Shopping is over, and tidying up is hot. A drawer in which a spare, thoughtfully chosen, selection of socks stand to attention like little soldiers is as much an of-the-moment status symbol as Paris Hilton laden down with ribbon-tied Fred Segal packages was in the 00s. If you want to nail this season, it’s not about spending £320 on the Givenchy I Feel Love T-shirt you saw on Brooklyn Beckham’s Instagram. No, it’s about spending half a day ridding yourself of any T-shirts that don’t “spark joy” – in the buzzphrase of decluttering guru Marie Kondo – and then the rest of the day folding the ones that do into perfect rectangles.
Kondo’s “Spark Joy” revolution, with its aim of making neat-freaks of us all by encouraging us to throw away any belongings that no longer bring us happiness, has gained traction where a million New Year resolutions have failed by rebranding a chore as millennial me-time. Shopping is supposed to be me-time, too – remember when we called it retail therapy? – but it has lost some of its lustre, thanks to our overindulgence. Perhaps now that we click and buy from Amazon via our phone while waiting for the kettle to boil, shopping doesn’t feel like so much of a treat any more. This year, we spent an estimated £728m online shopping on Christmas Day.
And for me-time to be truly satisfying, you need to be able to show off about it. Ideally, these days, you need to be able to show off about it captioned with an inspirational or uplifting quote, all the better to throw people off the scent of your show-offery. This is why yoga is excellent for me-time, and having a nap and a biscuit less good. Yoga is uplifting-quote gold whereas gingernuts are just gingernuts. Marie Kondo has come along with her tidying-up mantra just in time for a generation that not only needs to look good in the pub on Friday but also need to make sure its shoe cupboard looks good on Instagram. Even better, she’s got the enigmatic captions to make the whole sorting-and-folding lark sound like a party game. Spark Joy, Kondo’s second book, is full of hashtag-length nuggets of one-size-fits-all wisdom. My favourite is “Tidying never lies”. I have no idea what this means, but it sounds a bit like a slogan from a presidential campaign. (Try saying it in the voice of Barack Obama.) Who knows how much more effective our mothers’ entreaties would have been if they’d thought to encourage us to “Spark Joy!” instead of nagging us about dirty socks?
“Spark Joy” sounds like a Gap advertising campaign, rather than a book that contains diagrams about how to fold bras and instructions on how to stack saucepans. Which is the point, of course. The appeal of tidying and folding lies in the promise that we can experience the joy of being in a beautifully curated Liberty-esque shopfloor, right here at home. First, of course, we pick the low-hanging fruit and leave the tough jobs for another day. I mean, I’m sorry, but anyone can tidy a sock drawer; that takes 10 minutes. And folding a T-shirt into a perfect rectangle is no mystery: if you have ever successfully folded a piece of A4 paper in three and slid it into an envelope, you’re basically there.
But the really clever bit comes when Kondo gets tough. New-wave tidying up promises to cleanse not just your wardrobe, but your soul as well. If a piece of clothing no longer sparks joy when you hold it, you “thank it for all it has done and say goodbye”. This is genius. For hoarders – and I count myself as one – an overcluttered wardrobe is emotionally toxic, bursting with the guilt of purchases we never needed to make and life makeovers that never quite happened. The spark joy theory is like a royal pardon, allowing us to move on from our mistakes. It is unashamedly self-centred: Kondo advises against asking outside opinion, and against passing your belongings on to friends or family, as considering their needs will distract you from focussing on what you do and don’t love. Tossing out a perfectly good dress can bring you more joy than buying one. A day tidying isn’t the opposite of going shopping; it’s the new going shopping. I bet Paris Hilton is doing her sock drawer right now.
