Part Two

Let’s Get Started

The very first step I’d like you to take right now is to visualise a great big metal dustbin, all shiny and new and about to be carried away by a smiling binman, who will whistle a merry tune as he carts it out of your life.

And in that dustbin I’d like you to place all your guilt, all your feelings of not being a good housekeeper, mother or father, husband or wife – whatever negative, unhelpful feelings you hold about yourself that are caused by the chaos in your home.

You will not be needing them as you now begin the six-week journey to an organised home.

I’m not saying this as a brash, magnanimous gesture – I’m saying it for a very good reason.

Any guilt you feel will wear you down and blindside you if you allow it to stay. It’ll stop you taking a clear look at your clutter and it’ll make the whole subject so painful, and so much like one big long-lasting downer, that you’ll sabotage yourself and risk not making progress.

Trust me, I’ve been there – so bin that guilt right now and while you’re at the bin, drop in any shame that’s been caused by having unexpected visitors seeing your cluttered home, be they doctors, landlords, repair technicians, relatives or friends.

I am not advising you to list ‘Ten Bad Things My Home Tells Me About Myself’ or similar, because I suspect you already know those things, inside-out.

We are moving forwards not backwards, and as of today any negative thinking about yourself related to your home is unwanted clutter and needs to be binned as fast as possible, not pored over and dissected.

You are not a bad person, you are not alone, and you are about to create a better way of living in your home. Ready?

Let’s move on to the reality of your physical clutter and look at what we can do about it.

Tools

First off you need to line up the tools that will help you streamline your possessions and assist in the decluttering process.

These normally include the following:

• Storage boxes
• Box files
• Clothes hangers (wooden ones preferably, not wire, unless buying them will strain your budget)
• Bin bags
• A scrap book or two if you collect cuttings, magazines, newsapers or letters – and some paper glue as well

There are also a few little helpers that you’ll need once you’re got started such as:

• A vacuum cleaner
• Dustpan and brush
• Dusters
• Sponge-backed scourers
• Rubber gloves
• Kitchen roll
• Washing up liquid
• White vinegar and/or bleach

Don’t overdo it on these, keep it simple – most specialist surface cleaners and other products aren’t essential and this is about decluttering, not recluttering! I have done massive amounts of work in incredibly cluttered homes using just those few things, they are cost-effective and they work.

Round up your tools and make sure your vacuum’s emptied out and in good working order, but for goodness sake don’t put off getting started until you have everything on that list – which brings us to an important point.

Part Three

Perfectionism

If you feel unable to do any decluttering until you have several hours straight, or a weekend, or a long weekend with Bank Holiday and you feel in the mood and there’s nothing better to do – stop right now!

Perfectionism can easily become an ‘all or nothing’ trap in which you won’t do a bit of decluttering because you can’t do all of it, and won’t do a bit of housework because you don’t have time to do it perfectly.

Take a look around your home and see how well that approach has served you so far – in other words, see if the ‘nothing’ part has been heavily dominating the equation.

If you don’t like the results, make a brave choice right now to settle for less than perfection to begin with, because at least that way you can start to make progress, and the fine-tuning can come later.

While it’s true that ‘proper preperation prevents pitifully poor performance’ (to quote the polite version) it’s also true that if you don’t start doing something, it won’t get done.

And for goodness sake, don’t wait until you are in the mood to declutter – if you were prone to having those kinds of moods regularly, you wouldn’t be in this pickle, so you might as well stop waiting for something that’s unlikely to happen.

Make action, not perfection, your keynote here and let’s look at the second phase – assessing your allies.

Part Four

Your Team

Ready, willing and able to cart away your clutter are the following parties:

• Local council – both recycling schemes and domestic rubbish pick-ups, and most councils will also collect heavy/bulky goods from inside your home for a very small fee
• Licensed waste disposal companies – usually listed in the small ads at the back of local papers – it’s always worth ringing them to compare prices with council services if you’re disposing of large amounts of rubbish
• Friends and family – tell people what you are getting rid of, eg clothes, appliances you don’t use, books, and so on and give them the opportunity to help themselves. If your home isn’t up to visitors yet, offer to pop round with the goods, but set aside one specific day for that, or nominate a family member to do it for you, and don’t let it become a chore.
  Those around you can also get hands-on and help you with the practical part – but again, be sensible and don’t rope in anyone who’s likely to make you feel judged and guilty because that will be completely counter-productive
• Charity shops – they cannot re-sell complete tat so save your better stuff for them, but do ask if they have a deal whereby they can recycle unwearable gear – some charity shops sell fabrics by weight to companies who manufacture fillings for upholstery, and even old shoes and leather items can be re-used in this way
• e-bay – again, don’t overthink this one or allow it to become another obstacle to the critical work of getting started, but if you’re reasonably web-savvy and have a camera why not try and sell a few odds and ends on e-bay?
• Professional declutterers and organisers – increasingly plentiful and highly effective in dealing with clutter, and an option to bear in mind if you don’t feel you can ‘go it alone’ and want expert help

But your best ally right now is going to be yourself because you have made the commitment to start dealing with your clutter, and in honour of that you need to take the next step and begin to ask yourself – what do I want?

Part Five

What Do You Want?

For some people a comfortable home is one in which they can more or less walk about without falling over too many things.

Francis Bacon’s infamously chaotic studio is a testimony to the fact that streamlined tidiness isn’t always essential to success. You can see a photo of his studio at this page – www.hughlane.ie/fb_studio/index.html if you want to see some artistic chaos!

At the other end of the spectrum there are people for whom harmony comes from stark minimalism, and just one cushion out of place represents distracting clutter.

In between those extremes, there are the rest of us who have differing ideas about how much stuff we’d like to have in our homes, both on show and stored away, and what I’d like you to do right now is to get in touch with your own inner vision of your perfect home.

It’s Your Home

Creating a comfortable home is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ situation, and while all those TV decluttering shows seem to show that the fewer items you own, the happier you’ll be, it’s not always that simple and you do not need to comply with that ideal.

It’s even possible that you will be doing minimal disposing of things if your clutter fits mostly into the category of ‘right thing, wrong place.’

But I’m guessing that you’ve not invested in this course just so that you can decide to leave your cluttered home as it is, so, since you’ll be making changes it’s as well to know in advance what you want the end result to be.

Grab a notepad – don’t bother buying a new one unless you don’t have one at all, because we are not looking to add to the amount of possessions you have right now. Just grab anything you can reasonably write in and keep handy.

Write down a list of ten words or phrases that describe the feeling you would like your home to have.

Some examples from my own list include:

• Bright and sunny
• Eclectic and colourful
• Welcoming
• Relaxed

These are among the things I’d aim for in any new place and every time I’ve moved I’ve recreated them as thoroughly as possible.

Think of your own words or phrases that describe the feel you’d like, and intially don’t be too put off by your current reality – by which I mean, if you live in a dark two-room basement flat don’t be afraid of words like light and space.

Remember, if you don’t know what you’d like, you have no chance of creating it.

Check in with any people who share your home, but don’t invite all and sundry to offer their opinions – you don’t want to get distracted by multiple viewpoints here, you’re just outlining your personal goals.

Part Six

Your Style

After that, write a few sentences that describe the style you’d like for your home – it could be modernist or retro, Art Nouveau or Japanese, or whatever best describes your taste.

If you have several different styles in your home, do a brief sentence for each room, such as my own example:

‘My bedroom is Japanese in style with low furniture and minimal decoration. My front room is my take on 1930′s style with lots of light and plants…’

It may be that when you first moved in, or before you had children, or perhaps hit a bumpy patch in life, your home was bobbing along comfortably and things weren’t out-of-hand.

Take a few moments now to recall any times when your home was pleasing and uncluttered, and write a short paragraph or two that describes that useful memory.

An example taken from one of my clients, a single mum called Catherine, is as follows:

‘Before I had Jason I made sure every evening that the front room was in order and I’d straighten up, and wash-up, before bed. In the morning my bright white kitchen would be immaculate and the kettle would be filled, so I could get the coffee on!

My bedroom was My Space and it didn’t have toys everywhere, and I’d hang my work clothes up carefully because it cut down on the ironing.’

Your Life

Everyone needs their home to fulfill different purposes – mine needs space for seeing clients, space to work on my computer, and dog-friendly surfaces for my hound as well as the essentials like a place to store and cook food, bathe, sleep and so on.

The last bit of list making I’m going to ask you to do is to consider if you, and any others who live there, have any special purposes or demands for your home – does it need to be toddler-friendly, do you need space to work from home, pursue a hobby or craft, or perhaps exercise, meditate or pray daily?

All of these require some small considerations to be made – since we are going to be looking at strategies that will help you to live fully in your home next week, we need to bear these uses in mind during the planning stages so that we can proceed smoothly once we’ve got started.

The Nitty-Gritty

Okay, you’ve binned your guilt, assembled your tools, allies and vision, and you’re now ready to make a start on that clutter.

As mentioned, clutter comes in three kinds, and the first kind we are going to attack this week is the ‘The wrong things’ class.

Just to clarify this is the class of completely useless stuff, ‘junk,’ which you can part with immediately to create more space.

I would like you right now (or if you’re reading this outside your home, as soon as you’re inside) to commit to doing just ten minutes of bagging and binning anything that you do not want or need and getting it out of the house.

You can recycle it or you can put it in the rubbish bin but make sure that you dispose of it permanently.

After you’ve done that, I’d like you to make an appointment with yourself to do one solid hour of decluttering within the next 24 hours, at the very minimum.

Your can write this in your notebook, or you can fix the appointment to the fridge, or put it in your calender, but make sure it’s confirmed in writing and stick to it.

Don’t get bogged down in details and over-thinking – recycling and re-using are noble aims but right now if your home is in chaos you are not helping anyone if you refuse to take action until you can recycle everything.

