‘If I can’t go out, I shall have to bring things in’ – why I have rebelled against Marie Kondo and cluttered up the house

The more stuff I accumulate, the better I like my space – books, mugs, cushions and rugs bring texture and warmth to a room, writes Rupert Hawksley

Lockdown has turned a mild uncertainty about decluttering into outright rebellion (Getty Images)

Do you remember Marie Kondo? You might have bought one of her books, all the rage a few years ago, about the life-changing impact of tidying up and getting rid of clutter – though strictly speaking, by now you should have chucked those out, too. That brief flirtation with minimalism – I think the Scandinavians also had something to do with it – always distressed me. An empty room is so brittle and humourless. After all, what is a life, if not the things we harvest along the way?

Well, lockdown has turned a mild uncertainty about decluttering into outright rebellion. If I can’t go out, I shall have to bring things in. So parcels arrive and the contents get stacked in ever more unlikely places. A pile of second hand books by the kettle. A pair of running shoes under the coffee table – I won’t be needing those, thank you very much. I like to think of it as an ambitious form of nesting. Since you never quite know during these long months of nothingness when and where you might need to sit down, you may as well have some company when you do.

The latest obsession is old magazines (and yes, no doubt you’ll see me, a prisoner in my own home, in a Channel 4 documentary soon enough). I found 42 dog-eared copies of the New Yorker magazine from 2019 on eBay last week and immediately decided I had to have the lot.