Susan and Linda’s Success Story

Susan and Linda started their Private Clutter Clearing Journey in January 2021 and completed it in March 2023. This means they’ve cleared all their clutter and created the habits they need to stay Clutter Free Forever.

Success Summary:

	Susan	Linda
Number of rooms and areas completely clutter cleared	9	11
Number of years they had they been completely cluttered	23	19
E-mail inbox: Before   After	79,637   Less than 100	62,937   Less than 100
Percentage of clutter that came OFF the Clutter Conveyor Belt	83%	81%
Number of black sacks of donations to the local charity shop	43	56
Trees planted in their name with the Paperwork Reward Challenge	28	17
When did they start saving MORE than the cost of their Private Journey Memebership?	End of Step 1	End of Step 1
Number of direct debits cancelled	4	4

• Both Susan and Linda took longer to complete Step 1 than they did to complete Step 7.
• By the end of their Journey’s, Susan and Linda had saved enough money to book a cruise together as their Goal Reward.

Susan

• Susan was saving MORE than the cost of her Journey by the end of Step 1.
• By the end of her Journey, Susan had saved enough money to have new flooring throughout her house, and a new fitted kitchen. When Susan started her Journey, she wasn’t able to use her kitchen and spent considerable amounts of money buying ready meals, eating out, getting takeaways.
• Susan had her first ever birthday party in her home once she had completely clutter cleared her first 5 rooms and areas – the downstairs rooms and areas.

Linda 

• Linda was saving MORE than the cost of her Journey by the end of Step 1.
• By the end of her Journey, Susan had saved enough money to replace her heating system, get her house redecorated,
• By the end of Step 2, Linda was putting £50 a month into a savings account for her 10 year old granddaughter so she has some money towards her first car when she’s older.
• Linda is creating a montage of her before and during photos to put in a picture frame in each room that was cleared.

Susan and Linda are friends who started a shared Private Journey in January 2021.

As Susan explains:

We had both been on Clare’s e-mail list for over 5 years after Linda found her online. We were terrible procrastinators, always telling ourselves – and Clare – over the years that we ‘just’ had to do this or that, and then we’d make time for our Clutter Clearing.

Of course, we never did, and with hindsight we were dabblers and in denial that the only thing that was going to help us clear our clutter forever was starting the 7 Step Journey.

We’d started the DIY Journey together at the start of Covid, but we never got into a routine of ‘doing the doing’. We did what we always do – talked about our clutter, talked about how great it was going to be when we cleared all our clutter, but never actually ‘Did the Doing’. We never got into a routine of watching and following the Journey videos.

So we reached a point where we realised we needed accountability to make sure we actually make time to ‘Do the Doing’. We’ve done enough group courses to know that the Group Journey wasn’t going to work for us because as lovely as it is to be able to talk to people who understand, everyone’s usually too nice, so if you don’t ‘Do the Doing’ they tell you it’s all right, don’t worry! We knew we needed Clare to have that real, meaningful accountability. Of course, she doesn’t tell you off if you don’t ‘Do the Doing’, she asks the direct questions to help you find out ‘why’ you didn’t ‘Do the Doing’, and although that’s usually a bit uncomfortable, it does force you to accept that you’re resisting or avoiding ‘Doing the Doing’, or you’re habit of giving up is fighting hard. Clare always knows before you do what’s really going on! Then of course she helps you get through that and back on track and into the routine.

We knew we needed the 1-2-1 accountability but neither of us could afford the Private Journey on our own, so Clare agreed that we could share one Private Journey between us (we paid just over half each so we got the second toolkit with each step). This meant we had a joint private Clutter Clearing Session on the same day at the same time each week. That worked great because on Step 1 we struggled to get into a regular routine of making time to watch and follow the Journey videos.

We also decided to have a regular call with each other every day after we’d watched the Journey videos so we could talk about what we’d learnt. When the lockdowns ended, we were able to meet up face-to-face for lunch or in the park to talk about what we’d learnt in the Journey videos. They became our rewards.

What surprised us most was that taking Clare’s advice to treat the Journey like a part-time course and get into a routine of doing 2 hours a day, 5 days a week actually made it easier to make time.  It became the thing we did every morning, which worked well because we do our hobbies or meet friends in the afternoons and evenings. We made our Private session 9am too so we had to get up and ready for it each week, and before we knew it we were up and ready for 9am every day.

For us, switching to a shared Private Journey was the difference between success and failure. We’d been failing on the DIY Journey because no one knew if we ‘Did the Doing’ or not. There were no consequences. With hindsight, we became each other’s enabler.

Don’t make the mistake we made many times of thinking we could do this on our own, without any meaningful accountability to others or Clare. If you want to clear your clutter Forever, make sure you get the help and support you need to succeed.

If you’d like to do what Angela did and clear all your clutter without the need for an expensive home visit, find out more about the 7 Step Journey that enabled her to succeed:  https://www.clutterclearing.net/7-step-journey/