To ask you how a professional declutterer works?

[Merryoldgoat]

Help me. I’ve had a really hard term and I’m overwhelmed and not coping with house and work and kids and life.

DH pulls his weight completely - it’s just there isn’t enough time.

I think the first starting point is a big declutter and I’m thinking of hiring help. But how does this work? Do they go round with you asking questions then do the work? Do they categorise then ask you to sort through?

Would appreciate anyone who has used a service to give some guidance.

I used a professional declutterer once. It really wasn't right for me. She came for a day, but everything was rushed and I afterwards I regretted letting go of some of the stuff she took away. For me now, I pack up the things I don't think I want and put them in the garage in boxes or bags. If I haven't gone back to them after a certain time, then they go to the charity shop.

Thank you so much 😊

I follow one locally on Facebook, they are a company/team of declutters. But often the after pictures don't look much better than the before! I'd be really peed off to spend a lot of money for that, it's still a mess. One example attached.

They do offer a vinted/eBay service though where they list for you and take a percentage of the sales, however only for high value items, not things like cheap clothes and toys.

It is difficult to assess if there is no BEFORE picture, but in what way is the AFTERa mess? Looks very tidy to me…

that pretty much looks like my wardrobe now. I wouldn't consider it organised or decluttered. I definitely wouldn't use that image in an ad for my services.

So what do you think needs to be done for it to be organized and decluttered… Other than getting rid of some handbags - but maybe this person really likes handbags?

It could be argued that I own way too many art books. But art/painting is my thing, so I live with them.

there are a few things I could see that would help.....pop some of the bags or clothes in the suitcase..... lay the suitcase flat in the wardrobe to give better hanging space for longer things....maybe sort out the clothes by season and store the out of season ones somewhere else. If I liked my handbags so much, I'd put some stuffing in them to make them stand nicely so they don't come out stuck in odd wonky shapes. There's nothing actually wrong with it, it looks like mine as I said.....but if I had paid for help decluttering and it ended up looking like that, I'd wonder what I had paid for. If I was looking for paid help, I'd want the ad to make me go Wow! not meh.

I have a bin bag, a idea type bag and a box

I take them into a room and start furthest from the door. Bin bag - bin; ikea type - recycle, sell, charity; box - find a permanent home for or put in the ikea bag

Ruthless, fast decisions for 20 minutes. Bin bag in bin. Other bag, put up for sale immediately or take to charity. Everything else gets put away

Over a couple of months everything got sorted.

I am now repeating it with my craft stash. Bin bag becomes the charity bag, ikea bag stuff to sell, keep stuff I want for future use

Selling will take a few weeks, all will be sorted by the end of summer

Who knows how many times I will.have to repeat it 😊

I know.

There’s plenty I can do that others find difficult - we all have different lives/skills/responsibilities.

Depending on what craft, I didn't find mine worth selling. Mostly mine was papercraft and its so massively heavy to post plus staggering to the post office with it, that I gave up and started giving it away on my local facebook page and freecycle. Mostly the people who asked for it were kids club organisers, teachers and TA's, people who ran groups in residential homes and daycare. I met a lot of lovely grateful people, some of them sent me pictures of what had been made in the groups.....of course if you do car boots and stuff its different.

If you haven't got the time it's brilliant to get someone in. I do my own but no kids so very different. Where I always fall down is the take to charity shop pile. I can never be arsed and really have to force myself. I think it's a great idea OP. It's an investment in your home and family.

If you just don’t have time then a professional declutter can work they just work differently than someone who needs emotional support. I had one for a session when I was pregnant and too sick to move about a lot. I gave her general instructions like “please find all the toys scattered in the whole house, put them in sets where I can see them so I can quickly decide what to keep and what to charity shop”. She took the charity shop stuff away. She also brought me all the loose papers in the house, I sorted them and she recycled all the rubbish. If you have a clear idea of what you want done with whole categories of stuff then it really saves time.

An easy way to declutter clothes is to stop putting your laundry away. Get dressed from your drawers and wardrobe each day. When you run out of stuff you can actually wear almost everything left in that drawer can go and you can put the clean laundry away.

This is very true!

Ive often put off decluttering tasks because I thought they would take forever but actually, once started, with 2 bags ready for rubbish and donations, the tasks took a lot less time than I feared.

