Good Riddance

Amanda has been binge-watching ‘Tidying Up’, Marie Kondo’s new show on Netflix. Apparently, it’s all she and her yoga friends have been able to talk about in between their downward dogs.

For Sheryl, the show has provided the excuse she’s been looking for to throw out all her Dolce and Gabbanas. 

“She threw out all her Dolces?” Saffy asked.

“Everything!” Amanda repeated. 

Saffy’s bosom deflated as she sighed. “But why? She could have given them to me!”

“Well, she’s gone back to Lanvin as her favourite brand, but she didn’t have the heart to throw out the old wardrobe, and then that whole China thing happened,” Amanda said. “When she saw that person using the Dolce jacket to wipe the toilet seat, she knew it was time to really Marie Kondo her closet. Especially when a few days later, Kim Kardashian deleted her Dolce post after Diet Prada called her out on it.”

According to Sheryl, Dolce is the new fur. You really don’t want to be the one left wearing it and being screamed at. Or have fake blood splashed on. Or worse, be ridiculed on social media for your politically misguided fashion choices. 

Amanda says that Sheryl stood in front of her closet, weeping as she took out one Dolce outfit after the other, clutching each dress and handbag to her chest as she thanked them. 

Because that’s what Marie Kondo says you’re supposed to do whenever you throw something out. You thank it for being in your life. But if that sounds like too much hard work, do what my friend’s daughter did, which was to pile all her unwanted clothes into a giant heap and then thank them all at once. 

“So sayang,” Sharyn later said when Saffy told her about Sheryl. “Why she don’t give me her Dolce? I want!”

“It was a political statement, Shazz. Plus the clothes weren’t sparking joy for her anymore, now that she’s gone back to Lanvin.”

Sharyn was amazed. “Ay, so expensive you know, liddat anyhow throw away one, ah!”

Saffy shrugged. “She’s rich. Rich people are strange.”

But apparently Marie Kondo’s approach to tidying up your house has a much wider potential. Because a few days later, while shopping for a dress at Muji before her lunch appointment with her friend Mavis, Saffy’s phone pinged. It was Mavis saying she wasn’t feeling well and was cancelling lunch.

Saffy was livid. She immediately speed-dialed Amanda to vent. 

“She’s done it again!” she said the second Amanda picked up. “Ten minutes before she’s due to meet me for lunch, she cancels! This is like the third time she’d done it in the past couple of months!”

“Who?”

“Mavis!”

“Oh. Why are you still friends with that woman? Get rid of her!” Amanda advised. 

Saffy blinked. It was as if someone had asked her how she walked. “Get rid of her? You mean unfriend her? But I’ve known her for twenty years!”

Amanda’s voice sounded bored. “So? She’s not sparking joy. Why would you hold onto a friendship that isn’t sparking joy?”

Again, Saffy blinked. 

As she later said to Sharyn, just when you think Harvard should be closed down for allowing someone like Amanda to graduate from its law school, she comes up with a statement that is so profound she might as well be Yoda. 

“I mean, I never thought of friendships that way,” she told Sharyn. “It’s like, my whole life, I’ve just held onto friends because I’ve known them for a long time. No one ever said to me that you can actually get rid of them.”

Sharyn’s eyes, magnified like saucers behind her thick spectacles, blinked slowly like an overfed lizard. “Yah what. Is like old clothes. If got hole orredi and cannot sew back, what for you keep them? Just because you bought them twenty year ago, must keep, meh?  Or just because is Dolce. And get mouldy in your cupboard, some more!”

“That’s kind of what Amanda was saying!” Saffy shook her head. “She said if Mavis keeps cancelling lunch on me for no good reason, then clearly she’s not valuing our friendship as much as I am!”

Sharyn nodded sagely. “She not spark joy, mah!”

“Huh!” Saffy said as she stared off into space, contemplating this brave new world in which you could throw out friends like last season’s Dolce. 

“And is Chinese New Year, some more,” Sharyn went on. “You must spring clean your life. Some friend are like dust! Must wipe off!”

“Really, Shazz,” Saffy said with deep admiration. “You should put that on a tee-shirt!”

“Yah, boy!”