Get your home running smoothly and the opportunities for environment-friendly living will be much greater.

Action!

Actions of the Week

1. Get started

Commit to completing all the steps above, assembling your tools, lining up your allies and writing out your vision for your home.

If guilt or perfectionism creep back into your thinking, acknowledge them then move past them – they will only get in the way and are a form of mental clutter.

Keep the Thought For The Week in the forefront of your mind and repeat it if you start feeling a bit low about the whole situation.

2. Mark the time

Make as many appointments for One Hour Sessions as possible this week. Plan ahead, using allies from your list to help you move the clutter out of your home, and begin the sessions by removing any stuff that you do not want, if necessary working around the ‘right thing, wrong place’ items you find for now.

Start with a corner near the door and put on some inspiring music while you work. If you don’t know where to start, just start anywhere and if there was a “correct” place it will soon become obvious, if not, why worry about it because at least you’re making progress.

Don’t overthink things, and don’t force yourself to go past that hour – we’re avoiding all-or-nothing thinking and if one days’ session turns into an eight-hour marathon you are unlikely to feel motivated to pick it up again the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that…

An organised home is a work in progress so keep your enthusiasm under control and don’t wipe yourself out going crazy.

3. Ten minute tidy

Begin to do just five to ten minutes of tidying up (dealing with ‘right thing, wrong place’ clutter) at night before you go to bed. This will make suprisingly big inroads in one week, and it will also allow you to wake up to more order each day.

Encourage everyone else in your home to take up the ten minute habit, if you don’t live alone. People who live together share equal responsibilities and ten minutes isn’t going to tire out even the most hard-pressed executive or shift worker.

4. Limit incoming items

Avoid bringing anything new into your home right now that you don’t strictly need. You won’t need to be on such a strict ‘diet’ forever, but the last thing you need is to take one step forwards and two steps back at this early point.

Limit shopping to essentials like food, preferably planned out in advance, and don’t expose yourself to temptation – give up window shopping and ask that the people who live with you restrict their intake as well.

Try not to add to any existing areas of clutter by raising your game a little with the daily chores, so that you’re not adding to the problem just by living your life. Begin to be aware of picking up after yourself as much as possible, and encourage others to do the same.

5. Be observant

As you work away this week doing your One Hour Sessions and quick tidies here and there, try to notice what one area, or kind of item, is causing you the most trouble.

Don’t make a big issue of it but note it down ready for later on in the course, when we’ll be looking at prioritising and fine-tuning your decluttering. Knowledge is power and knowing your weak spots will put you ahead of the game when it comes to your new clutter-free lifestyle.

Until next week, be gentle on yourself and tough on clutter, and I’ll see you then as you continue your journey to a beautiful home!

Part Two

Never-ending Story

The main reason that keeping an organised home is so darned hard for many of us is the fact that you’re never actually finished doing it. Unlike goals such as getting a promotion, winning a race or completing a presentation, there’s no point at which you can draw the line and say “there – job done.”

As Joan Rivers once famously said: “I hate housework. You make the beds, you wash the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again.”

This is why those of us who struggle with clutter are often at heart perfectionists with very high standards in other areas, but who find that the daily grind of never-ending tidying is not a chore that appeals or offers any real glow of satisfaction.

Mind The Gap

Let’s imagine this – you’ve completed this course, and your home is now perfectly spotless, organised and tidy. You pour yourself a glass of something special and kick off your shoes to celebrate your tidy home… and ten minutes later the dirty glass and shoes are not only cluttering your room but also magnetically attracting other items to themselves!

What we’re aiming for here is a change of thinking in which you begin to stop clutter at source.

You can do this by making sure that the gap between using an item and putting it where it needs to be afterwards shrinks.

And so something is either in use, or back where it should be – but it’s not hanging about turning into clutter.

In my imaginary picture of a celebration above, this means that as soon as you’ve had a glass (or three) of something nice, you pick up your shoes, pop them in the cupboard or wardrobe, and rinse out your glass.

In fact, the “putting away” becomes a holistic part of the process of doing anything in life, from reading a newspaper (read paper > recycle bin) to cooking dinner (cook dinner > put pans in sink > eat dinner > wash up).

Sounds too simple? Consider this: right now, the clutter in your home is comprised of items frozen in time, caught in the gap between use and storage or disposal.

Remember that last week I described clutter as being “the wrong things, too many things, or things in the wrong place?

By definition everything has a place in which it belongs, be it a bin or your wardrobe, the kitchen cupboard or toybox – whatever is cluttering your home needs to make one or two small journeys to its destination and it then ceases to be clutter and becomes a valuable object once more.

It’s the small but significant issue of when it actually makes those journeys that separate the cluttered home from the tidy one.

Part Three

Time Is Precious

So, decluttering is about time-consciousness as much as it is about brooms, bin-bags and coat hangers.

Bearing that in mind, I’d like you to take a moment with your notebook and estimate how much time in an average day you spend dealing with the consequences of your cluttered life.

Examples might include searching for things that have become mislaid or buried under mounds of stuff, or having to spend ten to fifteen minutes washing kitchen equipment before you can even begin to cook a new meal.

Please don’t succumb to any guilty feelings or negativity about yourself at this point – these feelings are counter-productive and they will sabotage your success by making the whole topic so painful that it’s easier to ignore it and go back to old ways.

I want you to be successful and to feel good about your home, and in order to make progress we need to do a quick audit on what the cost is in terms of time before we can move on and look at ways to use your time enjoying your home rather than struggling with it.

Remember, be gentle on yourself – you went off-track and now you’re working to get back on it, and stay on it – no need to feel bad about yourself because of it, no-one is perfect after all.

My point in asking you to assess the time you lose is this: ALL tidying up has to be done eventually, unless you plan to grow old and die surrounded by untouched mounds of clutter.

By tightening your timeframe and recognising clearly that cluttered living is not quicker or easier than being organised, you’ll begin to have the motivation and methods you need to create a harmonious orderly life.

To quote Shirley Conran, “I make no secret of the fact that I would rather lie on a sofa than sweep beneath it. But you have to be efficient if you’re going to be lazy.”

Part Four

Knowledge Is Power

When you began the decluttering process last week, I asked you to take note of what kinds of item and which areas you have the most problems with.

It makes good common sense to put these at the very top of your list of things to do, because once you start to see real progress you’ll be ten times more motivated to complete the rest of your decluttering process.

If you find that one or two things stand out as regular pitfalls, then have an extra push on these this week.

My client Catherine was equally torn between her chaotic bedroom, strewn with toys, clothes and crockery and her kitchen which was full of dirty dishes, pans, cutlery – you name it, it was unwashed and lying around getting in the way.

When she got home in the evenings she was pre-occupied with washing pans so she could get dinner on for herself and her hungry son, and so she’d chuck her work clothes onto the floor or a chair instead of taking time to hang them up.

Getting herself and her small son ready in the mornings was a major ordeal because she needed to wash out bowls again before she could prepare breakfast, and she was normally juggling tasks such as having to iron her work clothes at the same time.

Even before she left home she was exhausted from the struggle! And she knew she’d be coming home to more chaos at the end of the day.

I showed her how making a commitment to tackling those areas first – organising her bedroom, hanging up clothes, doing a few mammoth washing-up sessions – allowed her to start to tighten the space between use and storage, because she had a clear sink and drainer so washing up after meals didn’t need to be a major chore.

Because her bedroom was clear of clutter, she could easily hang up her work clothes and change into something more comfortable, and knowing that her clothes would be fresh and unrumpled the next day made getting ready for work simpler and less time-consuming, leaving her more time to enjoy a healthy breakfast.

Part Five

Virtuous Spiral

It’s a virtuous spiral – start to declutter, mind the gap between use and disposal of items, and you’ll have more time and less pressure which in turn will give you the freedom to continue manifesting your ideal home.

Last week I asked you to consider if you had any special needs for your home, such as space to work, exercise or meditate.

As you continue your decluttering process this week I’d like you to give special attention to that area, or to planning where you can dedicate to that purpose if you don’t already have a space set aside.

If you do have this area already but it’s fallen into disuse or is so cluttered that you can’t enjoy using it, make it the target of at least one ten-minute tidy per day.

This space represents you caring about and honouring yourself, and if it’s shared by other people in your home, making it a pleasant and hamonious place will illustrate to them the joys of living in an organised home.

Other People

Other people who share your home have a major part to play – while you’re fighting in the front lines against clutter and towards an organised home, you don’t want to discover that “the enemy within” is undoing all your good work.

While it can be very hard to pursuade other people to change their ways if they’re not motivated to do so, it is worth taking time to think how you can influence the people around you in a positive way.

Techniques that have worked for me and my clients tended to be the ones that involved positive reinforcement, so that for example children learn that a tidy bedroom results in some small treat – praise or perhaps an outing at the weekend.

Partners and older relatives require more subtle encouragement and it would be a good use of your time to plan a few positive ways to encourage them to play the game and help you, or at least not undo your efforts.

When one person in a household starts to change the way things are done, others may use this as a means to exercise any grudges or bad feelings, by deliberately sabotaging your work.

While it’s not within the remit of this course to show you how to deal with such negative behaviour I do recommend that you don’t let it affect your goals, but rather, use your own personal experience of that person to find a way to motivate them to support your decluttering.

Sometimes the old saying “if you want a job done properly, do it yourself” comes into play and it might at times be simpler to tidy up after someone else than insist they do it, get into conflicts, and allow them to use this against you to undermine your dreams.

Right now you need to concentrate more on building up a good momentum for yourself, by getting deeply into the groove of becoming more organised, and ”cutting off your nose to spite your face” by refusing to cope with anyone else’s mess won’t help you at all.

Use your common sense and knowledge of the people involved and concentrate on getting your home straight, because in my experience that grinds down resistance far more effectively than scenes, drama and martyrdom.

