Sunny days are great for throwing open the windows and clearing out the cupboards; but decluttering can be great for our mental well-being, too. Louise Wates writes
“Are you reading KonMari?” one of my friends messaged, when I said that I was decluttering my wardrobe. This was in reference to Marie Kondo’s approach to tidying and decluttering which hit the book stands and headlines a little while ago.
“No, I’m using the old-fashioned method of making a huge pile of stuff and staring at it,” I replied.
And I was; literally standing staring at an unruly pile of clothes, feeling overwhelmed and stressed.
But eventually, with the help of some energising music, I got through it; trying on every single item to see if it was worth keeping, packing away stuff that is too warm even for an English summer, creating a charity shop pile, and even going so far — and this is a first for me — as to match up items so that I had ready-to-go outfits. Get me!
Then, feeling fabulous from the whole exercise, I began tackling my Leaning Tower of Paperwork — very almost sorting it properly and even, finally, reading some of it.
You would think that it shouldn’t take much skill to move an object from one place to another, or to throw out something that we do not like or need anymore, but with the number of books out there on the subject (Marie Kondo has sold millions) we must clearly need help.
It’s unlikely to be a problem that our cave-dwelling ancestors would have faced; but judging by the amount of goods that Egyptian pharaohs hoped would accompany them into the afterlife, or the trinkets archaeologists find in ancient graves around the world, as a species we clearly like ‘stuff’. So maybe there were arguments between couples thousands of years ago about old flints cluttering up the cave…
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