Is there a support group for hoarders? If there isn’t, there should be. “Hi, my name is Cheryl and I’m addicted to clutter.” I think I inherited the hoarding gene from my dad, and as an upcycler I am incapable of throwing things away ‘just incase’ I need them for a future project.
Reducing and recycling is one of my main focusses for both my job and my lifestyle, but it’s also one of the things that causes the most stress in our house.
It’s not just physical junk we need to clear out though, most people could do with a declutter in some aspect of their life. We collect things that collect dust, we hold on to objects for sentimental value, we’ve subscribed to way too many websites that send us junk email. Household admin can take over our lives too, if you work for yourself then you can triple the amount of post you get that needs to be filed.
My friend Amy gives herself time to sort out what she calls Life Admin, I see that as decluttering our heads from all the things that swim around in there that need doing – online shopping order, sorting the gas readings out, paying subscriptions for kids clubs, paying credit cards, all things that can slip easily if we don’t tackle them head on.
So I’ve been looking into it and I’m going to start a little series to help us all sort out our sh*t. Monthly challenges are hard to keep up with and most of us lose interest after a couple of weeks, so I’m going to keep it bitesized and hopefully weekly.
To get you in the right mindset for a declutter, here are some fellow bloggers and their tips for decluttering.
Lynne’s Wondrous Wardrobe Tips
Lynne Lambourne works alongside Julia Kendell and Angie Best for the blog Ask Your Besties and her post on wardrobe tips is great, including ways to sort it all into piles to mend, for charity, recycle and organising the final selection. Follow her on instagram for more ideas on reducing your waste, upcycling, decluttering and her awesome styling posts.
How to declutter when you have hoarding tendencies.
I love this post from Alice’s Wonder Emporium, she talks about decluttering when you’re a hoarder. One I can really relate to. Tips on buying less, ways to tidy to maximise your space and edit your possessions.
Do I Really Need All This Stuff?!
Spurred on by a cleaner, David Attenborough’s Blue Planet and too much available credit, Jennifer Mason sets about decluttering her home and editing her possessions. I love her take on saying goodbye to all those sentimental things we hang on to.
The lazy girls guide to being tidy
HonestlyHelen focusses on storage for all the the piles that grow in our home and ways to keep them all tidy in this great post.
6 steps to a decluttered business
Wherever you work, from home, in an office or studio, the post from Forsyth VA Services is great to help you organise your online filing, physical paperwork and creating systems to keep it all in order. You could easily adapt this to your home computers too for all your photographs, insurance documents and life admin.
8 practical tips to declutter your inbox
Another one from Forsyth VA Services, some great tips for clearing your emails. I recently sat down and took half an hour to unsubscribe from so many emails and no longer get bombarded with junk mail that I’m not interested in anymore. Saves me time every day from having to sift through it all.
Spring cleaning
Hello Freckles shows how you can earn money from your unwanted clothes with Enviro Clothes. That doesn’t that mean you can buy more clothes with the money though!
Some great tips from some fab blogs, hope this has whetted your appetite for decluttering. Watch out for my bitesized decluttering posted soon.
Remember, cleaning is for life not just for spring.
All round creative junkie 
Some really good advice in those links you posted! Like your friend I often schedule time in to deal with ‘life admin’, I don’t know if this is common in other families but my friends and I often moan that the mundane tasks like paying bills, renewing agreements/subscriptions, sorting out money, posting birthday cards, organising activities often falls to the wife/girlfriend, the men in our lives seem to get off very lightly when it comes to life admin. Although they do have significantly less sentimental clutter so I guess it’s swings and roundabouts!
I’m a neat freak, Cheryl but I think it stems from the fact that I am inherently lazy. My thinking is if I keep everything tidy it’s overall less to do. There’s a good logic there, do you reckon? I do hate the ‘life admin’ though – that always piles up out of control xo
I’m with you on that logic! Realised that little and often is much better than letting it all get out of hand. Thanks for reading! x
Thank you for a great article, your advice will be very helpful for me.