Part Six

This Week’s Target

Most homes have one key area – it’s often the kitchen or main living area – where decluttering will make the greatest impact because it greases the mechanism of your entire home.

Areas like kitchens have a constant flow in and out of shopping, waste, and things in transit to other areas, and they’re in use daily even if it’s just to boil a kettle or use a microwave.

Living rooms are shared and used by everyone in your home and when it comes to relaxing they’re the place where you tend to spend the most time.

Post, magazines and newspapers, kicked-off shoes – again, the high amount of traffic makes the main living area a prime place for clutter to accumulate.

Have a good hard look at how you live right now and ask which area or room you want to focus on this week, choosing the one that will make the biggest difference to the daily running of your life.

If you’re not sure how to begin, ask yourself the following:

• Which room do you most often find yourself hunting for lost items in?
• Which area do you spend the most time having to tidy before you can use it?

Once you’ve decided where to focus most of your energies this week, please make an appointment with yourself to do one hour of decluttering in that area within the next 24 hours.

Also start to really Mind The Gap in that area – when you’ve finished using something, deal with it immediately and without delay, because that way it doesn’t get stuck in time and become clutter.

Action!

Actions of the Week

1. Stay committed

Commit to the tasks above and answer all the questions, because you need to know your enemy before you can defeat it.

Having an organised life will pay off in so many other areas – family, work life, social life and self-esteem – that it is a very good use of time to think carefully about what works, what doesn’t and generally plan your strategies based on what you learned last week.

2. Ten minute mission

Begin to tackle “right thing, wrong place” clutter for ten minutes asap – when you have finished reading this course or the minute you get home.

Make any special areas in your home the subject of further ten minute tidies because this will give both you and anyone you live with motivation to keep up the good work, and it is a way of honouring yourself.

3. Watch out for sabotage

Choose the most effective strategy if someone else is sabotaging your work – this may be finding the right way to motivate them, or it may be just picking up after them.

No-one wants to be the unpaid servant of another person but picture this – if your house was running smoothly and efficiently, even picking up after someone else would probably take less time and be less problematic than going back to coping with clutter.

You’re probably doing it anyway but when you were cluttering yourself you didn’t notice so much, and remember this: eventually you will have to tidy up, so don’t let stubborness sabotage your dream.

The same goes for guilt and perfectionism – stop them in their tracks and concentrate your energies on productive thoughts that will move you forwards.

4. Keep on keeping on

Commit to that one hour decluttering session within the next 24 hours, and make appointments you can keep for as many as possible this coming week.

If you get stuck on where to start, look at the notes you made last week telling you which kind of clutter was causing the greatest problem and make that the focus of a few one-hour sessions.

Don’t burn yourself out but don’t use any improvements you might have seen – or not seen – as an excuse to ease up because you are aiming for the ideal home you described for yourself in Week 1.

Keep up the ten-minute pre-bed tidy, and make sure that you’re moving forwards every day by a small but noticeable amount.

5. Give yourself a treat!

You have now started the second week of your journey to an organised home and you are doubtless realising the scale of creating and maintaining order in your life.

It isn’t easy for some of us to live in an organised manner and for you to have actually got this far in addressing your clutter, investing in this course and making it to week two is pretty incredible, so give yourself a pat on the back and treat yourself in some small way this week, because you do deserve it!

I’ll see you next week, when we’ll be looking at how to deal with the things we hoard or collect, and how to turn them from clutter to allies.

Part Two

Make Do And Mend

A lot of us have been affected by the rationing and “make do and mend” philosophy that served us so well during WW2, whether we experienced it first hand or were trained to think that way by our parents.

A modern equivalent is the idea of re-using things for ecological reasons, and on a personal level if your life is hectic and you are a little disorganised, having a collection of goods can buffer you against the effects of poor organisation, such as running out of cosmetics or groceries.

There are certainly some very compelling arguments in favour of keeping a well-stocked store cupboard, especially if you live alone or have people depending on you, and repairing clothing and other items rather than replacing them can make sense for your finances as well as the planet.

While it’s fine to use reasonable caution and make sure that you have the things you are likely to need stored away, if these items are stored incorrectly and to excess they really are just as much adding to your clutter as the junk you’ve been getting rid of so far.

I have observed that broadly speaking, there are two types of hoarded or collected goods:

• Things that will be put to use or consumed one day, such as supplies of groceries, household goods, craft and hobby gear, and:
• Things that exist purely in their own right such as collections of ornaments, books and entertainment media, and items with sentimental value.

I’m going to label the first category of goods “Useful stuff” and the second, “Cherished stuff.”

You can transform the first category of useful goods from annoying clutter to handy allies by asking yourself the following questions:

1. How can I store this effectively?

Effective storage is basically any format that allows you to find the items you want easily and keeps them in good condition so they don’t decay.

Food will need to be stored in a way that allows you to rotate what’s coming in new, with what is stored away, otherwise your stocks may go out of date without you noticing.

Hobby or craft goods need to be stored so that they’re not underfoot or getting in the way, but so you can easily track down what you’re looking for.

Cheap plastic toolboxes and tupperware containers are perfect for this, and large amounts of fabric can be stored in clear plastic boxes so you can easily view their contents.

A hobby you’ve fallen out of love with isn’t serving any use and anything related to it can safely go – you will have more time, space and freedom to enjoy a new rewarding pursuit if you clear out interests you have outgrown.

Finally, cosmetics such as shampoo and bubble bath really don’t need to be split between several containers – resolve to not open a new bottle until the old one is empty and you’ll cut down on space, and get in the habit of keeping a full spare rather than several bottles or containers with tiny amounts left in them – it’s far more efficient and serves the same purpose.

If you hoard anything else which you know you’ll use in the near future, take a moment after reading these examples to see how effective storage will increase the likelihood of your items being used in good time, and of them being in usable condition when you do need them.

It would make good sense to start devoting some of your free time to planning this, and allocate some of this week’s hour-long sessions to implementing effective storage for your useful things.

Do try to prune items as you are optimising their storage, as well – and this brings us on to Question 2:

2. How can I minimise this?

Items in storage waiting to be used do best when they’re not getting in the way.

If you buy household goods, groceries and cosmetics in bulk, that’s fine, but do ask yourself whether the few pennies saved are worth having a mountain of gear making your home look like a cash-and-carry warehouse and causing you heartache on a daily basis.

Part Three

Trash Or Treasure?

You can minimise miscellaneous items such as bits of electrical equipment by being very realistic about how likely they are to be used.

Anything that has sat unused for more than three months is INCREDIBLY unlikely to suddenly find a role, and it’s this kind of stuff which is often hardest to store, so take a zero tolerance attitude towards it.

Kitchen electricals like breadmakers and juicers often fall into disuse, and are best disposed of because they eat up space. Watch out for guilt creeping in, and if it does, soothe your conscience by vowing not to let any more appliances into your home unless they meet a recognised, pre-existing need.

Where someone else in your house is the biggest collector of miscelleny, and won’t see reason about disposing of it, take an “out of sight, out of mind” approach and get it stowed away.

It’ll be much easier to convince the other person to part with it when you can prove the item has been stowed away for months instead of sitting around the house masquerading as something that’s just about to leap into action and save the day.

Finally, toys that are still played with can be minimised by adopting a strict “one in, one out” policy whereby every new toy acquired means that an old one has to go to a charity shop, and for unloved toys that are broken, damaged or outgrown, storing them out of sight for a few weeks usually ensures they’ll be forgotten about and can be disposed of quietly later on.

Cherished Things

The second class of items that tend to get hoarded are non-consumable items like collections of a particular object, entertainment such as books and media, and things with sentimental value like souvenirs, photos, inherited bric-a-brac and treasured old toys – your own, or your children’s.

Again, suitable storage, free from damp, mould, moths and dust is needed, and many collections look best grouped together on a shelf or in a glass-fronted cabinet.

Souvenirs and memorabilia can often be photographed and the photos kept instead of the originals, in an attractive “Memory Box” – shops such as Paperchase sell these or you could make your own, perhaps re-using another precious item to store your photos along with tickets, postcards, certificates, menus from special occasions, and suchlike.

If you’ve inherited something you treasure, then it’s a valuable addition to your home and needs to be displayed or stored carefully, but never be afraid to dispose of something you don’t like – again, a photo can be taken if needed, but then pass it on via charity shops, e-bay or by giving it to someone who will enjoy it.

If you find that you no longer enjoy a collection of your own, then it has ceased to serve its purpose and deserves to be rehomed with someone who will get fresh enjoyment from it.

My friend Stella got heartily tired of her collection of puppets, and put the whole lot up as a raffle prize for her children’s school, raising some much-needed money for a new computer and freeing up enormous amounts of space in her bedroom.

She’s since begun to collect china pigs and is excited by the prospect of a forthcoming trip to an auction where someone else’s collection is awaiting a new home.

Part Four

Paper Cuts

If you have stacks of papers, catalogues or magazines waiting to be pruned for articles to go in your scrapbook, let’s make this week do-or-die and devote some evenings to sifting through them with scissors, glue and your scrapbook handy.

Also, remember that the net provides most of the information you’ll need on most subjects permanently, and in a far more easily searchable, up-to-date and fluid form, so wherever possible consign hard-copy to the recycle bin every time.

Be realistic about how often you are likely to want to access an item, and let this help you to prioritise what gets searched through and what just goes.

If you think some of your items, such as old books, records, or magazines, may be worth money set a deadline within the next week to take action on selling them, or accept that you’re unlikely to ever translate them into hard cash – and let them go.

Books are of course best stored in dedicated bookshelves and bookcases, and stores like Ikea and Argos make excellent affordable bookcases in a range of sizes.