Then the bags go straight out of the house in the bin and donations into the boot to drop to the charity shop on the way to school.

Ive just done mine and DDs wardrobes, I certainly feel like I've lost mental weight!!

Sometimes, if theres space in my bin the day before collection, ill go round with a bin bag and just get rid of crap.

But im always amazed at just how much stuff there is in my house.

I’m useless at these kinds of things and hate that mid way point where everything is a massive mess. My sister however is amazing so I get her to help me. Personally if you don’t have a friend who is great at this and is organised and ruthless I would definitely consider hiring someone

the hook is trying to eat too much elephant at once. There shouldn't be a massive mess at any point.

One drawer, one shelf, one cupboard, one section of a wardrobe at a time…

This precisely. Its why I couldn’t get on with Marie Kondo,

She doesn't advocate doing a whole house at once but an area. Say your clothes. Or kids toys. Take them all out and only keep the ones you genuinely love.

@saraclara like you, I need someone “supervising” me and keeping me on track. A bit like having your mum watching you do your homework.

i had to declutter before moving house, so I roped in several friends - one to “supervise” each room with me. As each person only had to help with one room, it wasn’t too much of an imposition for them, not like asking one person to help you with the while house.

I found the big issue with Marie Kondo is she assumes your house is already fairly tidy and you just want to reduce your stuff - so for example she tells you to find all of your stationery, put it together and then decide which to keep, but I have no idea where all of the stationery is!

There’s probably some in every room of the house, tucked away in cupboards and boxes (we moved several times in rapid succession, combined two homes, have Sen kids, and life got very chaotic - so anytime we couldn’t find stationery we bought more, and then tidied it then forgot where due to health issues and medication - it’s absurd but it is what it is).

So it really helped to have somebody organise a cupboard, clear some space for me that we could say “ok that’s the stationery drawer”, and then whenever we found stationery we knew where to put it, and then whenever that drawer got full we could sort it out.

But it was a slow process, not a “take an hour and three bags” kind of process, I think a lot of people commenting on here are underestimating the amount of chaos some of us live in.

Exactly! It looks like most people's wardrobes but nothing decluttered or organised about it. In fact it would stress me out how crammed and unorganised it is - and that's the after photo!

It was just a warning to the op that she might not get the results she wants from one of these services, they're very expensive and I wouldn't be impressed with that result if I'd paid a lot of money for a 'professional'.

I wonder if this particular "declutterer" just fancied a side hustle and has no real expertise or experience?

I'd recommend a tunnel vision approach for you OP.

Pick the most important room (kitchen to make cooking easier? Lounge for peaceful evenings? Where stressed you out most?)

Pick a room and then pick the easiest task: the first pass for the bin. A quick sweep of anything you arent attached to that you can bin without thinking about. Envelopes, broken crockery, whatever.

Perhaps spend a day or two before making a mental list as you live in your space.

A second pass might be for things that don't belong in that room that you can temporarily move (without worrying about finding a proper home for them)

Then a third pass for selling, and do this as you go along rather than creating a pile. Fwiw, I got sick of selling really quickly and decided I valued the space more than the item so I sent it to charity.

Leave anything sentimental til last as it takes longest and is most emotionally challenging.

Then another pass because you inevitably need to review the um/ah items and make a decision.

As for doing it with your son around, could you prepare a fun task for him the night before? Like hiding 20 rubber ducks for him to find in the same room, or asking him to count something or help you find something?

I have three helpful rules:

1. Can I replace this in 20 minutes for less than £20?
2. If this was an insurance claim, would I use the money to replace this item?
3. Do i want this or do I want the space?

Good luck. Don't be hard on yourself. Even being ruthless it is going to feel like you're whole life for a while and take up headspace so don't try doing this alongside e.g. trying to lose weight, establishing an exercise regime, starting a new job etc because it will be mentally draining and need to be your focus.

As for doing it with your son around, could you prepare a fun task for him the night before? Like hiding 20 rubber ducks for him to find in the same room, or asking him to count something or help you find something?

I know this is a kind suggestion but it really shows a lack of understanding of what some kids with additional needs are like.

He is basically a very big toddler with very little receptive language skills. He’d have no way of understanding a task like that.

I use those three rules too.