Both these situation are obviously different, but they both require a change of direction to ensure good mental health, a sense of purpose and forward movement.

The midlife crisis often sneaks up gradually, frustration builds below the surface and often finds a way out in irrational behaviour against a situation that feels like it cannot be changed gradually. Quitting a job, exploring new relationships, taking on new hobbies (or buying a flashy car) are often the result of that frustration.

Men often find it more difficult to make gentle changes because they only realise what’s happening when slow action will take to long to take effect, so breaking everything and starting fresh looks like the only available option.
Retirement does not come out of the blue like a midlife crisis, but its effects can feel more lasting as a whole chapter of life is over; it’s the “retirement void”. This is not about finding a new way back to what life was like before, but it’s about reinventing yourself completely to deal with a completely new situation.

Both hinge points in a man’s life have common elements that can be addressed, but this ideally has to happen before the crisis hits. A lot of internal work has to be done here to soften the blow of these moments.

For one thing, us men (and I include myself here as I have been there once) have to learn to change priorities when the situation requires it. Trying the same old strategies in an evolving new situation rarely helps. Think outside of the box, ditch the old habits and develop new ones that suit the new you.

For many of us, midlife crisis and retirement lead to a loss of perspective, with only a dark fog ahead of us. It’s important to reorient and find a purpose to strive towards, something that feels fulfilling for the foreseeable future (beyond buying a sports car, that is).

And most importantly, review the way you interact with people. Relearning to make new friends, joining new groups, sharing experiences can be an important tool to fill in that image of a new present and future. Make sure you distinguish the quick fixes from the sustainable changes. And then make them into your new normal.

While the hormonal changes can lead to emotional upheaval and feeling unsettled, the brain fog involves forgetfulness and poor concentration. This is something that could possibly be addressed if you manage to set yourself up for success.

One way to keep yourself up and running is to keep an ‘energy diary’ and use what you learn about your energy levels and swings to pick the right time to do particular things. It can help you see if your fatigue is worse at certain times, or after particular activities. This might help you plan activities, or delegate those that make you feel fatigued or exhausted.

Marie Curie has a tool ready that is meant for cancer patients, but it has elements that perfectly work for perimenopause issues as well and can be an easy starting point. You can find it here: https://www.mariecurie.org.uk/document/fatigue-diary.

If brain fog distracts you all the time, you may still manage to develop routines and daily resets (small jobs) that help manage the regular stuff without losing track of them or staying focused on them long enough to finish them.

When perimenopause hits, your body may start to feel foreign, because it behaves in ways that you are not familiar with. This can be scary, but it offers an opportunity too: it allows you to reconnect with who you are in the process of becoming.

This goes beyond just finding a path back to “the way it was”: it’s about finding a new balance that works for you now. It involves learning to accept what is happening to you, that you may temporarily have trouble focusing, that things you could do with your eyes closed suddenly become impossible to achieve. Remember that you are still yourself, and that the actual menopause will be a doorway to a new balance. Keep your good spirits up and you’ll come out well on the other side.

[Of course I’m aware that I am a male professional organiser. I can only speak from the lived experience of working with my clients, but I hope you can see some of the above as advice that comes from the heart.]

Sometimes we have to be reactive to get things done, but it can be useful to let the chaos be, take a step back and make proper plans. We all plan things in a professional setting to be as efficient as possible, but many seem to be blissfully unaware that the same is true in your home. Carve out time in your calendar to calmly look at the issues at hand when you are not in “panic reaction” mode. Being proactive and plan ahead is a lot more productive in the long run and can reduce the instances of overwhelm and just reacting to situations over and over again.

Your partner and family are as responsible for getting things done as you are. If you are the only one who deals with dropped clothes and left out toys, does all the chores and fixes meals on your own, it’s time to rally the troops and find a system that involves everyone. Set up an operations centre so that everyone knows what they are expected to do, and when. That could be a wall calendar, but if all those involved are digitally literate (i.e., have a smart phone), a digital system works too. Be clear about who does what and follow up regularly. Make sure your partner and yourself are pulling in the same direction, though…

Reminders and tick-off task lists, particularly digital ones (see: shared smart phone calendar) are useful to ensure some level of success. Don’t expect miracles, but set yourself up to experience one on occasion.