Do prune your collection regularly and get rid of anything that won’t bear re-reading – remember, libraries can source pretty much any book for you, look upon them as your personal annexe and clear out as many unloved titles as possible.

Along these lines, storage for items like CDs, DVDs and so on is very reasonably priced so no matter how big your collection of media there is no reason for it to become clutter – stack it up safely if you don’t have enough shelving and again, as you are doing this, prune out anything you are tired of so you have more space for the good stuff.

Back In Style?

A note on clothing – as our Image Coach, Emma Ford, writes in her brilliant course Be Gorgeous, even though fashion often looks to previous seasons for inspiration, clothes are rarely exactly the same and even when the current trend references previous styles, the originals can end up just looking old, and odd.

If you have an item you love, which has become unwearable through age but you’re finding it hard to part with an old friend, take a few photos of it for old time’s sake, then let it go with love.

Resolve to only keep items that are so high quality they are true classics, and for the rest hit e-bay or your local clothing bank or charity shop and get rid of them.

After all, the fear of having to shell out again to replace an item that’s come back into style has to be weighed up against the reality of you wanting to wear old clothing in a year, five years or ten year’s time, and the hassle of storing it until then.

Part Five

Be Kind To Yourself

If you’re not sure you can bear to part with something right now, be as gentle on yourself as you would a child – carefully pack the item away out of sight and if you don’t find yourself missing it within 3 months, it’s probably safe to let it go.

As I’ve mentioned, I am no fan of the extreme clearout mentality often depicted on TV so I would urge you to be considerate of yourself and balance the very real need to clear out clutter with your own emotional attachment to your possessions.

This is your home and your rules are the only rules when it comes to what you need to keep, and what you can safely throw away.

Ella’s Story

My client Ella, 62, had possibly the world’s largest collection of part-used and nearly empty face cream containers.

Tubes, pots, jars, you name it, she was holding onto dozens of them, all with just a little bit left, and furthermore she tore out and kept every free sample of product that arrived in one of her dozen or so monthly magazines.

Ella had come into money quite late in life, and relished being able to take care of herself in style for the first time – but her memories of harder times prompted her to want to ensure she wasn’t about to run out of her newfound luxuries.

I talked with Ella, and we agreed that while it’s reasonable not to want to run out of a product you rely upon, rather than keeping the dregs she would be well advised to plan ahead and make sure she always has one new pot of each product in store.

We also agreed that she would sift through her odds and ends and bin all the ones which had begun to go off, because without exception opened products last less well than ones which are still sealed and unused.

Ella had already found a skincare routine that worked for her, so she agreed that one test of a free sample was enough, and that there was no point in keeping every sachet even when she knew they didn’t suit her skin.

She did a bit of shopping, then used up her remaining stores in just over a week, secure in the knowledge she now had unopened fresh pots and tubes of all her favourites stored away.

This worked for her, as she was then able to practice a “one in, one out” policy whereby she would completely finish her current container and start on the one in store, replacing it the day it was opened.

Ella felt happy that she was not about to run out, her dressing table had clear space on it for the first time in years, and she was no longer relying on products that had passed their prime as her fallback position.

Better still, after really looking at the reasons behind her hoarding for the first time, she was able to acknowledge that she felt a little uncertain about her newfound prosperity and made arrangements with her financial advisors that left her feeling more in control and secure about her future income.

John’s Story

John at 35 was still living very much a student lifestyle, supporting himself through a variety of bar jobs and casual labouring positions while he dabbled in art and photography. This low-pressure lifestyle suited him to a tee, yet after the breakup of his last relationship he was finding it increasingly hard to find the confidence to meet women.

When I visited his studio flat in Camden, I could see what was worrying him – it was a repository for every “interesting” piece of scrap, junk and flotsam he had found in years of walking home from work in the wee small hours.

The main space-eaters were a brand-new single mattress that he planned to use when friends came round (something that in fact never happened, not least because there was no room for it to be laid on the floor) and a large, beautiful Art Deco-inspired bureau.

Hunks of coloured acrylic awaiting the moment they would be deployed in an art project, fabrics and fibres in a rainbow of colours, bits of metal and wood in unusual shapes – his flat was an Aladdin’s cave of creative possibilities.

The only problem was, with zero floor left bare, and no worksurfaces or tabletops free, he had no space left to express himself creatively any more – there was barely room to breathe!

Worse still, John felt that he was isolating himself by having a home so full of stuff that there was no room to entertain his mates.

We discussed John’s vision for his ideal flat and he drew up an image of a minimalist dwelling, inspired by a photo of a New York artist’s loft he’d seen.

John made the brave decision to let go of the stuff that was actually blocking his creativity and he sold the bureau to a local second-hand shop, raising enough to pay for professional rubbish hauliers to clear out the metal and other non-household items.

He asked around and successfully exchanged the mattress for a stylish futon bed which took up less than half the space, and working from the sketches he’d produced of his ideal home, he created a really lovely, inspiring space for himself within two weeks of our first meeting.

John’s main fear had been that disposing of something which might come in handy for his art meant he was not taking that side of his life seriously.

Working with me and simply seeing the tangible, physical benefits of freeing up his space showed him that he would actually be feeding his creativity by having the stylish flat his inner artist was longing for.

Last I heard, John was dating and had established his home as the HQ for his entire social circle, and had meanwhile pared down his flat even more, loving the blank canvas effect of a minimalist home.

Part Six

What Is It For You?

Most of us tend to have something we collect in slightly larger amounts than we need – for me, it’s handbags, for my mum it’s books and for my late grandfather, a fully stocked larder was essential for peace of mind.

By looking at our collections, we can see that they speak volumes about our hopes and fears, and once we understand the reason behind our hoarding it’s often possible to meet that need in a more effective way.

Even where we have made a clear-headed decision to hold on to a large amount of stuff, to prevent it becoming clutter you need effective storage and a policy to ensure it stays within certain boundaries.

If, like John, you believe that you will at some point use an item that’s been cluttering up your house for ages, do carefully consider the hidden (and ongoing) cost to you right now in terms of space and peace of mind.

Finally, if you are a little baffled at the idea of consciously collecting anything, yet still find you have a home filling up with junk and excess items despite doing hours of decluttering, and shortening the gap between usage and disposal, the same questions can be applied to your situation.

Very often we become unconscious “collectors” of utter junk because we fear the grinding tedium of getting into any kind of housework routine.

This Week’s Target

In week 1’s module I asked you to imagine your perfect home, a place designed on your own terms that represents the domestic paradise we all deserve.

If you found that items you collect were featured in that vision, then this is the week you can begin to lay the groundwork for that by making sure you only keep the very best and most useful or beautiful examples of your collection.

Remember William Morris’s guidelines at the top of this week’s module, and make sure that you consign anything useless or not in its prime to the bin.

If your vision of an ideal home is extremely sleek and streamlined, and you have vowed to put an end to all hoarding and collecting, it would be a valuable use of your time to look at the fear that originally prompted you to hoard or collect these items, because once recognised, it can’t lurk away in the back of your consciousness ready to rise up in future and begin to sabotage your dream home.

If you’re happy with the collections you have, and I for one have no plans to get rid of my handbag collection, think carefully about optimising storage and display.

One technique that can work well for any objects you find beautiful is to rotate the items you have on display – this means that you won’t have a chance to get bored with your precious things and you will be able to enjoy them with fresh eyes as they’re not constantly on show.

Action!

Actions of the Week

1. Manage your property

Make this the week your collected or hoarded items are stored or displayed correctly, and make a firm commitment to be rid of anything that doesn’t add beauty or usefulness to your life.

Spend some time thinking and planning how to make any items you collect serve you instead of causing you unhappiness. If you’re still not sure where to start, ask yourself what your collection represents to you, what hopes and fears does it address, then consider how you can meet these needs without generating clutter.

2. Flog it!

Make a solid plan within the next 48 hours to sell anything you want to be rid of which you think has any monetary value – ask anyone you know who might be interested in taking it off your hands, and get it out there in Loot, local paper classifieds, or on e-bay.

If you know for sure the item has value and you also know that selling it yourself will delay your path to a clutter-free home, pass it on for resale even if it means you pay a commission – better to have 50% of some money than 100% of none and allowing your best efforts to be stalled by perfectionism.

And set a strict deadline past which, if the item’s not sold, you will consider it junk and dispose of it accordingly.

3. Scrapbook session

It’s do-or-die week for cuttings and clippings – ask yourself first if the information you need won’t be accessible elsewhere, such as the internet or a public library.

Remember, effective people in all walks of life delegate and this is a great opportunity for you to delegate storage of information.

Again, set a deadline by which any publications are pruned, clipped and then disposed of – while I don’t advise long sessions of hard decluttering, feel free to spend a quiet evening or two sifting artciels etc that you really feel you want to keep. It’s a pleasant relaxing task – just don’t get sidetracked into reading them!

If you still wish to collect complete back issues of any printed matter for your own enjoyment, prioritise planning where to store them and how you’re going to keep the collection from growing out of control.

4. Goodbye junk

If you still have any residues of outright junk left to clear, make solid plans for getting that done by the end of this week. Look carefully at your schedule and prioritise clearing out the remaining rubbish.

Don’t burn yourself out, but instead aim for slow steady progress, and if you are torn between needing help, yet not wanting anyone to see the state of your home, think carefully about clearing the very worst of the worst so you can call in help without worrying that they’ll see something ghastly.

Professional declutterers are likely to have seen anything you can throw at them, and if you can make this the week you deal with anything unmentionable that’s lurking you may be able to call in help from friends, neighbours or family to get the rest cleared.

If, for whatever reasons, you find yourself unable to enlist any help from someone else and you still find yourself with large amounts of clutter, hang on in there.

Just keep on going steadily and above all, keep your vision of your perfect home in mind and don’t fall prey to feelings of guilt or hopelessness.

