2. We vacuum the floor!

When I arrived, Stella was ready. She had a plan.

She wanted to tackle the dining room which was filled with a collection of half opened boxes: pictures, glassware and ornaments from a recently deceased aunt. Because they weren’t Stella's with her memories attached, she figured it would be easier to have a go at getting them into a basic order. Collections of like things developed; sheet music was encouraged to migrate to the piano, glassware was arranged in orderly lines and some things that she liked were given homes in the kitchen.

Light nattering and discussions of the process accompanied our work. I had warned her that after the first visit, she might be drained the next day.

Stella said, 'I was tired which surprised me! It's not as though the work we did was hugely physically demanding.'

to which I replied,

'Thinking about and making choices is more tiring than people think. I'm impressed that you didn't cancel the second visit.'

She said that although she'd thought about it, she held onto her choice to clear the house of clutter because she knew it's the right thing for her to do.

Some things we unwrapped are meant for other family members and were set aside. Some smallish boxes were freed up.

I 'considered' the piles of papers in the front room which Stella had shown me on the first visit which she said actually had a some order to them and she sort of knew what was where. There was a pile on the sofa and two piles on the floor.

'Can I put the paper piles into these small boxes? I promise not to move or mix them up''Yes' said Stella. Each pile was 'containerised'. The bits of exposed carpet could be vacuumed which marked the territory. We had a moment's celebration! It already looked tidier.

I asked her whether she'd told her doctor about using a clutter clearer. She said he'd been concerned that she might be rushing things. But when she told him how we had limited the time to 4 hours every 2 weeks and weren’t pushing, he was pleased that we appreciated Stella’s needs.

At the end of the visit while we were still congratulating ourselves, Stella told me that she had booked a gardener to clear the back garden of weeds on our week off. I was impressed!

30. Inherited belongings

Some time ago, Stella inherited some things from an aunt. This was one of those   complicated family situations that happen in families.

‘Most of this has been left to me, but I want to share it with the rest of the family.’

‘Okay, why don’t we first separate out what you want to keep?’ 

That was actually a fairly quick pass.  The next question was which things to go to who.

‘This requires the wisdom of Solomon.  People are going to compare what they received and I need to make an even division’

The situation is made more difficult because some of the family live abroad.  Stella had already contacted the shipping company and had instructions from them about what information they needed to set the prices.  We organised the different lots into piles which we would measure and photograph for the shipping company.  All the aunt’s things were in the dining room spread out on the table and the floor.

‘Let’s put the sorted piles in the sitting room so we can see what we are doing’

The sitting room had been clear for a while.  It was great to have a place where we could work. We started each pile on a large piece of packing paper with the recipient’s name on it. Some sensitive papers turned up which Stella needed to think about so we stopped for the day, returning the individual piles to the dining room with the labelled packing papers ready for the next session.