Organising and decluttering

I've always been messy. As a teenager I had the sort of room where you couldn't tell the colour of the carpet for all the stuff all over it. As I've got older I've got less and less happy about living like that. I hate having anyone over because I'm embarrassed about the house, and I've been irritable and grumpy with the children when I wanted to declutter and tidy and they just made more mess. When I was home-educating I thought it was lack of child-free time that made it impossible for me to get the house clear and tidy, so when Jade started school in April 2009 I knew I wanted to make it a priority. After a year-and-a-half of intermittently trying to do it myself (between spending vast amounts of time with Jade in school and other interruptions) including taking (excellent) online courses and reading decluttering books, I have realised I'm just not going to be able to do it. For whatever reason, I just can't see what to do or how to do it. I can't decide where to put things and I can't decide what to get rid of and what to keep. I was just getting paralysed with indecision.

So I decided it was time to call in a professional. I Googled and found the Association of Professional Declutterers and Organisers, and from there found Kay Julian of Welcome Space.

She came on Monday. We spent the first hour exploring the extent of the problem in all of the rooms, and then we got to work. We decided to start with the girls' rooms so that some of the stuff downstairs that was theirs could find a home upstairs instead.

The 'before' photo below shows a worse situation than normal in Jade's room, as we had just got new-to-us beds for the girls in the past month and the chest of drawers from Shannon's room was being temporarily stored in Jade's room, along with the zip-and-link beds that used to be our guest beds but now need to be got rid of.



It's not all that clear how much has changed in this next photo, but at Kay's suggestion we moved Jade's chest of drawers to the other side of the room near her wardrobe, so there is a 'clothes' side of the room and a 'toys' side of the room. Kay found the most efficient mixture of containers to go in Jade's toy cupboard to store things away so that her home-made stables, tackrooms and other horse paraphernalia could all live together in one corner.


There wasn't as much to do in Shannon's room, but the pile of toys and 'stuff' that was piled in one corner all got tidily stashed away in containers and homes found for them on the various shelves and spaces. She now has a clear floor and a proper home for everything.

The living room doesn't look drastically changed either, but everything was cleared off the table. We reorganised the drawers in the bureau to the left so that the bottom one became the tidy and organised craft drawer, and the top one became the 'to-do' drawer, where active projects and things waiting to go to other people can be stored. I also put a 'to do' note on my calendar so that I have a visual reminder of what I need to get done.




The basket that can be seen on the right-hand-side of the sofa has been re-purposed from a book basket to a 'toy-tidying' basket. At the end of the day, if the girls want to leave any of their toys downstairs ready for the next day, they can do so as long as they fit into the basket. Anything that doesn't fit has to go upstairs.

Kay took away the unwanted chest of drawers and a great pile of other stuff destined for the charity shop, and some rubbish that needed disposing of.

Today I have got rid of the majority of the stuff that was on top of the bureau (seen in the 'Before' pic), chucked some away and relocating some to the craft drawer.

Kay is coming back next Monday to tackle the worst downstairs room. Already I feel lighter and more free to think about other things. I am looking forward to discovering that my house can be nice!