Re-read modules 1 and 2 whenever you need a booster and remember that you can succeed so long as you move forwards a little bit every day.

5. Stop and think

Set aside time to truly appreciate the major changes you are making in your life. Remember, this isn’t about one big session of decluttering then your home will stay perfect forever.

You will need to maintain small changes to keep your home the way you want it, but living clutter-free is far simpler and more enjoyable than regular throwdowns with the clutter monster.

Keep up the ten minute pre-bed tidies, one-hour sessions where needed, and schedule in time to address the questions and actions required in this week’s module.

Take note of any areas that you’re finding hard and devote the time you would previously have spent worrying about the state of your home to finding solutions that work for you.

Once you’ve got the worst of the clutter out of the way, you will be able to set up the systems that will make you into one of those enviable people for whom unexpected visitors are always welcome, domestic life runs smoothly, and whose home is a sanctuary rather than a source of misery and guilt.

That’s all for this week, wishing you all the very best and I look forward to seeing you next week when we’re going to move on to the next stage – replacing chaos with order.

Part Two

Post-Haste

For example, if you find that post is the main problem, possible solutions include:

• Using a letter tray or inbox into which all paperwork goes the minute it enters your home
• Setting aside a time of day to open letters, perhaps after breakfast or lunch, or when you return home at night
• Having a bin handy right beside where you read your mail into which envelopes, junk mail and items not needing any further action can go, on their way to the recycle bin

Keep a file or folder close by as well so that important papers which need to be kept can be filed away in their correct home with minimum effort, instead of getting lost, having coffee spilled on them, or falling prey to children’s doodles or pet’s chewing.

Don’t allow any exceptions to this rule – don’t take post through to the bedroom or kitchen just because it’s the weekend, or stick it into your bag or briefcase on the way out, ready to fall out when you return home and become clutter.

Coach anyone who lives with you to at least put post into the letter tray or inbox, and if someone else deals with the paperwork in your home, set up a system that suits them and is centred round their needs.

If miscellaneous paperwork accumulates around your desk, again having an inbox, folder or drawer into which it can all go for daily or weekly sorting will contain the problem.

I personally stick all paperwork into a folder after scanning the post for anything needing urgent action, and every Tuesday go through it filing, binning and shredding until the folder is empty.

Because I know that I have a day set aside for this, I can relax the rest of the week knowing the issue is in hand.

Part Three

Crockery Crazy

Plates and mugs can tend to accumulate in the main living space, and perhaps you share your home with other people who don’t understand that crocks won’t grow little legs and find their own way back to the kitchen?

Effective solutions for this include:

• Acquiring a coffee table onto which all items have to be placed after use, which will at least corral them and stop the problem from spreading all over the room. Keep the table clear of any non-essentials so there’s no reason not to use it – treat it like a departure lounge rather than a space to display books and decorative items
• Pick up a large tray, or an empty washing up bowl, and use it as needed to take everything through to the kitchen in as few trips as possible – consider keeping it under the coffee table and encouraging other people to use it as well
• Making sure that you never leave the main living area with empty hands – if each trip you make out removes two or three items you are going to find it much easier to stay on top of things.

If you find that the kitchen is the biggest clutter magnet, and culprits include empty food containers and clothing, systems you can put in place to good effect include:

• Having a clothing rail or some wall hooks outside the kitchen area to place coats and outerwear on before entering the kitchen
• Getting into the habit of crushing containers down where it’s safe to do so, so that they take up less space in your bin – this means it will fill up more slowly and is also envirnmentally sound
• Storing recycling bins under the work-surface where you do most of the food preparation, so that as soon as a container is emptied it goes straight to its correct destination. Most of the containers provided by local authorities in the UK have lids, and you’ll need something like this to prevent any odours from leaking out
• Investing in a larger rubbish bin, and making sure that you empty it regularly – simple but effective!

Newspapers tend to get everywhere so placing a bin or even a small box beside the seating areas that are used to peruse that day’s paper makes it a lot simpler for readers to do the right thing after they’ve finished.

If you find that toys are spreading all over the place, a simple but effective trick is to make the last 10 – 15 minutes before children’s bedtimes into Toy’s Bedtime.

Depending on the age of the child involved, this can be a fun game in its own right, or for older children a great way to show some grown-up common sense and perhaps earn a reward at the end of the week.

A nice toybox makes this all the more fun for smaller children, and if you’re on a budget, why not employ tiny hands to create and decorate a Toy’s House out of a large cardboard box?

Bedrooms can become cluttered with clothing and I have always found that having a chair in the bedroom is an invitation for Mount Ragpile to begin forming. Sidestep this by making sure your wardrobes and drawers are easy to access and have plenty of space free to put clothing away.

Do be vigilant and if you spot a surface or piece of furniture which always attracts clutter, employ a bit of ingenuity (or simply remove it) because using it as a depository for stuff has become a habit that will be hard to break.

Remove the temptation and again, you’re making it easier to do the right thing than the wrong one.

Part Four

Small Acts, Big Consequences

The reason I have spelled out these fairly simple techniques is to illustrate that it is the smallest of acts, when adopted as everyday habits, that will make the biggest impact on your home.

If you’ve ever dieted you’ll be familiar with the way a tiny change, like cutting out a daily bar of chocolate, can have huge effects over time, and likewise if you understand the financial markets you’ll grasp how a few percentage rise in interest rates can have a knock-on effect in every area of life.

Changing from being a person who lives habitually in disorder and clutter is as simple as acquiring a few new habits and applying just a tiny bit of ingenuity in stopping clutter in its tracks.

The main reasons people don’t deploy these habits in the first place is that they seem too insignificant to make a real difference, and perhaps it feels just a tiny bit boring to have to think about the final destination of every single object you use during the day.

Never Too Late

Truly tidy, organised people tend to be have formed habits at a young age that ensure they always put things in the right place, and it’s never too late for you to start forming these habits yourself.

If you have a friend or relative who has a neat and well-ordered home, watch how he or she takes small steps constantly to maintain order and prevent items from cluttering the place up.

It’s not so much that tidy people have a big internal dialogue every time they go to put something back, it’s more likely to be the case that they do it automatically.

Sandra Felton, the US “Organizer Lady” and founder of Messies Anonymous (MA), talks in her MA e-mail programme about “robotics” – doing household chores in the manner of an unthinking robot.

She explains that relating emotionally to a chore creates the kind of resistance and resentment that all contribute to a disorganised home.

She advises, “Do the work without considering whether you like to do it, whether it is emotionally satisfying, or whether it is a good use of your valuable time.”

While this might sound worryingly like an extract from the Stepford Wives, having a big debate with yourself every time you go to pick up a used coffee mug isn’t exactly the best use of your energies.

If you’re in the habit of thinking about completing a chore, looking at it, feeling vague resentment (or not so vague resistance) and having mental arguments with yourself or falling prey to procrastination, then try this technique:

• Switch off your critical faculties
• Disengage emotionally and…
• Just do it!

As a teenager, I used to find my mum’s habit of whisking away my cup or plate as soon as it was empty infuriating – it was the outcome of that kind of devil-may-care attitude that led to me nearly losing my home ten years later, when my landlord threatened me with eviction if I didn’t tackle the clutter in my flat!

Part Five

Tina’s Story

My friend Tina, 22, was the only female in a house shared with three other students.

The three boys genuinely never saw any reason to “waste” time picking up after themselves in the shared living areas, the kitchen filled up with empty tins and cartons because throwing them outside in the dustbin was too much trouble, and their own rooms were the stuff of nightmares.

The mess was driving Tina crazy, but as the only female she resented falling back into the traditional role of domestic skivvy, so she alternated between yelling about the mess and resentfully clearing it up, all the time feeling like she could hear Emily Pankhurst spinning in her grave.

She was contemplating breaking her lease and moving out without giving notice when she spoke with me.

I suggested she went to every effort to introduce bins beside each seating area and kitchen work-surface, and she placed two large trays on top of the coffee table making the evening clear-up of crocks and takeaway wrappers far simpler.

She cleared a cupboard of stale food and empty wrappers and instead of doing the week’s washing up when there was no spare work-surface left, she shoved it all into two washing up bowls and into the cupboard out of sight (and smell).

Tina was the only person doing any housework at all at this point, so she was already making it simpler for herself and laying the groundwork for the next stage.

She ran these systems for a few weeks, making adjustments where needed to increase their effectiveness, and after the benefits of a slightly tidier house had begun to be noticed, and the lack of rows had improved relations, Tina called a house meeting.

She drew up a rota for who would be responsible for emptying the bins, taking the trays through at night and also emptying the washing-up stash, and explained that she had gone out of her way trying to make it easy to keep the shared areas tidy.

She also calmly explained that as a student herself she did not have hours to devote each day to being the unpaid servant of three capable adults, and that she would move out at the first opportunity if the situation didn’t improve.

Because she had made it easier already for her fellow sharers to do the right things and improve the level of order in the house, the boys were far more willing to co-operate, and her use of fixed rotas and shortcuts like the trays appealed to the boy’s desire for an easy life.

Looking for a new sharer to replace Tina would be more trouble than simply going along with her carefully laid plans, and because she had delivered her speech calmly and with forethought, it was obvious that she was serious and not just throwing a tantrum.

Making it easier to be tidy than untidy and appreciating that the other students needed housework broken down into easy chunks meant Tina kept her sanity intact and no longer felt like she was a traitor to the cause of female liberation.

She stayed on until her lease ended, and her experience of planning ahead for domestic chores and introducing shortcuts and systems has proved very useful in her new house-share, where she was able to set fair and simple ground rules from the first day.

Too Hot To Handle

There’s a saying that if a frog hops into hot water, it will hop right back out, yet if the water is heated slowly with the frog in it, it will cook without realising what’s happening.

While that’s not a very nice image, it does describe the way that we don’t always notice small changes that can then overwhelm us.

