A plastic wrapped vacuum
OUTSIDE spring is busting out all over. The dawn chorus is deafening, the green shoots are shooting and the garden centres are positively throbbing with action. Indoors it’s time for a spring clean. Open the windows. Let the sunshine in. And, as inevitable as the first cuckoo are all those newspaper articles about decluttering and editing your wardrobe. I know the advice by heart: if you haven’t worn something for two years get rid of it. Be brutal. If in doubt sling it out. Those washed-to-death T-shirts must go, that jacket with the Dynasty shoulder pads will never come back into fashion, those shoes that hurt will always hurt. Begone! Then you’ll be left with a mess-free home and everything in its place. You’ll be serene and confident, no longer a slave to your belongings. Etc etc. Marie Kondo is the queen of the clean-up and author of the global bestseller The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up. But she looks like an amateur compared with Fumio Sasaki who has written a book called Goodbye, Things: On Minimalist Living (the Japanese do seem to be very tidy).
Mr Sasaki now owns almost nothing beyond basic clothes, some kitchen equipment and electronic odds and ends. He doesn’t need books because he can read them on a Kindle. Don’t keep things for appearances’ sake, he says, and don’t be intimidated by the “fear of regret”.
This is a bit extreme for me. In any case nature abhors a vacuum. So within days that barely-filled hanging rail would be clogged up again with all the new stuff I’d suddenly feel at liberty to buy.
Yet having read the decluttering articles and feeling inspired by spring weather I did have a tidy-up which reunited me with the summer clothes that I’d forgotten I owned. And while on the subject of vacuums (that nature abhors) let me also tell you about my new hobby. As advised in the articles I bought some of those vacuum storage bags. You shove things in them and then empty the air out with the nozzle of your vacuum cleaner. It’s brilliant! Before your eyes an unwieldy armful of coats flattens into something the size of a child’s surfboard. You don’t have to chuck things out any longer. You simply squish and store.
I’m vacuum packing everything now. Anything that doesn’t move and gets in my way could end up flat and wrapped in plastic with the air sucked out. Be very afraid.