Retail therapy may have lost its lustre, but Kondo’s ‘spark joy’ message promises to cleanse your wardrobe and your soul as well
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.
Related: Decluttering can’t save us from the consumerist mess we’ve made | Suzanne Moore
Continue reading...