There is no doubt that Marie Kondo is one of the hottest properties in TV and media at the moment and maybe we would like a little bit of her magic to rub off on our lives. Let’s face it, we all want our homes to ‘spark joy’ to some extent, even if it’s only once in a blue moon, and however closely you follow the evangelical teachings of the Japanese lifestyle guru, there is no doubt she talks some sense.
Marie Kondo is classed as an ‘organising consultant’ and maybe we all feel like we’ve met one of those in our lives and it is a bit of a stretch to be making a living out of it, but Marie has written four books on the subject, so clearly she knows a bit about it. Furthermore, her books have sold millions of copies and been translated into dozens of languages, and her latest title ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up’ has been published in more than 30 countries, so it seems quite a few people are listening closely to her too.
Why our sofa sparks joy
Her most recent book is about organising the home; something that we all like to do if and when we have the time. In essence the book is about how you should keep only things that ‘spark joy’ and you should throw away everything else. In our home, that probably means we will have a sofa and virtually nothing else.
Our sofa sparks joy from the moment we get home from work until the moment we get off it and go to bed in an evening, and we could happily live without anything else in the home; a cooker, a TV and even our smartphone technology. Okay, maybe we are exaggerating a little here, but in terms of decluttering, the sofa doesn’t come into the equation and we will be waving goodbye to a lot of things before we admit our sofa has lost any of its joy.
Don’t throw away my sofa
The principle that we should thank an old item for its service and get rid of anything that no longer sparks joy just suggests to us that if you have fallen out of love with your sofa, you just go and buy a new on; to rekindle the joy if you like.
As Marie suggests, everything that is useful and positive in our lives should be kept visible and accessible, and that certainly applies to our sofa. Even if we wanted to stick it away in a cupboard, we couldn’t.
At Nabru we have watched the engrossing Netflix series ‘Tidying Up With Marie Kondo’ and taken some useful tips from it to apply to where we live. But we do find that many of the decluttering tips are not useful or practical to people with busy, working lives, and hence we find ourselves back on the sofa, thankful for at least trying to declutter our home and to be more organised, but happy that our sofa is our kingdom and that it will be sparking joy for a few years yet.
