The cult of clean

How clean are you? I ask not as a mother confessor. I’m not interested in the state of your soul. What I want to know is: how clean is your sock drawer? Your fridge? Your gut?

These are the pressing questions of the new cult of clean. Its apostles urge us to divest ourselves of worldly possessions, to renounce ‘dirty’ food and alcohol and to dress in monkish grey or bleached white. Our sins are these: we have bought too much tat, eaten to filthy excess and stuffed our wardrobes with cheap, disposable rubbish.

The clean cultist says no more. Everything must go. The most high and holy of the clean cultists is Marie Kondo, Japanese author of The Life-changing Magic of Tidying. She asks us to take everything we own — from family heirloom to gas bill — hold it in our hands and demand of it: does it ‘spark joy’? If not, throw it out.