'The massive issue every parent will have with Netflix's Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.'

Did you know that tidying up can save your marriage?

Well according to Japanese cleaning queen Marie Kondo, star of Netflix new hit, Tidying Up, that’s the take home message.

No need to work on your marriage, just cull your books and fold your t-shirts and you will fall in love again! That’s right, the reason you haven’t had sex for three months isn’t because you’re tired after having a new baby, it’s because you have too much stuff. I mean how can your partner be expected to find your clitoris in all that clutter! Look! There it is! Under that pile of magazines!

The series is the spin off of Kondo’s successful book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I don’t get it. If you are reading about tidying up, or watching a Netflix show about tidying up, the one thing you aren’t doing is tidying up. Here’s a solution – turn off Netflix, put the book down and for God’s sake just tidy up! The idea of watching someone tell someone else how to tidy up is ludicrous. Have we become that deskilled that we no longer know how to perform basic functions? What’s next? The Life-Changing Magic of Breathing? That’s on after my other favourite show Watching Paint Dry.

I have five children. I have been tidying up now pretty solidly for two decades. I don’t have a show on Netflix. And I don’t surprise my victims by turning up announced at their door with a hug.

Generally, I stand in the bedroom doorway and I scream, “How many times have I told you to clean your room? I’m taking your phone – when your room’s clean you can have it back.” Marie Kondo gets called an angel. I get called, “A f*cking bitch!”

Watch the official trailer for the popular series. Post continues after video.

And who says that order is the best environment for every human being to live in? Kondo makes people’s houses look like some sort of department store showcase. But that’s not how people live. It’s unrealistic. It’s ridiculous to spread this completely unfounded belief that tidying up is going to make you happy.

Lots of miserable people are tidy. Some of the happiest families I know live in complete chaos. Some of the most terrifying controlling people I’ve met live in terrifying order. Remember Sleeping With The Enemy? That dude would have got five stars from Kondo for his super minimalist approach, but he was a dangerous psychopath.

I wouldn’t want Kondo anywhere near my stuff. I love my books. I am not going to kiss them goodbye and send them away. I also love to keep large piles of paper all around the house just in case I feel like building a nest.

The mindless enslavement of women to the drudgery and hopelessness of housework is what sent us running to the Bex back in the 1950s. It’s why we hid gin under the sink. Do we really need to return to unachievable ideals… again? It’s soul destroying.

Every week I look around my house and I think, “What is the point?” I wash dishes, I make beds, I pick up towels off the floor and hang them up, I take out the rubbish, I wipe down benches, I do the washing, I fold it and put it away, I vacuum, I clean the toilet, I mop, I dust, I clean the top of the fridge, I clean under the fridge, I clean the stove top, I empty crumbs from the toaster… I stand back and then for this very brief moment my house is clean.

Order has been restored to the chaos. I breathe in this strange and transitory moment of peace and harmony, before the inevitable slide back into mayhem. I make a cup of tea and sit at the table imagining how nice it would be to maintain this level of neatness on a daily basis.

Mess is what comes with a full and creative life.

I know the moment the fruit of my DNA tree step foot inside the house my carefully maintained sanctuary will be obliterated.

Shoes discarded at the door, a rolled up rotting sock will leave its mate and find residence under the sideboard, a school bag will be dropped in the lounge, with the zip open just enough to let the contents protrude onto the floor. Milk on the bench. Slightly spilled. Drained cups sit unwashed. Toast crumbs are returned. The butter is left out. A towel makes its way back onto the floor. Three hours after achieving order, disorder ALWAYS returns.

The other day I heard a startling piece of information on a BBC broadcast where a bunch of physicists were discussing time. Apparently we live in a state of continual entropy, meaning that it is a law of nature that everything moves to disorder. That’s why your house gets messier rather than cleaner.

We’re not pigs! Mess is just nature!

Take that Kondo you kamikaze cleaning consultant!

So if you want to rescue your family relationships, stop tidying up, get out the paints and paper and make a huge massive mess. Then go out!