I don’t want you to have to repeat the major declutter you’ve done in the first three weeks ever again, because life is just too short and an organised home is a pleasure we all deserve.

This week’s target therefore is to make the first few steps towards organised living and to find new ways of thinking and feeling about keeping a tidy home.

Action!

Actions of the Week

1. Identify your target!

Right now, or when you get home, identify the single biggest clutter problem you had to clear out in weeks 1 – 3, and spend a few minutes planning the systems you can put in place to prevent it from becoming a problem in future.

These “systems” can be as simple as moving a bin so it’s within reach, putting up some coat hooks, or getting a letter rack or inbox, but make sure they are based on your actual experiences during the big clearout, and having pinpointed the worst source of clutter in the worst area, move on down the list until every kind of item that becomes clutter has its own system in place

The goal is to make it easier to be tidy than untidy, and after the hard physical work of the last 3 weeks, this week it’s time to deploy your wits to outsmart the clutter monster.

2. Pay close attention

Once you’ve created a few of these systems, observe carefully how well they work for you and anyone who lives with you. Ask for feedback if other people are using them and where possible adapt your systems to please everyone, so that other people have an investment in the new regime.

Remember we are in this for the long-haul, and making a few adjustments now and maybe humouring other people’s foibles is a price worth paying for an organised life and a beautiful home.

3. Get inspired

Take some time out to leaf through the notes you made in week 1 about your ideal home. Update any descriptions if you’ve had better ideas, or spotted some potential you didn’t notice before.

Treat yourself to one or two interior design magazines, or a book about design, and when you get a moment spare, surf the web for ideas and inspiration. Share this with anyone you live with who can make a positive contribution, and make sure that all voices are heard.

The goal behind this is twofold – I want you to stay in touch with your vision, and I want you to begin to engage emotionally with the beautiful ordered home you are creating.

Next time you start having negative thoughts or feelings about completing a small chore, either switch off completely using Sandra Felton’s robotics technique, or better yet try to replace the negative thoughts with the positive, productive knowledge that you are creating the lovely home of your dreams.

4. Live in the present

Make the most of what you have. Even if your current home is temporary or far from perfect in size or location, reflect on the fact that you are putting in a solid foundation of good habits for when you do get your ideal place.

I haven’t drawn any firm conclusions on how much we can really manifest things in our lives, but I do know that time spent preparing for good things is never time wasted.

You’ll feel awfully silly if you get your dream home and within a year it resembles the municipal dump – so be prepared for greatness, and meanwhile continue to make the most of your dwelling by keeping up the ten-minute pre-bed tidies, minding the gap between use and disposal, and looking out for ways to make it easier to be tidy.

If you’re waiting to acquire some new shelving, storage or new furniture don’t let that be a reason to let things slide – there’s no reason to lapse back into perfectionist all-or-nothing thinking just when you’re ahead of the game.

And of course, if you already live in your dream home it might be a good idea to reflect on what a blessing it is and what a terrible shame it would be to ever let it get cluttered again.

Aim to find the beliefs or attitudes that promote tidiness and which motivate you to create productive new habits, and when you spot any beliefs or thoughts that support untidiness stamp them out without hesitation.

I don’t want you to have wasted the last three weeks of your time by slipping back into, and justifying or excusing, old patterns of cluttered living.

5. Make an “HQ”

Buy a folder or allocate a drawer or box to your new organised home and keep any inspiring cuttings, printouts and your notepad in there – you’ll be needing this space next week when it will become your control centre for the next stage of organising your home.

In week 1, I advised against acquiring any more possessions than you needed but with the big clearout now complete, you can safely treat yourself to a few things that will make you feel good about your new organised lifestyle and provide a kind of HQ for all your organisational materials

I look forward to seeing you next week!

Part Two

Our Homes, Ourselves

Our homes are, in a way, like our bodies – they give a shell and protection to our inner self, and second to our own flesh they are the most intimate aspect of ourselves.

How we present our homes speaks volumes to other people about the way we perceive ourselves – this is why it is often such an unpleasant feeling to have a cluttered home and unexpected visitors!

Likewise, living with clutter is one of the most morale and self-esteem destroying things out – the constant and daily reminders that your life in unmanageable and the time wasted searching for things that are buried or lost has an enormously destructive cumulative effect.

Cluttered Life

Now that you are safely out of the worst of it, I’d like you to briefly cast your mind back to before you began this course and answer the following questions:

• How did your cluttered home make you feel about yourself?
• What did the state of your home tell you about your ability to create good things in your life?
• What did your home tell other people about your self-esteem?

Now that you are freed from the clutches of clutter, it’s important to take a moment to remember why it’s so important to not fall back day by day into the same trap.

It’s also important to recognise the emotional and psychological impact the level of order or chaos in your home has on your self-esteem, and it’s safe to do it now the main part of the work is completed, so you are not going to get bogged down in guilt, perfectionism and avoidance.

Do I need to tell you this isn’t an exercise in beating yourself up? – I hope not, the aim of those questions was to allow you one last recognition of the reasons you committed to this course and to creating an organised home.

You very nearly have the home of your dreams, so let’s tip those questions on their head and get to the fun part!

Organised Life

Imagine your ideal home. Take out your mood board, any images in magazines or books you find inspiring, and saturate your mind with the feeling of your new home.

When you have strong sense of your ideal home, answer the following questions in your notebook:

• How will I feel about myself when I can move effortlessly through my organised, ideal home?
• What does the state of my gorgeous home tell me about my ability to create more good things in my life?
• What does my fragrant, tidy, beautiful home tell other people about my levels of self-respect?

Take a moment to really feel the satisfaction that comes from a home that reflects everything that’s best about you.

Part Three

Plan Ahead

If your shopping list for your home includes big-ticket items you are going to have to save or budget for, start planning that right now and also apply a little ingenuity and consider if there’s a low-cost way to achieve the same look, permanently or just until you have the exact item you want.

I sourced some attractive wooden fruit crates, sawed them down to the right depth and painted them, and right now for under ten pounds I have a complete storage and display system for my beloved handbags until the day I can justify paying a carpenter to custom-make me some display shelves.

Using your mood board and the descriptions of your ideal home, be creative, adventurous and ring the changes until your home begins to evoke the pleasant feelings you described above.

The Intangibles

There’s more to having a great lifestyle than cushion covers and tie backs.

This week, take a look at other areas of your life where things are still feeling a little cluttered and resolve to start taking action there as well.

If you have got behind with your paperwork, repairs, laundry, or some other area, set a date in your diary this week to begin to catch up with it all and consider if there are any other aspects of domestic life you can streamline.

Life should not be a slog and now that you’ve seen the major changes you are capable of making in your home, you can deploy the levels of self-belief and focused attention your have cultivated on any other areas of your life that need a little tidy-up.

Menu Planning

One technique that works well for many of my clients and in my own life is to plan menus for the week’s meals so that food doesn’t get wasted and there’s no need to run to the shops every single day.

The quickest way to get started planning menus is to note down for a week or so what gets eaten in your home, and then base future shopping lists around that, because it will be an accurate reflection of the kinds of things you’ll need in that week.

If you’d like to make any long term changes to the diets of the people in your house, once you have an overview of the kinds of foods consumed over a week, you’ll be able to plan where to make the most effective small changes.

I keep a small notebook on a clip in my kitchen and note in it things that don’t need replacing every week, such as tea, coffee and spices as soon as my supplies start getting low.

Then I add in the fresh items from that week’s menu plan, and I’m good to go and can get almost everything in one single weekly shop.

Plastic Peril

Because I found that plastic carrier bags were a major source of clutter for me in the past, I now use fabric shopper bags for every shopping trip.

I make sure to take out enough of those for the week’s shop and I’m not only stopping one kind of clutter from even coming near my home, I also know that I’m doing my bit to cut back on the amount of harmful plastic waste created.

You can create a similar “shopping centre” in your own home by choosing a drawer or perhaps a couple of hooks and storing shopper bags, your shopping list for that week based on your menu plan, and anything else you need like coupons, reward cards and trolley tokens in one space.

Internet shopping is a great way to buy groceries in bulk where that’s a necessity, and again having a list of the things that really get used in a week or a month stops food from being wasted.

If you’re buying in bulk, don’t forget to optimise storage by looking at your list before you send the order through and making sure there are suitable places for it to be tucked away.

Part Four

Judith’s Story

My client Judith was finding herself coming home from work every night totally exhausted and spending a fortune on ready meals because she never felt she had anything stored at home that she could quickly prepare.

A busy charity worker on a fairly tight budget, Judith didn’t need the hole overpriced ready meals were burning in her weekly finances, and she was very aware that she felt healthier when she increased the amount of fresh produce she ate.

But somehow, each evening the promise of hot food in fifteen minutes won out over her best intentions.

I showed her how to make a note of her favourite dishes and then come up with recipes for them based on low-cost fresh produce that could be made in large amounts at weekends, then frozen ready to be reheated.

As she was using quality ingredients she didn’t need to add the fillers, binding agents, modified starches and flavourings common to most ready meals and she felt that the time spent cooking was put to good use as she was creating more than just one day’s meal.

I also encouraged her to think of recipes that needed very little preparation, such as bean salads, pasta dishes and baked fish and vegetables, and to stock up her freezer and cupboards with the ingredients needed.

Judith then created a menu plan for the week, and because she knew she had that plan in place and all the ingredients waiting, and meals ready to heat and eat, the temptation to grab a pricey plastic-wrapped dish from the supermarket diminished.

She felt like she was coming home to a manageable few minutes of preparation instead of scratching around trying to create her dinner, and within a fortnight the daily ready meal was history.

She lost a few pounds in weight without even meaning to, noticed an improvement in her energy levels now that fresh produce was a regular feature, and she gained financially by making her own tasty food instead of paying a premium for ready-made food.

