The tyranny of the tidy

A few years ago, James Delingpole and I were two-fifths of ‘The Manalysts’ a clique of agony uncles employed by a women’s magazine. The idea was to provide five answers to each problem from five disparate standpoints. James was the trenchant intellectual, I was (supposedly) the metrosexual adman and the other three were a practising psychotherapist, a blokey builder from Essex and a gloriously camp hairdresser.

A fair few of our correspondents were, unsurprisingly, complaining about a boyfriend or husband’s untidiness but I remember being struck by how many wrote in to bemoan the very opposite – the strain of living with someone tyrannically tidy.

It’s always assumed that tidy equals good and to a certain extent, that’s true: tidy mind, tidy sum, Keep Britain Tidy – but quite often, tidiness can tip into tyranny. Yes, yes, we all know how awful it must be to live with a slob or a slattern but the stress of a partner who constantly tidies away your possessions – and with them, your sanity – should not be underestimated.