Hayley’s Success Story

Hayley started her Private Clutter Clearing Journey in March 2021 and completed it in March 2024. This means she has cleared all her clutter and created the habits she needs to stay Clutter Free Forever.

Success Summary:

• 9 rooms and areas completely clutter cleared after 46 years:
  • Hallway
  • Kitchen
  • Living room
  • Dining room
  • 3 bedrooms
  • Garage
  • Attic
• E-mail inbox now below 100 read and unread e-mails
• 73% of all the clutter she categorised and sorted came OFF the Clutter Conveyor Belt
• 12 trees planted in her name with the Paperwork Reward Challenge
• Now saves over £750 / $940 a month due to
  • the weekly shopping challenge
  • cancelled monthly subscriptions that she never used

If you don’t protect your Clutter Clearing Journey time, you won’t get into a routine of ‘Do the Doing’, get more comfortable with letting go, clear your clutter, and create the habits you need to stay clutter free Forever. It really is as simple as that. You are not too busy. There are very few genuine emergencies that require you to get involved in. You know as well as I do that you won’t do your Clutter Clearing Journey if you aren’t following your weekly planner.

Why are Personal Boundaries Important?

• Step 1: A Successful Snail / Steady Turtle hybrid
• Step 2: A Steady Turtle
• Step 3: A Steady Turtle / Powerful Elephant hybrid
• Step 4 – 7: A Powerful Elephant
• When Hayley started her Journey she started seeing a therapist weekly to help her deal with the resistance, self-sabotage and past trauma’s that she knew she needed help to process, and that the theory and exercises raised.
• Hayley used to attend a local in-person monthly Hoarding Support Group. She stopped going when she had completed Step 1 because she started to realise that although the people were lovely and friendly, they weren’t focused on ‘Doing the Doing’ or moving into the learning and change zone like she was.
• Hayley didn’t tell her friends or family that she was doing the Journey while she was on Steps 1 and 2 for fear of judgement, and because she knew she wouldn’t be working on the physical clutter and didn’t want the added pressure and expectations.
• By the end of Step 1, simply from the awareness Hayley gained from the Conveyor Belt exercises, she was saving over £80 / $95 a week which covered the monthly cost of her Private Journey Membership.
• As a direct result of doing her weekly Paperwork Clutter Clearing Sessions, by the end of Step 2 Hayley had cancelled 2 monthly subscriptions on her bank account that she realised she didn’t use.
• With the money Hayley saved and put away in a savings account each week, by Step 5 Hayley was able to afford to get her house decorated, because she only had the attic and garage left to clear, which the decorators wouldn’t be decorating.
• Hayley’s Clutter free Goal reward was to visit family that lived abroad.

Hayley started her Private Journey in March 2021.

As Hayley explains:

It was the first anniversary of the pandemic that made me realise I needed to stop procrastinating, making excuses and finally deal with my clutter.

On the TV people were talking about lives that had been cut short because of the virus, and all the things that some of these people had done with their lives.

That’s when it dawned on me that if I didn’t do something about my clutter now, I was going to be remembered by my family for leaving them with all of this to deal with. They wouldn’t remember me for the things I’d done in my life, or the memories buried in my clutter that they didn’t know about.

To help me focus and motivate me to get into – and maintain – my routine of ‘Doing the Doing’, I decided to treat it like a full-time job. It was just easier for me. I did my 1 or 2 hours of Journey time in the morning after breakfast. Two mornings a week I would do my Journey time as part of a Private Session with Clare, then I’d go out to a local café for a coffee as my reward, sometimes meeting a friend there for lunch.

Then one afternoon a week I would go and see my therapist so she could help me deal with some of my challenges at a deeper level, one afternoon a week I had my book club, and the other three afternoons a week I came home and worked on my LIFE Timeline, writing up the memories of my life that were coming back to me, so I could share them with my family.

My LIFE Timeline was scary at first – I resisted capturing things because I was afraid of what I might discover – but when I started sharing it with my therapist and family, they wanted to know more. Going to visit family became an enjoyable reward for everyone. To have people ask questions and want to know more helps bring the memories back.

Evenings and weekends were my ‘play-time’ with family, friends and a few groups that I belong to, and I was able to do those guilt free. Play-time was essential for me so I could meet the needs of my gremlins which came to visit regularly!

The wonderful thing about my routine is that now I’ve cleared my clutter, I have so much time to spend time on my hobbies. Four mornings a week I do my weekly planner, paperwork and e-mail clutter clearing sessions. Managing my accumulation is definitely a habit now!

I’ve started volunteering as a ‘Telephone Companion’ which I thoroughly enjoy, just speaking to someone who’s lonely and fancies a chat once a week. I’ve been able to share some of the memories in my memoirs with them, and they’ve shared their memories with me too.

It’s not easy to get into a routine, especially when we’re all so In-time and resist routine. But when you start to notice that you miss working on your Journey when it’s the holiday time, that’s a reminder that it’s making a difference and that actually, things ARE changing, they CAN change, and YOU’RE changing it simply by ‘Doing the Doing’ as Clare calls it.

It’s not easy to clear your clutter, but the more you focus on living your Best Life in the present, the easier it is to let go, and the quicker you clear your clutter.

Now I’ve cleared my clutter Forever, I know that when my time on this earth comes to an end, my family don’t have to deal with my clutter, and they have LOTS more memories to share and pass on because of my memoirs. I feel like they’ve finally got to know the real me.

You can clear your clutter fast, or you can clear your clutter forever, but you can’t clear your clutter forever, fast.

To find out how Clare can help you clear your clutter Forever, without the need for an expensive home visit, click here now: https://www.clutterclearing.net/clares-help-centre/