Part Five

Pared Down Life

Just as preventing clutter from piling up is a case of tightening the gap between usage and disposal, you would do well this week to take note of the areas of your domestic life that eat up the greatest amount of your time and plan ways to reduce the time spent on them.

We all deserve time to relax and be quiet with our own thoughts each day, and if you find life is still one mad scramble of domestic chores, invest an hour or so this week in applying your ingenuity to find ways you can reduce the chaos.

Take note of the daily chores you have to do – such as getting kids out on time with the right homework and other school paraphenalia, loading up your briefcase for work, or regular trips to your local bank, library, or social club, and take note of the main ways that you can simplify the preparation for these.

Just as I keep all my shopping-related gear in one place, I also have separate locations for my banking kit – paying in books, cheque books and so on – and a place to store my library and DVD rental cards.

Catherine, who we met in weeks 1 and 2, has created a box into which all Jason’s school gear goes when he returns home. She brings it through to the front room when he is ready to start that night’s homework and before bed makes sure the books and other things are replaced.

In the morning while she’s making breakfast she supervises him as he packs his own schoolbag from the box, and the days of hunting frantically for lost homework books that had gone astray overnight are gone forever.

Mental Clutter

Look at your own lifestyle and note the sources of mental clutter – feelings like frustration, anger and confusion caused when something doesn’t go smoothly – then plan carefully to reduce these by tailoring your home further to your needs.

A technique recommended by US “Organizer Lady” Sandra Felton is to create what she calls Launch Pads onto which items that need to go out with the adults and children in your home can be deposited.

These can be a table top, shelf or other surface where the day’s incoming items like briefcases, schoolbooks, handbag and so on can go and where they’ll be safely found the following morning.

I’ve expanded on that for my own needs and advise my clients to think in terms of giving every item a home to which it can safely return and where anything related to it can be put ready for the morning rush out the door.

Gym kits, work gear and even basics for a long night out clubbing can be corralled into a drawer, a box or a shelf and return there when you come through the door, making time spent hunting for lost items a thing of the past.

Part Six

Elegant Living

Consider if any of the following tips and tricks appeal to you:

• Creating a morning routine so that you have time to enjoy breakfast and still know that everything that needs to be done has a time-slot allocated to it
• Creating a weekend schedule so that chores like shopping and laundry that would otherwise sprawl all over your weekdays in bits and pieces can be compressed into one half-day
• Allocating one day per week to an intensive deep clean of one room or area in your home, on a rota system so that each area gets intensive treatment on a regular basis
• Doing a quarterly Home Audit and re-examining which techniques are working for you and how you can improve the ones that aren’t.
• A quarterly change of soft-furnishings, trimmings and re-arrangement of any decorative items on display keeps your home looking fresh and is a useful thing to schedule into your diary or calender, as is a change of wardrobe when the seasons change.
• At the start of each new season, store away clothes you won’t be wearing in moth-proof containers and that way your wardobe will have more space and getting dressed will become a simpler proposition, as the only things on offer are wholly appropriate for the weather.

These kinds of things are the basic backbone of domestic organisation and they will help you to increase the levels of order in your life and prevent clutter from ever creeping back in.

So far, the ten-minute pre-bed tidy is the only regular routine I have suggested because we needed to focus on your own personal decluttering plan.

Experience tells me that nailing down every hour of the day with routines and structure, especially where these have not been a feature of your life before, is likely to do more harm than good at first, and create resistance to the idea of organised living.

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you what time to get out of bed in the morning, and taking on too much of a scheduled approach has never worked for me or my clients as we progress from cluttered living to an orderly life.

However, elegant living requires a little forethought, so now that you have a tidy home and are beginning to think of ways to accentuate your home’s beauty, it would be worthwhile planning some structures for yourself that you can live with on a long-term basis and which will add to the easy management of your home.

Mine include a morning routine, which I apply most weekdays and which ensures that breakfast,  exercise, shower and bed-making are completed before I even have to think about facing the world that day.

I also have a bedtime routine which includes making sure there is no dirty washing-up left anywhere in my home, time for some stretches and a big cup of green tea to take to bed.

While I’ll happily throw these to the wind when I feel like it, having the basics covered in this way means that I am not constantly struggling with everyday tasks and because they have become habits now, I barely notice I am doing them.

Action!

Actions of the Week

1. Fall in love again

Create your mood board and complete the exercises in this week’s module so that you begin to really sense the experience of living in a beautiful home.

After spending so long dealing with a cluttered life, I want to you fall in love with your home all over again and to feel excitement about finding ways to improve and beautify it.

Reflect on the good feelings that having a lovely dwelling space inspire in you, and cast your mind back to the days of being swamped by clutter if you need a little motivation to keep on making changes.

Embrace your right to a home and a lifestyle that is not only functional but also enjoyable and deeply satisfying.

2. Start to plan ahead

What parts of your day or week could you regularly apply a little planning and structure to in order to save time and fuss?

Try out the suggestions above, such as devoting a day a week to an area of your home, and see how it feels. Consider all the things you need to get done when you wake up and note how long they take, then try working up a shedule so that instead of rushing everything has its own time-slot allocated.

This is a form of decluttering time, as it will stop you inadvertantly doing too many things at once, the wrong things, or things at the wrong time.

Have a think about ways you can apply the techniques you’ve used to successfully declutter your home to other aspects of your domestic life and don’t be afraid to try things out for size.

3. Magnificent menus

Try planning your menu for next week by taking note of the foods that get consumed in your home the next seven days.

Note if there are any nasty suprises, such as eating more junk food or drinking more sugary drinks than is wise. Review the list of foods and drinks consumed and see if there are any changes you can make that will be healthier or perhaps cut down on wasted food or money.

Britons are estimated to waste one third of the food that is grown in the UK through poor planning, over-buying and general carelessness. This amounts to £420 a year for every adult in the UK – resolve not to be putting £420 of your money straight into the bin and get savvy when it comes to shopping and creating the week’s meals.

4. Keep up the good work

Keep up the good work of doing pre-bed tidies and minding the gap between usage and sisposal of everything that comes into your house. If there are any areas left that still need tweaking, schedule one hour sessions until they’re done to your satisfaction.

You have made excellent progress and I don’t want you to be like the frog in the hot water I described last week, not noticing that the temperature is rising until it’s too late.

Remain vigilant and stay on top of any items that are in the wrong place or which no longer serve a good purpose – clutter tends to start off as small heaps of stuff here and there, and it can look so harmless and insignificant until one day it you realise it’s taken over your life.

I never want you to have to do a major declutter again, so watch out for little slips or little piles of innocent looking things caught in the gap on their way to their rightful home and pick them up as soon as you see them.

5. Enjoy your home

As you did last week, take a moment sometime in the next 24 hours to really savour the experience of a clutter-free home.

You are on track now to the kind of gracious lifestyle people envy, and you deserve to congratulate yourself for getting this far.

We prefer doing the tasks that we associate with good feelings, and creating good feelings about your tidy clutter-free home is the surest way to ensure that you will stay on track.

That’s all for this week, I look forward to seeing you next week when we’ll be looking ahead to your organised future!

Part Two

The Story So Far

Please take a moment to answer these questions:

• How did you do with last week’s Actions?
• How are you finding the experience of living a more organised life?
• Did you find a routine yet that works for you to increase the level of order in your life, and which you can apply daily or weekly?

If you can’t quite find the right formula, I would like you to take a new approach to the part of your day or week that you are trying to organise.

Let’s play a game to discover what really goes on behind the scenes when you struggle with daily routines:

“They’re Here!”

Imagine for a moment that aliens from a far off world have landed for a visit.

Friendly fellows, they live on a planet so very different to ours that the basics of housework and domestic life are a complete novelty to them.

As you are a veteran of the clutter wars, the UN has commissioned you to instruct the aliens in ways to create as much chaos and disorder in their daily routine as possible, so that they can fully experience every aspect of life on earth.

Are you ready to accept this mission? Then let’s go!

• Start The Day
  How would our guests start their day if they wanted it to get off on the wrong footing?
  Would they hit the snooze button repeatedly until they’re running late, or perhaps have faulty alarm clock that regularly lets them down?
  Would they make sure that obstacles like creased clothing and dirty mugs are lying in wait in order to cause chaos at the first opportunity?
• Attitudes
  What attitude to life in general would need to be simmering in their pointy little heads in order to create the greatest amount of friction and disharmony?
  Would they need to basically believe that nothing ever goes right for them, or that they were incapable of living like “other people”?
• Staying Stuck
  Which technique would work best to protect the status quo – blaming oneself for every last problem, until the guilt and shame are overriding any last scrap of motivation to change life for the better?
  Or perhaps it would work better to blame someone else in the home, or outside factors, for any problems so that they don’t have to take any action themselves?
• Sweet Dreams
  What would be the last thing our visitors would need to do at night to guarantee the morning comes thudding down on their poor little heads with a vicious crash?
  Dirty washing up is always a terrible sight first thing in the morning, and what else could they arrange the night before to pile on the misery first thing?
  Perhaps they could fall asleep cataloguing everything that went wrong, convincing themselves that life is a vale of tears, and that to struggle every single day with life’s most basic aspects is as normal as breathing.

Sometimes we can begin to create structures in our lives and if they don’t work straight away, or if they feel too new and we run out of motivation to keep them going, it’s easier to slip back into old ways.

By turning this situation around and looking at what you would need to instruct someone who has no concept of how to live chaotically, I am making the point that disorganised living uses as much energy and is just as tedious and uniform as organised living.

Please take a moment to consider where you can apply this knowledge, and if you’ve successfully created some structures from last week’s tips, have a think about any remaining areas of your life where you are encountering resistance and look at the amount of effort you have to put into maintaining that feeling.

