In January this year I went mad and quit my job and began completely gutting my house of clutter, and it’s been great. Now I’m not sure you should do the same, but what I will say is that decluttering is like a disease, it’s viral. I tentatively mentioned (bored on endlessly) to my friends what I was doing, and then, bit by bit, messages would appear: ‘Anna- I’ve done my wardrobes’ ‘Anna, I’ve done my cupboard under the sink’ ‘Here look at these pictures of my shoe rack’ and so on. It’s even spread to (some) husbands. Viral.

So I wanted to take you through, step by step how I’ve done it.

Step 1: Avoid reading the book. This book- The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Come across it on social media, decide it’s way too extreme for you and you are NEVER going to fold your clothes upright, I mean, who has time for that?

Step 2: Throw one thing away a day for a bit, get a few bags for the charity shop, and a few bags of ACTUAL RUBBISH that you were storing in your home- I’m looking at you bathroom cabinet and cupboard under the sink.

Step 3: Look on social media to try to get the gist of THE BOOK, without actually buying it.

Step 4: BUY THE GODDAMN BOOK. OH IT’S ACTUALLY REALLY GOOD AND SIMPLE AND NOT SCARY AT ALL AND IT ONLY TAKES A DAY TO READ WHY DIDN’T I JUST DO THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE??!!

Step 5: Declutter properly according to THE BOOK.

The two principles of KonMari (the nickname for this method of decluttering) are

1) Keep only that which sparks joy

2) A place for everything

It is very simple, but very hard at the same time.

You have a specific order to work through namely, clothes, books, paper, miscellaneous, sentimental. For each of these categories you gather every single item you own into one pile. You then hold each item (bear with me) and ask if it ‘sparks joy’. If it does keep it, if not, get rid.  As I said, simple, but labour intensive.

Once this is completed (she suggests you do it as quickly as possible, in no more than 6 months) you have to assign everything a place, and keep everything of the same type together (I.e. no more pens in 8 different spots around the house).

If you do this your life will be changed dramatically for ever she claims, and you will never have a cluttered house again. Does it work? Did I do it? Will Brad ever find out who cheated on his sister? Tune in next week folks….