My house is chaos: where do I start? (2024)

I’ve never seen myself as the sort of person that might embark on a ‘decluttering’ mission. In fact, I’ve always taken comfort in clutter. Stacks of books on a coffee table, walls hung with art, and shelves of pottery and trinkets – for me these things are weighted with emotion, perhaps reminding me of a holiday or a rainy Saturday where I unexpectedly happened upon something beautiful. I’ve always gravitated to more than less and anytime my husband might gently question whether we “need” something, I would be a bit baffled. Of course, I didn’t need a ceramic platter but I took comfort in knowing we had it just in case we ended up with a house full of friends to feed. There was security in stuff.

Just over a year ago, however, I had a change of heart. We had a six week old baby, had just moved house and our clutter was becoming a source of stress. All around us were boxes – at least 30 of which contained books – and I felt weighed down by the fact I had to find a place for everything. Still, I had nine months of maternity leave stretching out ahead of me and thought that I might spend some of my time organising. That, of course, speaks volumes of my naivety as a first time mother and when I returned to work earlier this year I realised – even with the boxes long unpacked – that our lovely little cottage might always be in a state of chaos. Our cupboards are bulging, surfaces are piled high with everything from packets of vegetable seeds to a bike saddle (no I’m not really sure why it’s there either), and nothing seems to have a designated place.

And so I found myself on the Association of Professional Declutterers and Organisers (ADPO) website, seeking out someone who might be able to unravel the mess. ‘Looking for help or support? Whatever you are struggling with, there is someone who can help you,’ it says on the homepage. It sounded like it was offering some kind of counselling service, and it was then that I realised that while practical clutter was my issue, it had in fact become mental clutter. I was well and truly overwhelmed. I quickly found that less than five miles away from me in Sussex happened to be Mimi Bogelund, a professional declutterer and organiser who launched The Organised Life & Home in 2018 after honing her craft with a couple of months training in San Francisco with tidying queen Marie Kondo.

Just before Mimi – who charges £35/hour (with a minimum booking of three hours) – arrived at my house I panicked that she might ask me to bin anything that doesn’t ‘spark joy’. What a relief, then, when one of the first things she said was: ‘I’m here to reveal all your lovely things, not get rid of them.’ She also, thankfully, doesn’t see homes as a stage set: ‘I hate staticness,’ she explains. It seemed I had found the right person. Mimi realised the power of decluttering after she was made redundant from a fashion business. ‘I took some time out to tidy and this burden that I didn’t even know I had just lifted,’ she says. ‘It was amazing.’ Many of those who contact her are in a similar boat to me: ‘most people have reached a point where they have had enough, but are overwhelmed and don’t know where to start,’ Mimi explains. Unsurprisingly, big life events like new babies and house moves (don’t I feel like a cliche) often spur people on to declutter once and for all.

Mimi starts off not by looking around but by asking some probing questions. ‘What matters to you in life? How do you want your house to be? What do you want to feel in your house?’ These might sound obvious, but when life becomes hectic with a child and full-time job they are questions that you don’t give an ounce of thought to. What I want more than anything is a sense of order – I want my house to be like a well thought-out plan, with a place for everything that will tick along happily even when life is chaotic. Over the next three hours, Mimi – who doesn’t bat an eyelid at the piles of paperwork and tile samples on my dining table – helps me with where to start and how to declutter and organise. Here is what I learnt:

Declutter by category

While it may seem logical to declutter by room, Mimi suggests approaching it by category. ‘It goes clothes, books, papers, miscellaneous bits in the kitchen, bathroom and relating to hobbies, and finally any sentimental mementoes,’ explains Mimi, whose approach is based on Marie Kondo’s KonMari method. So rather than tackling, say, my utility room, Mimi suggests pulling all of the coats out of there and going through them in the context of the rest of my clothes (along with any other coats that, in my case, are hanging on doors in almost every room!). ‘The brain loves looking at one thing at a time,’ says Mimi. ‘Take things out of their everyday space when you’re working out what to keep as it allows you to see them in a new light.’ In the case of clothes, laundry, Mimi says, should be up-to-date to ensure it’s a straightforward process.