What is clutter?

One Person's Clutter is Another Person's Treasure

There are people, and you may have already experienced this from family and friends, who are quick to say that you ‘should’ clear your clutter, you ‘should’ have your home looking, feeling and smelling a particular way, or you ‘should’ prioritise clearing the clutter you have.

Maybe they've said you should just get a skip and chuck it all in there because it's all clutter so get rid of it and start again.

Maybe they've 'helpfully' started picking their way through your things and weeded out what they think should go, or started to arrange your home how they think you 'should' have it so you have more space and less clutter, or bought you useful storage to help you store your things more efficiently (in their opinion).

After all - isn't it obvious to you that this and that is 'clearly clutter'?

But hang on. What is clutter to one person is not clutter to another. That's why, when you walk into other people's homes you may think 'I couldn't live like this / thank goodness my home isn't as bad as this' yet that person doesn't seem to notice it's cluttered at all. Why is this? Because to them it's not an issue or a problem.

Clutter is all relative to how you feel in your home -

yet it's the relatives who can make us feel even more ashamed of our homes.

Many people also tell us when they contact us that they've had well meaning friends and family who have offered to help, told them they 'should' get rid of this and that because (to them) it's obvious that it can be thrown away.

Well meaning friends and family just don't understand it's not that simple, is it?

We would like to see the word 'should' removed from the dictionary - after all, who has the right to tell anyone else how they 'should' live in their homes, unless they're commiting a crime?

All sound familiar? YOU know it's not that simple, that although it's a worthless piece of paper and 'logic' says to them that it's obvious what to do with it you can't simply 'throw it away'. Yet they don't understand, do they, and I suspect you don't know how to explain that it's not that simple.

Let's be honest - when our clutter is so out of control, the last thing we feel able to deal with is well meaning friends and family offering to 'help' - it just adds to the stress, pressure and sense of failure we already feel. So best to say 'thanks' but 'no thanks' to the offer of help and get on with it yourself.

If you can just figure out how and where to start so you don't repeat the same as last time you did some de-cluttering and organising. You just want to avoid creating piles of clutter that move around the room which is what happened last time you had a blitz on the clutter.

Don't worry.

We understand, and we won't 'help' you by telling you what you should and shouldn't keep. We WILL help you make the decisions for yourself in a non-confrontational way.

Our definition of clutter is:

A mass of belongings that are:

greater in number than can be accommodated by the space we have available to us

disorganised

are not being used or appreciated by us

do not have a defined home

coming onto the Clutter Conveyor Belt faster than they are coming off

What's the difference between a tidy up and a de-clutter?

My clients usually tell me by week 2 or 3 of the follow up telephone calls that they are tidying up rooms as opposed to having to de-clutter them.

When they tell me this I know that they've cracked their de-cluttering, because a tidy up simply means that things need to be put away in their clearly defined homes, whereas de-cluttering requires us to look at things that may be unfamilar to us because we haven't seen them in a while, make a decision about where they belong and where their home will be, and then put it in that clearly defined home - which may not be easy or possible because that clearly defined home may be cluttered so putting things away that DO belong there may not be easy.

Put simply, de-cluttering requires more time and effort than a tidy up because it requires decision making and 'remembering' that isn't required when we're simply tidying up things that are temporarily out of place.

To de-clutter is therefore to:

adjust the amount of belongings to the amount of space we have available;

organise the belongings we choose to keep efficiently and effectively:

use or appreciate the belongings or items of clutter that are of use or of sentimental value to us;

pass on clutter that have a use but either can be used by someone else for the purpose for which it was made or that we cannot accommodate in the space we have available;

define a home for our belongings that are cluttered

learn to control the accumulation of clutter in the future so that it doesn't come back to overwhelming proportions.

Most people have some clutter – whether it’s a drawer, a cupboard, a loft, a garage or a whole home. Many people live with clutter and never feel the need to clear it because it doesn’t bother them.

There’s one important thing I’d like to get clear right now: