For most of my life I have lived in large old country houses, where I collected and restored furniture and effects obtained at deceased-estate clearing sales. I have always liked order but am more flexible on filth. As a child, God stood over our Methodist household threatening violence to children who were careless or wasteful. Adults paid me to impose order on pantries, spare rooms and overflowing sheds because, à la Marie Kondo, it sparked joy in me, and it was useful. It rarely involved throwing things out.

Over the last few decades, privileged, westerner consumers have changed their patterns of consumption. Beautifully-made furniture—blackwood, cedar, pine, mahogany—stable and strong, with dovetailed drawers, has been supplanted by flat-packed, disposable, venereal and plasticated-wood furniture that chips and cracks when breathed on. Mary Kay Buysse describes it as ‘a significant shift in material culture’ … ironically during an age of climate change and natural resource depletion (in Verde: 2017).