Sort and Survive – part one
Following many years working as a museum curator, six years ago I set up my own business, ‘Sort & Survive’, to provide advice and practical help to individuals and institutions looking to re-home, catalogue or display their collections of antiques, paintings, furniture and memorabilia. I was surprised to find that there was an organisation in the UK, the Association of Professional De-clutterers and Organisers (APDO), to support and provide training and validation for those working in the field. Since then, decluttering has become much more mainstream with almost daily TV programmes where an organising expert is parachuted into the home of someone whose hoarding has got completely out of hand. The Japanese de-clutterer, Marie Kondo, author of ‘Spark Joy’ is now a household name and has her own trademarked method. Rather counter-intuitively for a self-styled queen of minimalism, she now sells her own range of upmarket homewares!
Unlike some practitioners, I do not subscribe to the idea that de-cluttering is key to good mental health or can become a fundamental organising principle of your life. For me, Church, friends and family do that. However, having worked with individuals whose homes are no longer functional because of an accumulation of ‘stuff’ I think that it is useful to know how to prevent this happening. Even if we are not drowning in possessions or paperwork, we can start to feel overwhelmed by a stack of unanswered correspondence (or overfull inbox) or an accumulation of junk in the attic or shed.
Why declutter?
- Urban living can often mean living in compact spaces.
- You save time when you are able to find what you need quickly.
- Clearing out gives you more space and means that your home is easier to clean.
- You also get a good feeling that your redundant possessions can find a new life elsewhere.
Part two with hints of how to go about decluttering will be in Church Chat in the next few weeks when you may be starting to think about New Year resolutions, and possibly one of them will be to do a bit de-cluttering!