Lastly, overwhelm often is the result of fixating on getting everything done perfectly. When you are getting overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things to do, perfectionism is not your friend: getting crushed by your own expectations doesn’t help either. You’d be amazed how much regular time for selfcare can achieve in this respect. Addressing your basic needs, relaxing in some meaningful way, and even just taking opportunities to step away from chores and tasks can make all the difference. Allow each member of the family to take time off from the regular running of the household, ideally on their own to maximise distance from the regular day-to-day.

All of this should really be common sense, but I’m surprised how often this needs to be repeated!

This makes for some tricky situations whenever who possesses something makes decisions that are not in line of the wishes of the owner. In fact, this may just lead to a total breakdown in decision-making.

Allowing someone to store some of their belongings in your home may be a charitable thing you do for friends and family, but it comes with some downsides. Especially if you find that those belongings take up space you want to put to good use for yourself at some point. You might consider this is a niche issue, but it’s a lot more common than you think.

A typical situation is a child leaving the home for university or to strike out on their own, but leaving some of their stuff behind. Usually, the child’s room stays the way it is “so that they have a place to stay when they come visit” (which parents always believe is going to be each weekend!). So the room is full of stuff that the child is likely never going to pick up …

Maybe a friend is travelling abroad without a fixed address here, he need a place to store some of his stuff and you offer some room in your loft or spare room for half a year. What if he takes his blessed time and his time abroad turns into 10 years?

Making changes to such arrangements can be difficult: your home is technically filled with stuff you have no control over, but you don’t want to disappoint the people you are helping out. It’s hard enough to deal with your own things, but other people’s stuff involves actions that someone else has to make and you are in no position to force them to do so.

This is decluttering paralysis squared: it’s tough to make choices for your own things, but getting someone else to make a choice is near impossible. It’s helpful to keep in mind the difference between “owning” and “having” and being clear - and occasionally determined - to clarify who is in charge of decisions and actions.

By the way, this is also relevant in a family home that is full to the brim: whose stuff is it, really? You would be perfectly able to make decisions about your own stuff, but what about items that belong to both you and your partner? What about their stuff? What about your children’s? These are issues I come across all the time when one person suddenly starts decluttering someone else’s stuff…

That is one box for each: keep, maybe, donate, discard. If you want to keep it even simpler and streamline the decision process, you could go with: keep, maybe, let go. In this setup, you’ll have a second go with the “let go” category to decide if you can donate some of this, if it can be recycled, or if it goes into the bin.

Either way, this workflow is a useful one for most decluttering projects. It’s also worth pointing out that, depending on the items you are sorting out, boxes may not be the best option. If you are sorting through paperwork, paper piles may be better for the stuff you keep while you chuck recycling in a bin straight away. Choose your containers wisely each time, according to what’s most useful.

Make sure to handle each item only once and make a choice about the available box categories only, nothing else. It will save time, and also limit your interactions with each item so you are less likely to get bogged down with revisiting your choices more than once. Tip: if you’re going through clothes and intend to donate to charity, it’s helpful to place these items in a black bag to keep temptation to reconsider at a minimum.

• Once you have gone through your whole pile of items and sorted them correctly, review the “maybe” items one more time, reassign to other categories if you can, and leave the rest for now.
• You then start packing things away again: take the items in the “keep” box, organise and store in the correct place. This tends to be the most straightforward element of the process.
• Any remaining “maybe” items should be kept separate for now. For the next period of time, keep revisiting them and try using them. If you never pick them up, donate or discard them!
• The remaining “discard” and “donate” items should leave your premises at the earliest possible time. Make sure of that.

It’s a pretty simple process, but you are still doing two things at once: making (hard) decisions AND sorting. Also, if you are running out of space, you’ll have to interrupt the work to take things away or bring new stuff in. Each time you have to do this, you’ll be distracted from the main job “choosing”, and that is where a second pair of hands can be helpful (call a professional organiser?), quite besides keeping you on track when you get distracted!

Many people make a crucial mistake: they look at a pile of their belongings and ask themselves what should go. In reality, it’s much better to ask yourself a different question: “why does it have to stay?”. And you’ll have to find a solid answer to that question for every single item!

