About Stella

Chrystine Bennett writes:

Stella Brown, a high flying professional person working in a national organisation, was hit by a serious illness later compounded by clinical depression, she has since retired.

In 2007, Stella started thinking about all the stuff that had built up around her. She knew she couldn’t manage to clear it by herself so she started looking at clutter clearing web sites. She didn’t want someone who would come and just tell her what needed to be done. She wanted someone who would get down on the floor and do the actual dirty work with her. After reading several websites very carefully, she was convinced that it would be Cluttergone.

A broken boiler pushed her to clearing some of the paper in the front hall and purchasing a shredder. Stella, looking at the piles of paper decided that even though she couldn’t deal with the clutter herself, she could stop it from getting any worse. She put a recycling bag in the front hall next to where she opened the post.

6 March 2008, she was ready to contact Cluttergone.

Stella told me during a recent visit that having screwed up her courage to make the call; she’d hung up when the phone wasn’t answered after 4 or 5 rings. Beverly used the phone memory to call her back.

Stella told both Beverly and me that she knew this was going to be a very long process and that she wasn’t setting any kind of deadline. We advised that each visit should not be longer than about 4 hours and there should be tw0 weeks between each visit.

Subsequently, I learnt from Stella that her psychiatrist was reassured by this and the fact that we were not trying to push too far or too fast and that she retained control. Stella has also more recently said that it continues to be scary to be clearing the clutter but with the support she has she can cope.