I can see clearly now; I’ve just decluttered my life

Michael Simkins looks at the pros and cons of letting go of your posessions

Decluttering author Marie Kondo. Ben Gabbe /Getty Images for Time / AFP

"Don’t own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire.” So wrote the American author Wendell Berry; and, until recently, I had also considered myself to be bracingly unsentimental about material possessions.

Yet my world was turned upside down last week with a visit from my friend Sonia. She arrived at my front door with a bright, far-off look in her eye that usually betokens a new romance or the arrival of some unexpected financial legacy. Yet Sonia’s conversion – for such it was – was due to a book she’d just read by Japanese organising consultant Marie Kondo. It had turned her life, quite literally, upside down.

Kondo, who describes herself as “a professional expert in decluttering”, writes bestsellers in which she explains how you can free your inner spirit by throwing out all but the few essential items that make you happy. “Have nothing in your life that doesn’t give you joy” is her mantra.

As Sonia passed a critical eye over my living room I assured her I had no need of her guru’s emotional meddling. Indeed, I glibly observed that if my wife used the criteria “throw out anything that doesn’t give you joy”, I’d probably be first into the recycling bin. But Sonia was having none of it.

A quick look in my wardrobe confirmed her worst fears. There they were: tatty pullovers, pairs of grubby jeans and items of malodorous footwear. And how had I acquired seven separate pairs of pyjama bottoms?

And what of the stuff languishing under the stairs? Was life really insupportable without retaining my first-ever cricket bat or that rolled up piece of stair carpet? As for the clay money box I’d made in pottery class aged 13 and I use to store paper clips, both Sonia and, by inference Kondo, were adamant: it had to go.

Out went old novels, LPs, magazines and battered coffee pots. Most tellingly were the hundreds of “good luck” cards I’d kept in the sentimental glow of three decades of theatrical productions, each one swearing undying friendship while acknowledging that I was the best actor they’d ever worked with. But reread now, they seemed like waste paper.

Then there were the holiday snaps. Bags and bags of them. Me in front of the Taj Mahal, in front of the Empire State Building, at a thousand different restaurants and on sun-kissed beaches, the only unifying factor being I could no longer remember the occasion and, in some cases, even my fellow celebrants. My past life chronicled in fading prints of crushing monotony. According to Kondo, I should retain one or two best examples from each set and dispose of the rest.

Yet even as I filled each bin bag, I realised that behind Kondo’s glib sentiments, she had perhaps identified a more profound issue. For while one half of the world can’t find enough to eat, the other half is wallowing in “stuff” – material possessions, many of which are not only surplus to our requirements but also to our peace of mind; yet whose purchase gives us a momentary rush of pleasure, before our cravings urge us on to yet more retail therapy in an effort to recapture that fleeting fix.

As if to echo Kondo’s words, a study published recently by the lobby group Waste and Resources Action Programme estimated that the United Kingdom is throwing out 7.3 million tonnes of edible food a year, which translates to a staggering £470 (Dh2,100) per household. The situation is similar in the UAE. Think of the transformation in our quality of life if we all shopped more carefully and devoted that saving to education, housing or health. Surely our fragile sense of well-being really would improve.

So, along with the new year comes my new regime. Cupboards are bare, larders stocked only with essentials, and from now on I’ll survive with only five shirts in my wardrobe instead of 15. I feel better already. Of one thing I’m sure, should Kondo herself ever knock at my door, I’ll offer her three hearty cheers and a welcoming cup of tea. Even if I have to borrow my neighbour’s kettle to do so.

Michael Simkins is an actor and writer in London

On Twitter: @michael_simkins