There are many reasons why something might need to stay, and to some degree that depends on your original decluttering goal: you want things to be more tidy and organised, you need more space, you want to downsize, etc.

Caution: you might also be worried about what happens to the items once you discard them. If you want to sell them or make sure that they find a good new home, take a step back right now. These lines of inquiry have nothing to do with your original goal, but rather what happens to unnecessary items afterwards. If you want to avoid getting bogged down, stick to deciding over “keep” and “let go” at this point.

Many items will easily fall into either category, but some need more consideration. In those cases, I suggest finding out if an item is linked to your past (sentimental), used in the present (practical) or saved for future action (aspirational), and then identifying if your reasons are realistic or not.

If an item is not sentimental in nature, you may want to ask yourself “Does it serve me right now?” and “Is it realistic to assume that I’ll ever make use of this in the near future?” If the answer is not a resounding YES, maybe it’s time for a reality check and find out why it’s so hard to let this go.

Often we assume thing will come in handy in the future out of mindset of scarcity, the worry that this item is unreplaceable if we let it go now. In that case I’d question how useful it was in the first place, packed away in a box in the loft. In reality, we can often make do with different tools, find other solutions or simply live without a particular item, without missing out on anything.

That said, there is nothing wrong with having some refills or items we only use occasionally, as long as we actually use them rather than assume we might need to use them sometime. “Sometime” is your worst enemy when it comes to making decisions, because it can easily lead to large accumulations of “just in case” items that do nothing but clog up your space and add to stuff you need to manage in some way, now or in the future.

Start small. Picking a defined small project allows you to deal with the issues you encounter and learn lessons that will serve you well for bigger projects. Small projects take less time and you are more likely to get a general view of the project and bring it to a successful conclusion.

Plan ahead. Be clear about your goal and why exactly you are doing this. Is it lack of space? Or maybe you struggle with finding things? Once you have that clear goal, make sure to make it the measuring guide when you make decisions.

Decluttering is not only about extracting items that no longer serve you, but dealing with the follow-up: Let’s say you organise a drawer and after sorting and extracting you find that there are two distinctly different types of things here. Will both categories go back into the drawer (hopefully separated in some way), or do you need to find another (more logical) place to shift one of the categories?

And of course, you’ll have to deal with whatever you have decided to let go: is this going to the rubbish bin, can it be recycled or donated to a charity?

Make enough time. Many decluttering projects fail because they are done in the spirit of “I’ll just do this quickly” and then you run out of time. When that happens, more often than not, all the stuff goes back into a drawer, box or bag and is – once more – relegated to “maybe later”. Unfortunately, this often leaves you with more of a mess than you had before.

Running out of time is actually one of the main reasons why projects aren’t finished. Time is a tricky mistress, but there are ways to manage this resource during a decluttering project: either do projects with no other plans afterwards so you can spend as much time as you need, or you can try and cut a project into smaller bits that feel more manageable time-wise.

Stay motivated. This is where the first three steps come together: each time you finish as small project and you see the improvements – small as they may be – you’ll be rewarded with a sense of success. One more job done, some items easier to access, things looking more tidy, etc.

I’m aware, of course, that small projects will not immediately change you life in a big way, but they are much more likely to succeed in the early stages of your efforts and they will teach you how to tackle larger ones (think: loft or garage).

Anything you own can go out of fashion overnight and turn into something you no longer wear. Mostly, this dead weight will end up in some hidden wardrobe, box, loft or storage unit … kept for a long time and forgotten.

Most people follow fashion for one of two reasons: fitting in (= doing what everyone else does) or setting yourself apart from the others (= by adopting the new and unusual). The real question is: do you want to fit in or stand out?
Either way, you will end up with items that only serve you for a short period of time and then accumulate things you never use because you live in hope that a particular style may just make a reappearance sometime soon.

To break this cycle, it may be a good idea to think about cultivating a personal style rather than following every new fashion that hits the stores. Following trends may help you fit into a peer group and avoid any confrontation regarding your outfit, but having your personal style gives you more freedom in your choices and keep you away from the constant hunt for the next new thing.

Of course, having a personal style does not mean you can’t look for new things, but maybe the pressure to follow suit is taken down a little and you end up being able to manage your wardrobe space a little more easily.

