques and collectables programmes. In an era of mass production the craftsmanship of an earlier age is enjoying a bloom. Many of yesteryear’s artefacts are neither useful nor beautiful, but quirky conversation pieces – though personally, a rusty tinplate advertisement for Will’s Woodbine doesn’t spark joy in me. Young ones flock to the rails of charity shops in search of vintage fashion. It’s a bit chilling to realise that eighties wear is considered vintage. My Joan Collins shoulder-padded jacket with peplum waist is still hanging in the attic.
Which brings me neatly to Marie Kondo’s attitude to clothes storage. She advocates a ruthless cull of all those bought-on-impulse garments, rarely if ever worn and is a stickler for the care of those remaining, colour or seasonally co-ordinated on padded hangers, shoes in boxes, bags in clothes bags; woollens, T-shirts, underwear, nightwear, neatly folded and stored in drawers.
Ah, the space-saving Japanese art of folding! A friend who has Kondo-ed her entire wardrobe claims she has accommodated 51 T-shirts in a single drawer. “Do all 51 spark joy?” I was reluctant to ask, for fear of severing a life-long friendship. She’s happy in her origami jammies. I do not fold. I drape – mostly over the backs of chairs, till the accumulated weight of the garments causes the chair to fall over backwards. The Loving Spouse once said to me, “Do you think you could drape some of that stuff over a hanger?” This from a man who invariably hung his pure wool jumpers on a coat hook for that Quasimodo look…
No, Ms Kondo, I will not espouse your peculiarly unemotional approach to possessions. Any woman who declares, as you do, that “No house should have more than 30 books in it,” is a philistine.
