The students at Reykjavik’s School of Housewives learn more than just the domestic arts, they learn life skills. Since 1942, young women – and men – have been educated in home economics here. And the stately villa still draws people to spend a year training here. In best Marie Kondo fashion, the curriculum has been de-cluttered of ostensible housewifely virtues such as thrift, to be replaced with the principles of sustainability. The students are taught how to cook and preserve food, to sew and patch, to mend and repair. Former students, male and female, talk about how much their year at this unique state-subsidised institution shaped their professional and personal lives. And they say that the self-confidence they gained affected their lives far longer than the excess pounds that inevitably come with a year of that kind of training.