In practical terms, the most space-efficient option to hone your fashion is a capsule wardrobe with a couple of standard pieces that can be combined with stand-out highlights to add variation. Think of the capsule pieces as a canvas for the more fashion-forward pieces that stand out and can be updated easily. You can still follow trends but you won’t have to change everything.

A capsule wardrobe does not have to be boring either, we don’t all have to look like Steve Jobs! The ‘capsule’ element does not have to be defined by its colour (usually black or muted tones) but could be a particular model in several colours, or you may limit the added elements to certain lengths or shapes.

It took me a while to find a style that I like and I have stuck with it ever since. It’s a comfortable cut of trousers that suits me, plus T-shirts, pullovers and various shirts. I choose the colour of trousers, plus a top that suits the temperature and weather. Not exactly a capsule wardrobe, but close enough.

I have had my share of clients with expired foods that have resulted from buying in bulk and then either forgetting the tins, or losing interest in eating that particular stuff.

You need to ask yourself: how and where do you store things? Most of us don’t have enough proper pantry space. Storage in a typical British home tends to be limited, so bulk-bought foods often end up in the garage or somewhere in the back of cupboards, where they are easily forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind. And then the same items are bought again, eating up the savings you make on the initial bulk-buy.

Add to this the psychology of shopping: can you refuse a cheap deal that is offered on your way to the checkout till? A special offer? Or – even worse – Black Friday deals? The real question to ask yourself here is not so much “Can I refuse this ‘cheap’ offer?”, but “Do I actually need this?”

When you find yourself in front of an “offer”, keep in mind that someone else wants you to buy this, and ask yourself why that would be the case: check expiry dates and conditions. And then consider where the “offer” ends up in your home. You may just come to the conclusion that you don’t really want to go ahead.

Speaking about paying for things, you may have encountered one of the many “buy now, pay later” services that allow you to pay purchases in instalments over a period of time. Those payments are usually interest-free, but only as long as you pay them in time. If you don’t, you may find yourself paying significant interest, though.

Such services can be particularly troublesome for those who struggle with managing money because it’s easy to accumulate instalment upon instalment and lose track of the total of repayments due. In my mind, they are more problematic than paying with a card, because the card payments CAN easily be followed up with bank extracts or a banking app. The delay payment services tend to claim money irregularly, and it’s a bit of a nightmare to follow up on the status quo, and it’s easy to overspend.

There is something to be said for cash payments when it comes to staying on top of your spendings.

Suddenly, shopping had become an ‘activity’ or even an ‘experience’ that could provide fun, especially when experienced in the presence of like-minded friends.

Similar to any other activities we find pleasurable, this jump-starts the production of endorphins in the body, and as with other addictions, and we want more of it. And so we return to shop some more. Where does all this leave us, though? First of all, we seem to have lost sight of an important bit of knowledge: that there is a difference between ‘needing’ something or simply ‘wanting’ it.

The next step is ‘retail therapy’, going out with the intention to buy things because it makes you happy, because it takes you away from your daily (often depressing) life and into a world full of wonders, constant change, and the dreams of being famous, rich or beautiful. In the end, it’s a distraction from some other underlying issue, of course, but it’s an attractive one. It is also very addictive.

That brings us back to where we started: remember those society ladies 150 years ago who started the trend of browsing and drinking tea? Venture a guess why they did this? Probably they were tired of being cooped up at home and found the thrill of browsing attractive, maybe even slightly addictive. The only thing that’s changed is that in the modern world shops actively encourage such behaviour whereas back then it was rather seen as a nuisance to have someone wander around a shop without buying anything.

There is an especially bitter taste to all of this: if it all boils down, it’s the act of shopping that gives you the mental boost, not the item itself. However, the item is here to stay with you and it could be considered as clutter from the moment you bring it into your home.

There may be no sentimental attachment or practical use to many of the things you pay for, they only have negative effects: they cost you good money, you have to carry them home, store them somewhere, and in the end you’ll have to take the difficult decision to let go of something that has accumulated all the resentment associated with that journey.

Shopping addiction is a serious matter and it’s important to be able to recognise it in yourself, and take the necessary steps to remove yourself from that particular trap.