The decluttering trend

Question 1

floordrobe

Answer 1

collection of clothes untidily kept on the floor rather than in a wardrobe.

are you a tidy person? Me? Oh dear no! You should see my floordrobe! Tidy people keep their clothes in a wardrobe. I just dump a lot of my clothes on the floor, so – a floordrobe.
well it sounds as if you could use a bit of decluttering.
Well I don’t have a floordrobe, but I do have a chairdrobe – I guess you can work out what that means!

Question 2

clutter

Answer 2

untidiness caused by having too many things – to declutter is the process of getting rid of things.
Clutter is the word for general mess and untidiness when you have too many things, too much stuff. These days the idea of decluttering is very popular.

I love a good declutter - trouble is, I hate throwing things away.
The decluttering techniques of Marie Kondo are very popular these days. A UK decluttering expert, …

Question 3

to tackle (a problem)

Answer 3

to deal with a problem and try to fix it.
To tackle something means ‘to deal with it, to sort it out’.

She basically says you have to do things in a certain order. You have to start with your clothes. Then you move on to your books. Then you move on to paperwork. Then you go on to something called ‘komono’, which is kind of everything else: kitchens, bathrooms, garages, lofts etc. And then finally you tackle sentimental things.

Question 4

sentimental

Answer 4

with an emotional and/or nostalgic connection.

She basically says you have to do things in a certain order. You have to start with your clothes. Then you move on to your books. Then you move on to paperwork. Then you go on to something called ‘komono’, which is kind of everything else: kitchens, bathrooms, garages, lofts etc. And then finally you tackle sentimental things.
These are things that you have an emotional connection to, such as old letters and photographs. I have to say those are the things I find most difficult to get rid of! I’m very sentimental like that.

I think you just have to be ruthless,

Question 5

shift

Answer 5

change.

I think there’s been a big shift really. So my generation, my parents, you know, definitely came from that ‘make do and mend’ era post war in the sort of 20th century.
first she says that there has been a shift in our behaviour. This is a way of saying that there has been a change in the way we behave.

Question 6

make do and mend

Answer 6

an expression that means to use what you’ve got and fix something if it breaks rather than buying new things.

I think there’s been a big shift really. So my generation, my parents, you know, definitely came from that ‘make do and mend’ era post war in the sort of 20th century. And then all of a sudden people started to get a little bit more money. Things became more affordable.

We used to make do and mend much more. This phrase means that we made full use of what we had and if something broke, we tried to fix it.