BIT OF SPRING CLEANING? SORRY, LIFE’S TOO SHORT
IT’S that Spring Clean time of year. Well, it is if you’re a domestic goddess stuck in a 1950s timewarp.
The rest of we slatterns know life’s too short to shift the settee and vacuum up a 2009 edition of the Radio Times, £3.24 in coppers and a fluffball the size of Anglesey.
In ancient times, when women possessed such mystical skills as gravy-making and low dusting, the annual Spring Clean was a seismic household event.
In the era when a woman’s entire social worth depended on whether she had “grain” on her washing and kept “her front” spotless, nets were bleached, cupboards cleared, floorboards waxed, ornaments sponged, walls washed, rugs beaten, and family pets put through the mangle.
Yet even now, when we can thank the Lord for post-feminist slovenliness and a Dyson with a mighty suck, the pressure remains.
But at least it can be delegated.
Over the past week my social circle has been passing round the contact details of an amazing Polish cleaner with the covert fervour of fading Hollywood stars sharing the number of a miracle-working plastic surgeon.
“Ask her for the Deep Clean,” they whisper. “It’s incredible.”
As much as I need the domestic emergency rescue services of the marvellous Marzena, I have a few difficulties with the concept of hired help. It’s not just the “who-doyou-think-you-are” guilt complex of employing a cleaner when half my ancestors were in service. It’s the rather more pressing problem of before she came to clean I’d have to Tidy Up.
For there is a 21stcentury equivalent of the Spring Clean – it’s the De-Clutter. At this time of year we can’t move for magazine articles and blogs instructing us to essentially empty our houses.
I’ve always maintained if God had meant us to be minimalists he’d never have given us the cwtch
under the stairs, but in recent years the Feng Shui fascists and storage fanatics constantly warn us of the dangers of stuff-ocation.
They make you feel guilty about actually owning any possessions. Much better, they say, to throw everything out apart from the three items you can arrange artfully in a shoebox with a Polaroid of its contents on the outside.
There are people who have cleaned up by lecturing the domestically chaotic.
I know who they are because over the past two decades concerned relatives have taken one look at my back bedroom and bought me their books.
The first big name in the modern de-cluttering world was Dawna Walter, founder of the Holding Company, which has filled thousands of homes with ingenious storage solutions like knicker-drawer dividers – just the thing to save you 20 minutes in the morning ploughing through your old grey chest-warmers in search of the single pair with unperished elastic.
She was the author of Life Laundry: How to De-Junk Your Life. (I had a copy – I just can’t find it as it’s probably somewhere in the back bedroom.)
You may also remember this American Matron of Minimalism had her own BBC series, called Life Laundry, in which she shamed hapless hoarders into chucking out most of their belongings.
Granted, these were usually people whose back bedrooms were so crammed with detritus they could have been housing several asylumseekers without realising it, but it was still an extremely painful process to watch.
It usually ended in tears as Dawna wrenched items of sentimental value out of their desperate hands and into a fearsome machine known as The Crusher.
At the end of the programme the reformed squirrels were led around their pristine habitats, admitting that yes, life will be much easier with neat cupboards.
But is it really easier? I’m always suspicious of minimalists with neat cupboards.
Open them when they’re not looking and you might find their children there, cowering with their banned Lego collection.
What’s wrong with a little light hoarding? I like stuff. Indeed, my work desk was once officially designated a health and safety hazard.
But there’s nothing wrong with being a clutterist (as long as you say it very carefully).
Dawna believed that “hanging on to your possessions from your past can stop you moving ahead from the present”.
But she obviously never came across that vital tenet of household management – the theory of It Might Just Come In Handy One Day.
One person’s Kitchen Drawer of Doom is another’s treasure trove of emergency birthday cards, halfempty tester pots and the concert ticket that provides an immediate flashback to a memorable mosh pit of your youth.
Why throw out clothes? Everyone knows fashion is cyclical.
With the possible exception of that shellsuit you bought in Stewarts Seconds on a West Wales caravan holiday in 1992 everything comes back in style eventually.
As for the most heinous de-junking practice – chucking out books – just remember no visiting paramours will know you read shallow chick-lit on your Kindle if your 45 Penguin Classics are still proudly on display.
But the minimalists believe we clutter-keepers are also hoarding damaging psychological baggage along with our “useless” possessions.
The latest high priestess of the mass de-junk has upped the emotional ante by spreading her dramatic “Spark Joy” method of house clearance across the globe.
She is Japan’s “expert declutterer and professional cleaner”, Marie Kondo – the author of The Life Changing Magic of Tidying.
This “simple, effective way to banish clutter forever” has sold three million copies. You can also see her on YouTube demonstrating her advanced sock-folding techniques.
I’ve got two copies of The Life Changing Magic of Tidying.
I bought one myself and another was bought by a concerned relative.
So I’ve probably already violated one of Kondo’s strict dictums on possession-keeping by doubling up.
What marks Kondo out from the de-junkers who preceded her is her almost mystical philosophy that claims tidying up can transform your life.
As the blurb on the back of the book says: “The key to successful tidying is tackling your home in the correct order, keeping only what you really love and doing it all at once. This incredibly easy method will not transform your space, it will change you too. You will feel more confident, become more successful and be motivated to create the life you want.”
More confident? More motivated to create the life you want?
This sounds like the kind of personality overhaul only possible after three years of psychotherapy rather than finally clearing the bottom layer of the dirty laundry basket.
But Kondo’s methods are grounded in psychology. Each act of chucking out has to be accompanied by an emotional ritual.
“Ask yourself if it sparks joy,” she writes. “The criteria for deciding what to keep and what to discard is whether or not something sparks joy. When deciding, hold the item firmly in both hands as if communing with it. Pay attention to how your body responds when you do this – when something sparks joy you should feel a little thrill.”
Sparks joy? Oh come on. If I only held on to what sparks joy in my house I’d be left with family photos, the cat and a tin of White Chocolate Hot Chocolate powder. And even the most ardent minimalist might find that clear-out a tad extreme.
But I might just throw a few things out this spring… starting with all those books on de-cluttering…