Trash TV An Inspiration

Watching others confront their mess is disturbingly compulsive.

- Diana Wichtel

Four episodes into Netflix’s Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, something snapped. At nine o’clock at night I found myself reorganising the top shelf of our inconveniently narrow linen cupboard so that the tablecloths stood to attention in neat rectangles. I could now remove one without the lot falling on my head. This shelf, tidied in the “KonMari” manner made famous by the tiny Japanese declutter queen, now “sparked joy”, as she would say. I had drunk the Kondo Kool-Aid and it was good.

Kondo’s improbable bestselling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, and now the television series have sparked both inspiration and derision. She has clearly plugged into something primal. Fear of entropy, possibly: the gradual, inexorable decline into chaos that may one day destroy the universe and, meanwhile, is busy making my study into a no-go zone.

The families Kondo visits – “Hieeee! I’m Marie-eeee!” – are not the sort who turn up on