Part Three

Work In Progress

My ongoing commitment to personal development began in the late nineties, when I realised that a lot of things in my life weren’t working for me any more.

The exercise I have given you above, regarding how to teach a visitor to live a disordered life, is based on some fairly standard personal development techniques and I have found it (with or without the little green men) immensely useful for looking at any problem I face in a whole new way.

People, myself included, can tend to get into the habit of keep trying the same actions while expecting different results to magically appear, and for that reason a change of perspective is often useful in showing us a new approach to life’s challenges.

I would like to suggest as the first part of your support structure that you re-read any personal development books you have found useful in the past.

This may sound like a shameless sales pitch but I can honestly say that I read and work through Fiona’s Be Your Own Life Coach about once a year, and I have always found that there are new levels to completing the exercises.

I strongly recommend that book if you haven’t read it and also, while I’m discussing Fiona’s work, I recommend you join up on our conversation board to chat with other like-minded people and have a place to get support for the changes you are making in your life.

All the coaches on Fiona’s team are carefully chosen and expert in their fields, and Francine Kaye’s book Time To Live is for me the essential guide to time management and will help you to apply the basics of this skill to your own organisational endeavours.

Classic Fear Buster

Moving on to other authors, if you’ve not read it yet Susan Jeffer’s Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway is another must-have classic when it comes to understanding that fear is not a reason to stop dead in our tracks, but rather is a sign we are doing something right.

There is, as I’m sure you know, a whole world of motivational books to choose from and while not many of them talk directly about household organisation, the truth behind their teachings can be successfully applied to all areas of your life including the domestic sphere.

A great way to reward yourself for completing this course would be to browse a bookshop or library and select a title or two from their personal development range, and then wholeheartedly commit to working through the exercises in it.

You have proven that you are open to new ways of doing things in your life and you are now in a prime place to take your lifestyle improvements to the next level of excellence.

Part Four

Textbook Case

Books about housework are plentiful and while I would never trade in my thrillers for a tome about the correct application of surface cleansers, stocking up on one or two basics is a good idea because it will give you something to fall back on.

Clare Coulson’s House Rules is a charming little book packed full of useful information on how to run a stylish and neat home and it’s written in a lovely light style that is very easy to digest.

Because I prefer my housework leavened with a little humour, I also love the How Clean Is Your House? book by Kim Woodburn and Aggie MacKenzie.

It has plenty of useful hints for hardcore cleaning of troublesome areas and while I think the authors are completely potty, it’s huge fun, repays a read and makes a useful textbook.

Finally, to increase your motivation and feed the flames of your love affair with your home, do keep an eye out for any other home decorating and design books that you can use for inspiration as you create your perfect home.

My favourites are the Changing Rooms-style books, and most large modern bookshops will let you browse for hours until you find the one book that you just HAVE to take home because it delights you.

If you have noticed that you like any type of design, or relate strongly to any period of architecture, books about that subject will feed your passion for stylish living and are worth investing time and money in because they will feed your dreams.

Liquid Information

I have already suggested that your search the internet for sites relating to interior décor, and there are many more resources online that cover domestic issues.

Sandra Felton, the US “Organizer Lady” has a web site at www.messies.com and I can wholeheartedly recommend her work even though it is heavily geared to an American audience.

She offers a free daily e-mail service through Yahoo Groups, which can sign up for from her main website above, which mails out invaluable household hints and tips, as well as support for people who have an issue with cluttering.

I have been signed up for it for years now, and with an average of two mails a day going out, it’s particularly worth checking out if you have daily access to e-mail.

www.flylady.net is another US-based website that offers a range of different ideas and motivational tips for staying on top of the housework, and while it’s not a site I love it does have a lot of information and advice.

If you fancy chatting online with real people who have overcome – or are still dealing with – their cluttered lives, a search engine such as www.google.co.uk will find you dozens of online forums where you can discuss all things domestic, from the best way to remove biro stains to creating healthy recipes, learning the basics of menu planning and beyond.

Finding an online group that you feel at home with is a matter of personal taste, so I won’t recommend any, but I suggest you have a look around and see if that kind of support suits you.

The internet offers a wide range of information about every topic under the sun, some of it solid gold and quite a lot of it utter trash.

When you have some spare time on a computer why not search for the areas that you are looking for information on, such as menu planning, redesigning a bedroom, or even learning a new craft such as re-upholstering a chair, or learning the basics of DIY?

Part Five

Mind, Body, Spirit

So far we have talked about the physical aspects of decluttering, dipped a toe into the psychology of clutter, and the final aspect of household organisation and layout I’m going to mention is the spiritual.

Feng Shui and the Indian art of Vaastu have never been more popular in the west and if approached with an open mind, they offer some common sense insights into the way we relate to our environments and the deep effect that our homes can have on us.

I approached studying Feng Shui with an open mind, and all I will say is that it was not time wasted and that I am inclined to think there may be valid scientific reasons behind the basic rules of placement for important furniture like beds and work spaces.

I began to apply several of the principles in my own life, and while it’s impossible to scientifically “prove” the effects, I did notice some beneficial changes and continue to study and train that subject.

If you have ever wondered about these practices, there are a range of websites that offer information and opinions on them, and my favourite one to date is www.rising-dragon.co.uk which offers a free online tutorial in the basics of Feng Shui.

Part Six

Real World

Back in the real world, once you have your home running fairly smoothly you are in a great position to start looking for ways to delegate household chores.

Having a cleaner in once a week is a luxury that you might not have considered, but now that your home is sparklingly organised why not see if there is any way you can arrange this?

If you decide to invest in a cleaner, do check references and use shrewd common sense when you choose the person you are allowing into your home, but if you choose wisely you could find that it revolutionises your life.

If you loathe ironing, consider finding someone to step in for a few hours a week and do it for you, and better yet why not be creative and ask people you know to swap some ironing time for a skill you possess?

Many local communities now run Time Banks where participants earn credits for helping each other – one hour of your time entitles you to an hour of someone else’s time.

If that sounds like something you’d like to know more about, you can find your nearest Time Bank at www.timebanks.co.uk

If you belong to any community groups, why not investigate whether they have a similar system or if you feel really motivated, why not set one up yourself?

Nearly all of us possess some unique skill or knowledge that someone else wants access to, so you could turn your life experience to good use and get something you want in exchange for it.

If you have a friend who struggles with domestic tasks, you might find that swapping chores with each other makes getting the housework done a lot more fun.

I don’t know why this is, but I regularly swap time with my best friend who has in the past also battled the clutter monster, and there’s something rewarding about doing someone else’s housework than can be quite lacking when doing your own!

Down To You

Finally, the best source of support and motivation you can possibly have is yourself.

This is why I suggest that you go into the coming weeks with a renewed passion to keep out clutter, and that you invest time and thought into setting up structures and systems that will make it so much easier to be tidy than untidy.

You are the person who has the make-or-break key to organised living in your own head, and it is reasonable and perfectly legitimate for you to spend time and energy perfecting and fine tuining your domestic organisation.

An organised home is a work in progress, just like you and me, and you deserve the very best home you can create for yourself.

Action!

Actions of the Week

1. Prepare for the future

What are your feelings about coming to the final week of this course? How can you set yourself up for ongoing success now – will joining an internet forum keep the ball rolling, or do you need to hook up face to face with a coach or perhaps other people in your area who are battling with domestic chores?

If you haven’t done it already, why not upgrade this course to the PLUS version and let me coach you for two hours on the area you most want support with?

You can schedule the coaching to happen at intervals of one month if you suspect that your motivation might need a boost, and I’ll be delighted to work with you one-to-one.

Before the end of this week I would like you to find at least three things you can add to your support system that will work for you, be they books, online resources, scheduled support from me or friends, or social events.

2. Stay alert

Watch out for self-sabotage in future. Stay vigilant for small clutter icebergs waiting to try and sink your ship, and make sure that you implement some techniques to bring some structure into nyour life – the ones I suggested last week are a great starting point and you can work out versions that suit your lifestyle.

Tailor them to your needs, and don’t be afraid to experiment – and do keep on taking this seriously because clutter is a sneaky opponent and given an inch, will take over the whole house.

3. Honour your growth

Investigate further sources of personal development materials that will support you in maintaining a high level of self-esteem, and feed your confidence that you deserve a beautiful home.

Check out the articles on this website and consider taking one of the other online courses that addresses a specific need for you, and make sure that you keep the ball rolling and keep on raising your game.

It is never to late to have your ideal home and it is never to late to make huge improvements in your life – in fact, to quote George Eliot, “It is never too late to be who you might have been.”

You have proven to yourself that you can change your lifestyle so why not spend some time thinking about any other changes you’d like to make, or skills you’d like to acquire, and plan an exciting program of study of personal development in order to stay fresh and excited about your life, and your potential?

4. Capture the moment

Consider taking some photos of your home when it’s at its absolute best, because very often a photo shows us our home as other people see it. Initially taking photos of your home at its neatest will inspire you and give you a benchmark against which to compare things a week, or a month, further down the line.

As you move into your organised and stylish future, your snapshots of this early stage will be a good reference point and they will also help you to spot any areas where you’d like a change of these or need to make some alterations to the layout.

I regularly photograph my own home and I regard it as an invaluable way to get a different perspective on things.

5. Well Done!

Right now congratulate yourself on creating the clutter-free home that is your foundation for a wonderful life.

Sadly, some people never get past dreaming that things will improve someday and you have shown yourself to be in theat group of people who can make a plan and carry it off.

Share the congratulations with anyone you live with who has helped and supported you, and ensure everyone undertands the benefits of continuing to move your home forards into harmony and order.

Give yourself respect where it is due and make this week the week you celebrate the start of your new organised lifestyle!

Thank you for working through this course right to week 6 – this is of course not the end of your journey to your ideal home, but it is the end of our weekly sessions.