Kate Hawkesby: Had no one heard of tidying up before Marie Kondo?

Our house has order by default of living with someone who is never not cleaning stuff up ... I don't think he even pauses to check if it sparks joy or not. Photo / Getty Images

It's amazing how fast time truly does fly when you're having fun. (Or your alarm isn't going at 3am).

Either way these holidays whizzed by and I really have nothing to show for it.

Other than weight gain due to excessive Christmas mince pie consumption, and somehow getting laryngitis.

I don't know how you get sick sitting on your bum doing nothing but my goal was to have a voice back by today, so I've knocked off one New Year's resolution already.

The weather was awesome, and when it wasn't, there was Netfix. I finished watching Ozark, which gratified my Jason Bateman obsession.

I also dipped in and out of my daughters' viewing of decluttering guru Marie Kondo - mainly because I'd read the book when it first came out 3 or 4 years ago - but also because I actually live with Marie Kondo. I'm married to him.

Our house has order by default of living with someone who is never not cleaning stuff up, throwing stuff out, or putting stuff away.

I don't think he even pauses to check if it sparks joy or not.

In fact his penchant for putting stuff away means the rest of us rarely know where anything is.

It's been cleaned and tidied away before we even have time to say "I'm still using that".

I jumped on this bandwagon momentarily and Marie Kondo'ed our pantry.

Which now has the food neatly sorted into labelled containers. Not sure how long this'll last with kids who like to open packets of stuff and then just leave them there - but I'm trying.

The phenomenon of this fad though, and how "the magic art of tidying up" seemed to rock everyone's world, perplexed me.

Had no one ever heard of tidying up prior to this? Is it the folding of the clothes that blew people's minds? I don't get how it was such a huge sensation. Then again, I didn't get that viral world record egg picture either.

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Let’s set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram. Beating the current world record held by Kylie Jenner (18 million)! We got this 🙌 #LikeTheEgg #EggSoldiers #EggGang

A post shared by Eugene | #EggGang (@world_record_egg) on Jan 4, 2019 at 9:05am PST

My inability to understand all this could come down to the fact that I stepped back from social media this summer - and boy was that a revelation.

I highly recommend a digital detox.

Not posting on Instagram meant I had more time. I engaged my own family instead of randoms online.

So although I'm not a big believer in new year new me, I am a convert for less time scrolling.

It also leaves more time to do things like throw out anything that doesn't spark joy.