Colm O'Regan: Cleaning the house can both spark joy and cause a panic

Colm O'Regan: "There is a rustling in the corner. The youngest is tidying things; TIDYING. Sometimes you watch your children pick up your neuroses later on in life."

It's early morning in the family hotel room of a bank holiday. The air is hotel room morning air. The air that makes a teetotaller feel hungover; that makes a light drinker feel like they’ve just woken up in the cart of a pressganger having been plied with rum. 

There is a rustling in the corner. The youngest is tidying things; TIDYING. Sometimes you watch your children pick up your neuroses later on in life. 

Sometimes it happens in real time. So at some point me saying “The mess in here!!” has rubbed off on them.

They are actually tidying. Two little Marie Kondos walking around the house but instead of “does this spark joy?”, it’s “which bin does this go into?”

They’re getting brutal with some childhood toys. A decluttering purge might be about to happen.

Every so often, a cold wind of change sweeps through the house, when you declutter and nothing is safe. There will be a trigger — an ‘enough is enough’ moment. One year, it was the discovery of a bag — the size of a coal-sack containing nothing but receipts. My wife sifted through it asking: “Why are you hoarding a losing lottery ticket.”

I had no reply. What I should have said was that as an observational stand-up comedian, all life is potential material. So all time is work. So all money I spend is a work-related expense. But then I’m working illegal hours. The receipt bag went in the bin. Revenue are notoriously strict about nonsense.

Getting rid of clutter is supposed to be good for the soul. In fact, it was the Buddha himself who said that abandoning our possessions would lead to our happiness.

That’s fine for the Buddha to say — generally he only needed a cloak and a comfortable rock to sit on, and I bet he had people doing his tidying.

But he had a point. Many of the objects and customs in our present are sacred from the past. Whatever instrinsic value or use they had has evaporated. Take the leather jacket my wife held up with disdain one day. 

When I bought it aged 20, it was my most expensive clothing purchase ever. But it never fitted me. It waited for me to grow shoulders. I kept meaning to get around to growing them but I was too busy itemising receipts.

Another spark for decluttering is visitors. Visitors are like EU regulations. They’re coming down the track, it’s a pain in the hoop, but you might as well accept them in the hope you’ll have a better place to live after. The tidy you do before visitors shortest-termist. Put the shite upstairs.

There is no time to consider whether a piece of metal with a screw hanging out of it or one lone wellington sock deserves a place in our house. 

For now, they are shunted to another place to await trial. No visitor is to be allowed upstairs unless it is absolutely necessary.

But, if it’s a playdate the visitor will go upstairs and ask why is there a wellington sock or rawl plug on my pillow. So there will be a second stage. Objects that shamed us during the visit will receive short shrift.

Since she had children, Marie Kondo has revised her ideas on decluttering. She is ok now with clutter as long as the floor is walkable. Things don’t need to be sorted now at the end of the day into their correct boxes. This will come as a relief to anyone who has a shite drawer or a ‘box of stuff’.

The youngest has stopped tidying and wants cartoons. The children’s tidying obsession will pass, like all child hobbies that briefly spark hope in an easy retirement. But for a while, it sparked joy.