Death to decluttering: Why I'm saying no to isolation to-do lists

If you are one of the millions of Australians fortunate enough to be keeping well, and functional enough to stay indoors, you’ve probably been told that now is the perfect time to get stuck into those DIY home projects you’ve always wanted to do but just didn’t have the time.

Time. Right. As if time was somehow the problem.

If the cheery advice from Marie Kondo’s Twitter link to the “Tidying Tips” on her website is to be believed, now is the perfect time to spring clean, and put a focus on storage solutions.

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The rest of the internet is no better. Far too many experts are suggesting to me, a lazy person at the best of times, that I am now freed up to re-arrange furniture, clean out my pantry, paint the kitchen, create homemade wax candles, sew some quilts, bake bread, re-grout the bathroom and declutter everything else.

Excuse me, are you all nuts? Has the virus infected your sense of decency? Who in their right mind – apart from those nauseating people on Instagram – is attempting this?

As a deeply suburban mother of two small kids, I want to say that you’re lucky I put a bra on this morning because I do not have the time! For any of it!

It’s not only that I now have to home-school my own children like some inane anti-vaxxer. I also have work to do. And while I’m grateful for employment at such a devastating time, it also means that my working mum juggle just turned into a car crash.

But even if I take myself out of this equation, (difficult but not impossible), there are still plenty of people out there who are too overwhelmed with grief about losing their jobs, or anxiety about this, that they simply can’t be arsed hanging up that gorgeous print they bought in Morocco back in the 1990s, before it was overrun with tourists.

I believe US journalist Emily McCombs put it best when she tweeted:

“If you’re feeling overwhelmed seeing people who seem to be living their best quarantine lives, whipping up an Alison Roman recipe between Zoom yoga and virtual Happy Hour with 15 of their closest friends, let me assure you that some of us can barely even shower or do our dishes.”

And one of those people is me. One of the reasons I can’t shower is that I now have to compete with three other people who want to use the bathroom!

Everyone is eating away their feelings of boredom and washing it down with so many liquids, that damn bathroom is in use 20 hours a day! I find myself cleaning up more often than I ever have.

Look, if you’re over 70 and you need something to fill up the hours, then by all means, go the full Kondo. I’m sure there are plenty of John Farnham albums you’ve been meaning to archive.

And, yes, I also recognise that cleaning can, in certain contexts, feel calming.

But this pandemic is one of the most terrifying things to come along this century, and given enough energy is being poured into staying sane, why do we need to be burdened in this way?

For proof of our tenuous grip on sanity, look no further than the astronomical rise in alcohol purchases. Bottle shops are now putting limits on how many wine bottles you can buy at one time.

If you want a silver lining among the record numbers of seriously ill, the people who have died and the rubble that is left of our economy, it’s that we should no longer be tethered to any sort of societal pressures. And that includes decluttering.

Yes, I know Bunnings is experiencing a surge. And to this I say: not all of us have turned crazy.

If anyone wants to hand out tips at this moment on what to do to improve the house, let’s start with the most pressing: how to hide your booze.