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Decluttering after a death

9/11/2020

Decluttering a home can be hard work. This not only means hard physical work, shifting boxes or sifting through a lot of small and large items, but it can also turn into devastatingly difficult emotional work on occasion.

One of the reasons for accumulating clutter and having a hard time with letting go of any of it is the emotional value we assign to items in our possession. This is a typical element in all decluttering, but especially so the older my clients are. Of course: they had a lot more time to experience important moments.

Does your life fit your rhythm?

26/10/2020

Irrespective of the situation you live in, be it in these taxing times of Covid-19 and limited possibilities or not, if you work from home or elsewhere, if you live on your own or with partner or family, one thing is for certain: your life rhythms are determined to some degree from the outside.

Either way, you do have a certain level of control over how your day is being structured, even if you may not always be aware of it. Let’s have a look at what exactly you CAN do to adjust your daily routines to serve you better.

Christmas is coming... again.

12/10/2020

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You may be thinking “What? Christmas is months away!” But the sad truth is this: what feels like an eternity in terms of months is really closer than you think: you have little more than 10 weeks left to get everything organised and ready to rumble.

There: 10 weeks sounds a lot shorter than ‘months away’. This is the kind of bias we always bump into when it comes to planning ahead: not only does ‘months’ sound like a huge amount of time, but also we tend to underestimate just how long it takes to get things done in the runup to the big event.

One of the main culprits here is that just looking at what you need to do in terms of shopping, pre-cooking, invitations, cards, decorations, setup, cleaning, etc. does not give you the whole picture. You may be feeling that these actions are not all that time-consuming, but what you keep forgetting is this: all those things need to be done on top of what you have to do every day anyway. And that changes things quite a bit. While those preparation on their own may only take you a couple of days of rigorous planning and running around, if you add your regular work schedule, school runs, doctor appointments, yoga class, meeting up with your friends, work Christmas dinners (and your partner’s, too, of course), the state of affairs is a lot more dire!

Once you realise that all the Christmas stuff needs to be slotted into the few free moments you may liberate in your regular schedule, Christmas turns out to be much too close for comfort.

In these difficult times of Covid limitations, all this has the potential to take a lot longer even: waiting outside to be let into a store, and/or having to wait at home for a delivery that will otherwise end up in a pickup spot 20 miles away will keep you busy for much longer than you would think! It’s hard to get everything organised without getting frazzled at the best of times, and 2020 has most certainly not been ‘the best of times’, right?

My advice is simple: don’t wait any longer and get yourself sorted NOW rather than later. Make a plan. Get started sooner rather than later. Do what you can do ahead of time. Stay level-headed and make sure YOU can enjoy Christmas as well rather than spending all of December in a state of panic, and Christmas time in the kitchen.

If you know that time has always tended to get away from you, here’s something to help you get everything done in time: I am offering an online workshop to get you started on the right foot, and I promise that at the end of the workshop you’ll have the makings of a personalised plan to ensure that your Christmas will be a relaxing one.

Have a look here and sign up for the planned workshops!

Young men

28/9/2020

Talking about younger men and their relationship with clutter and lack of organisation is a tricky subject, even without going into desperate attempts at avoiding gender stereotypes. Leaving aside any effects of being brought up in a household that retains levels of gender typical association of mom or dad with particular tasks, there are some differences in the way young women and young men associate with things they surround themselves with. There also appear to be some differences in the way they react to how others see them, as far as I can tell from professional experience with decluttering clients.

What difference does it make to employ a PO?

14/9/2020

You may be wondering what a Professional Organiser or a Decluttering Specialist can add that you wouldn’t be able to do on your own. To be honest, you wouldn’t be the first person to ask that question! At first sight, most people appear to have the abilities necessary to clear their space, shift items around, look at things and make decisions, etc., so why pay for someone to help you out? Isn’t this an unnecessary expense when you could do it all yourself?

This appears to be common sense, but ask yourself if it actually holds true for you?

Is there such a thing as a 'womancave'?

31/8/2020

Despite efforts to eradicate differences between men and women when it comes to behaviour, social connections, education, upbringing… there are clear differences in all those and many other fields of interaction with others still. We may have made some progress on this particular road, but we are far from equal in oh so many respects.

What interests me mostly is not so much the social differences as such, but the way they affect how men and women deal with their environment, the choices they make when it comes to accumulating things and dealing with their possessions.

Asking for help

20/7/2020

Many of us have been brought up to rely on our own good judgement and make sure to be self-sufficient, relying on family for help if needed, but better not make use of that too much. This seems to me to be a very pressure-ridden approach, especially since the way families work today is very different from only 50 years ago.

More and more people live alone, in relatively small homes, and their families further away than just the next larger town. This puts us into ever more of a difficult spot: we rely on friends rather than family members to a much larger degree than used to be the case for our own parents. Worse even: many – especially the older generation – may not have friends in a position to provide assistance when needed, and they have to fall back on social services or the kindness of neighbours and total strangers.

Do you see things as they are of the way you want them to be?

6/7/2020

I have written and spoken in videos a lot about what I call the “outsider’s view”, the notion that we get used to the way things are and stop seeing any other way of doing thing, or arranging things in your home. This also includes our ability to overlook when things start to slide and stuff starts accumulating in the dark corners or on top of your furniture outright.

It requires an outsider to come in and point out what seems to go wrong, as well as the person(s) living in that home to trust and accept that advice if change is to be happening anytime soon.

The virtual journey

22/6/2020

While quarantine is gradually taken down to a lower level, it seems that my business has changed a little throughout the last couple of months: a lot of it has been taken online and virtual organising has become more of a thing for me than ever before.

YES: I have done virtual assistance before the lockdown. In truth I have never really advertised it as a standalone thing, but rather as a follow-up at the end of a live session with clients to keep tabs on their progress. These days, however, the virtual side has become as relevant to me as the live assistance in my clients’ homes.

Men are sociable in different ways

8/6/2020

The following content obviously contains generalisations that are solely based on my own impressions while working with clients. Furthermore, most of my clients belong to the older age bracket and have lived in households with traditional male/female task separations.

In any couple, there is usually one partner who keeps the communications with outsiders open, while the other surfs the waves that come their way to some degree. In my experiences with clients, there often is a huge gender difference when it comes to keeping up with social contacts outside the relationship or family, and in heterosexual couples this role most often falls to the woman, rather than the man.

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The author

Hi, my name is Tilo Flache. My current mission: help my clients declutter mind and space.

This blog contains pointers for your journey towards a happier living experience.

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