I wasn’t too worried before Trio came- it was a present so I wondered what I would say if it was unhelpful, but I was pretty hopeful from the start. Decluttering is something I’ve wanted to do for ages and I knew I needed to have help. My friend had spoken to her. My best bit was just seeing the space emerge. I’m now very aware of how much more I’ve got to do. Seeing order emerge was great – it’s not all randomly scattered around the house and on the floor. I didn’t know what was in a particular bag and now I do. I enjoyed it – her positivity, she helped me be more disciplined. I looked forwar ..read more

  Resource no 1: your life story Stuff that is broken, out of date, or that refers to a life we don’t live any more, doesn’t serve us. In a cupboard, it might be choking shelf space that could be used for things we treasure, want to reuse or have access to for personal reasons. Safely disposing of a pile of broken suitcases might bring about an opportunity to store and re read old letters and go out in the garden with the po-go stick. Our resources might be more qualitative than financial initially, but the life narrative they remind us of is hugely valuable emotionally, in ..read more

No kidding, but decluttering can bring up emotions: wistful memories of times past we will never see again, or dread of things we will have to address even though we hoped we would never have to. Lots of things. Some decisions are just not going to be quick ones, and lots of brewing and mulling and adjusting needs to happen over time. This is fine, so let’s call it what it is. If you have artworks that must be preserved, then the storage container, be it box, bag or basket, needs to be emotionally fit for purpose. Be clear that what you are storing are items whose sole role in your l ..read more

It’s been on my mind for a while that I would like to get a better feel for how my work fits into the wider considerations of environmental awareness. In the end I came up with four ideas. Firstly, there is no magic ‘away’ place where the stuff we don’t want to keep, goes. This is something that my clients have often been scrupulous about and it’s one of many reasons why people keep overwhelming amounts of unwanted plastic. We can look at the ‘life after you’ potential of an item. Equally, recycling and rehoming play a part. Most of my clients reject the idea of just filling a skip and chuckin ..read more

I hope it’s not too much of a clanger to say that this post is prompted by a chat I had with George Monbiot this morning when he stopped by my stall. We were talking about how the phrase ‘retail therapy’, originally coined as a disparaging comment, gained currency and added empathy in our emotionally cluttered social environment. That’s terrible, opined George. Not at all, I said. And here’s why. When you shop, you’re taking a punt that the thing you are buying is going to prove to be an addition to your life, a solution to a challenge, nourishment, a bringer of opportunity… any or all of thos ..read more

We are in Oxford, in the Thames Valley, UK.  Oxford homes I have worked in typically have a lot of moth, and a lot of books. Moth, because the Thames Valley is a favourite place for them, and books, because we are in an academic environment whether we are a member of the University or not and these things rub off on you. We have learned to relate to a city with abundant books in it, and without them life would be unthinkable. You can set off a moth bomb relatively easily. Books, however… Before I began decluttering work, I worked in a variety of retail environments selling books – new books, r ..read more

A question that comes up when I am trying to sell my service to someone, is how to describe my work using concepts that people are otherwise familiar with from other parts of life. I’ve quite enjoyed this process for myself and have had a number of fascinating conversations with APDO colleagues about this too. So … here are my top three: I’m a sort of hairdresser. Clutter will grow, like hair, because it’s a byproduct of being alive. For as long as we are moving through this world, we will be using things, doing things, being in various changing environments, messing the place up. A long stand ..read more