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PRESS RELEASE 1.3.10
Mothering Sunday is a time when children pay respect to their Mothers
As Mothers Day approaches, how many children will give their mothers the gift of more space in their home?
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It’s a known fact that more and more children are living at home with their parents longer.
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It’s a known fact that when children do finally leave home they leave at least some of their belongings at home because they don’t have space in their new home to accommodate it.
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It’s also a well established fact that the great British Public are becoming a nation of hoarders thanks to our bargain mentality and the recession.
Thanks to the recession, not only can we afford less space when we leave our mothers home, but the Great British Public also has a new favourite pastime of bagging a bargain whenever possible and storing things away ‘until they come in useful’, thanks to businesses desperate to get what little cash we do have to spend – something mothers who lived through the war and rationing became experts at doing.
Add to that the fact that we are living with our parents longer and moving into smaller homes when we do eventually move out, we’re having, out of necessity, to leave some things at home with our parents – the most common item of which is old school books and paperwork.
Yet at the same time, we’re filling the homes we’re moving into with the ‘bargains’ we’ve bought.
“People who have clutter tend to have the ‘out-of-sight-out-of-mind’ problem.” says Clare Baker, founder of The Clutter Clearing Consultancy (www.clutterclearing.net – a company that helps people de-clutter their homes, wherever they live, whatever their budget). They can’t see the clutter that is in their homes when they go out to the shops, or see the clutter that they’ve left at their parents home, so they forget it even exists. Very often they’ll be the type of person who wants or needs the instant adrenaline rush or feel good factor that you get from getting a bargain as opposed to making a rational, informed decision about whether you are going to use or appreciate something you’ve bought within a matter of hours, days or weeks of buying it.”
“Part of the process of HOW to de-clutter that we teach people requires them to really look at their clutter and what specifically is in it. So often it’s just ‘clutter’ rather than particular types of clutter and items. I had one client last week who, unknowingly, had 3 hand held vacuum cleaners in amongst his clutter – and he thought he only had one that he couldn’t find”.
Clutter Squirrels
Clare is seeing more and more clients who have become ‘clutter squirrels’ – they’ve bought and continue to buy during the recession because there are so many bargains out there to be snapped up that people think they’ll get while they can and while they’re cheap and then store away for when prices start to rice again. The trouble is they don’t realise that the marketing companies know that there are people just like my clients who cannot resist a bargain, regardless of need – even when they don’t have the space to house the bargain”.
“I was working with a client just last week” continues Clare. “Their face lit up in excitement as they showed me into the cellar of their terraced house to show me what a bargain they’d snapped up due to a ‘Special Offer’ on a particular type of food. They had bought the equivalent of a years supply – yet not realised that not only did they not have enough space for it all (some of it was in their cellar, some in their bedroom, some in their garage), not only did they not realise that they would be eating this food at least once a day for the next 365 days, but the shelf life of it ran out before the year meaning they would need to eat this particular food for every meal between now and September to get the full value out of the ‘bargain’. It still surprises me how many people – and especially people with clutter – buy things with good intentions but don’t think about the short term consequences on space and clutter in their homes”.
Clare continues: “Many of my clients will justify their clutter by saying ‘when I do x’, ‘if I ever want to do y then I have what I need’, or ‘I had planned to do z’. The intention is there and the intention was the justification for buying the item, yet they never had or made the time to use or appreciate the item.
So why is it that we don’t have a clear-out when we leave home?
Our parents are often from the post-war era when we had rationing. Supplies were scare so we had to be good at adapting the things we could get our hands on to fit the need we had. So our parents taught us how to be resourceful and economical. The trouble is that, as our parents have enjoyed the post war relative affluence, their rationing and resourcefulness attitude has stuck and been passed down to us. We now have two or three generations who have the hoarding and rationing mentality – and the most recent generation also has the mentality of replacing rather than repairing. Add to this the tendency towards smaller homes with less space and it’s a recipe for creating a cluttered home.
So what advice does Clare have for anyone wanting to give their mothers more space in their homes this Mothers Day?
“Offer to come and collect any clutter that is at your mothers home rather than at yours” says Clare. “Then take it to your home and de-clutter it. It’s likely that most of it can be recycled or passed on to charity shops who desperately need our donations at the moment.”
In fact, Clare will be practicing what she preaches and helping her mother-in-law get more space this Mothers Day. “Apparently my husband has several hundred vinyl LP’s still in his mothers garage – LP’s I’ve never seen in the 6 years I’ve known him’ says Clare. “His mother has often hinted that she would much rather have the space than the LP’s which have no sentimental or other value to her, and my husband doesn’t even have a record player any more so they’re of no value to him. So a de-clutter will be just the thing to put a smile on his mothers face this Mothers Day!’
Clare Baker runs The Clutter Clearing Consultancy www.clutterclearing.net with consultants throughout the UK.
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Notes to editors:1. Clare Baker set up and runs The Clutter Clearing Consultancy – www.clutterclearing.net
2 Clare Baker is available for interviews, discussions, phone-ins etc on clutter clearing issues.
3. Clare Baker has contributed to articles on the issue of clutter for many well known magazines, newspapers and the BBC radio network.
6. Details of unusual things found amongst the clutter can be found on the website at:
www.clutterclearing.net/unusual-finds.asp
7. Details about more survey results can be found at:
http://www.clutterclearing.net/survey-results.asp
Please call one of the following numbers to book an interview with Clare.
0777 5897955
01295 275030
