This ‘Japanese joy’ thing is turning out to be... rubbish

A friend says she hasn’t had a man in her bedroom for ages because there’s no space for one. Instead there are cupboards full of remote controls from machines anyone born after 2000 would not recognise, writes Suzanne Harrington

Antique cameras from her grandparents which are gorgeous and hipster and all that, but don’t work. Out-of-date gardening catalogues and expensive ornaments she hates. She doesn’t quite collect margarine tubs, but it’s close.

You need to spark joy, says another friend who has read that book by the Japanese lady who says that happiness is all about tidying up. The book urges you to enter into (an admittedly one-sided) dialogue with every inanimate object in your home, and ask, with great sincerity, if it sparks joy within you.

Pillow case with dribbles, do you spark joy? How about you, holey towel? Missing mitten from under the tumble drier now thick with dust bunnies? Ugly vase?

So far, this friend has emptied 15 binliners of unjoyous non-sparking items from her flat, and says the process has felt like colonic hydrotherapy, without the actual hose. She has let go of her crap, she says, both materially and metaphorically. Hoarder friend looks alarmed. She quite likes her crap, she says.

Just maybe not stacked to the ceiling in every room, like a Channel 5 documentary when the men from the local authority arrive in biohazard suits with a skip.

The idea of reading a book about tidying up seems as joyful as unblocking drains with your bare hands, but my tidy friend swears by it. I feel so light! she says. So I decide to give it a go. Initially it’s easy. Manky old cardi, do you spark joy? Frock bought years ago while drunk, do you? Drawer full of football scarves, gas bills, dead lipsticks? No, none of you either. And the black bags begin to fill up. I slash and burn, scything through the ephemera, dismissing all sentiment as I fill up binliner after binliner without a backward glance.

Actually, no, I don’t. I totally don’t. Once all the odd socks and dishcloth t-shirts have been culled, I am left with a houseful of stuff, every single item imbued with meaning, memory, sentiment. The baby teeth that the tooth fairy forgot. The wonky cloth bags, sewn by my kids in primary school. That horrible thing they got me for Mother’s Day. The years and years of drawings, crafts and assorted rubbish they lovingly brought home from school. Of course it sparks bloody joy. What am I, a monster?

And then there’s the rest. The shoulder high stack of Q magazines from the Nineties — cultural history. Fifty billion books and CDs crammed in every corner — ditto. A teeny sparkly bra top from my Goa party days — double ditto.

Teapots, Hindu love gods, peculiar bits of artwork made by friends, old tins full of buttons, random bric a brac — French for crap — raided from a thousand car boot sales. My joy remains endlessly sparked. This is impossible.