Unpacking Marie Kondo’s mission to clear unnecessary items from your home 

If I’ve learned one thing in my twenty years in Japan it’s how to enter someone’s home. What you did is this: take off your shoes at the genkan (porch) and say the following, o jama shimasu (the nuisance is here). Under no circumstances should you copy the de-cluttering Goddess Marie Kondo, who in her new Netflix show begins her transformative mission to tidy an American couple’s junk filled house by kneeling on the floor, falling into a trance, and offering a solemn benediction to the soon to be de-cluttered home.

The petite but perfectly formed Marie, who looks as if she could be neatly folded and placed snugly on a shelf herself, has reached the zenith of subscription television in little over 15 years, since setting up her ‘organising consulting business’ as a 19-year-old student.

She began sorting out other people’s mess as a tidy minded schoolgirl (or annoying busybody – take your pick), volunteering to rearrange the bookshelves while her fellow students were out playing games.