Attempted options for alternative school wear (an Iron Man outfit, a police uniform, a Princess Elsa dress) were chucked crossly over the bannister after I put a ban on them (“but Eliza’s mum lets her wear a tiara to school”) and the snack drawer had been rifled through and purged of 126 different biscuits (approximately). Kevin the carrot – which is genuinely the size of a fully-grown adult (see here if you don’t believe me) was in the kitchen two pairs of pyjamas discarded halfway down the stairs (because why not start getting changed for school mid-landing, I don’t make the rules). The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is a bestseller and has been turned into a television drama for Japanese TV.

That’s right: it was grey and drizzling outside and below freezing, but in between edits there I was in the garden, hunched over to stop the wind, holding an extra-long cooking match to a box of PG Tips. Marie Kondo runs an acclaimed consulting business in Tokyo, helping clients transform their cluttered homes into spaces of serenity and inspiration. Speaking of tea bags, allow me to provide a vista into what “working from home” and “mess” really means when you’re solely responsible for two under-10s: just the other day (around the same time that the scandal over Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs gathered pace, as it happens) my six-year-old son was out of class because he was ill except that of course – as soon as I’d resigned myself to not going into the office, and diligently contacted the school to say that he wouldn’t be in – he made a remarkable recovery and asked me to set fire to a tea bag. Are you even a parent if you don’t wade through a tsunami of shoes, empty Pom-Bear packets, softly browning apple cores and a homemade “art installation” featuring a lump of Blu Tack and a tea bag (”don’t throw it away, I made it for you!”) just to get out of the door in the morning? What did Marie Kondo get WRONG in the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and her other decluttering and organizing books Today were discussing the parts of.

Declutter marie kondo