17. Piling in heaps and a clothing rail

‘I want to book in a cleaning company to give the whole house a going over. So I want to start consolidating what we've done. There's no point in having them if they can't get into most of the rooms. Let's start with the spare bedroom.’

The spare room used to have piles of clothes everywhere making it virtually impassable. Since Stella had bought the extra dress rail*, she could now have all her clothes in her bedroom.

Stella wanted to shift some of the furniture around so we moved a large cupboard, first removing the contents and a chair. This is the room where the Christmas decorations and wrapping are kept. We took the opportunity to organise it all.

Then we spent time moving boxes around, basic piling-in-heaps. Piling-in-heaps is the first step to organising things. In order for a client to see how much and what they have, it helps to get one category of objects in one place. Stella is particularly fond of this part of the process; she calls it "like with like" and finds it has cut costs considerably. She can find things even before they really have a home so doesn't go out and buy more.

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*There are lots of clothing rails on the market. Many have lots of pieces and require complicated assembly. The results are often unreliable and not very sturdy. The best rails come in 4 pieces: 2 ends which click into the bottom piece and then a top bar that fits onto the side pieces. They can be put up and taken down in less than 5 minutes and are perfect for coats at big parties. Stella has found it invaluable to have a stable rail like this with wheels.

27. Much tidier now

When Stella made this booking, she was expecting friends to come for drinks before they all went out to dinner together. We were going to titivate the sitting room and consolidate some of the things we’d been working on.

‘My friends have had train problems so they can’t come today and I was up late last night seeing Obama through his celebrations. So I don’t really have a plan for this session’

‘Okay, shall we do some of those bits and pieces that have been bugging you? We could start with packing away the Christmas decorations.’

‘That’s good. Can we then go back to that cupboard under the stairs? It’s aired out now. I’ve bought some special stackable plastic boxes for things like light bulbs.’

It didn’t take very long because we’d already sorted under the stairs and disposed of the rubbish in an earlier visit.

‘The place is now so much tidier that I’ve started thinking about decorating. I’ve had these pictures framed and I bought cushions. I want to use the needlepoint cushion covers we found. Come see the dining room. Do you notice anything?’

‘You’ve removed the three vases of fake flowers you were using to screen the mess in the room.’

‘I’ve given several lots to the charity shop and the others I’ve just thrown away.
As soon as I have anything for charity, I rush out and take them immediately!’

Then we went back to our default activity: sorting paper and did a couple more boxes.

Stella said, ‘Please notice, I am actually sorting paper into piles, not just watching you or playing around the edges.’

As we worked, we talked a bit more about the last session when we had to find the box. If it had disappeared altogether, our process would have been thrown into doubt.

As we finished for the day, I said:

‘We’ve only got three more boxes of paper to do.’ Stella replied, ‘Our next default task will be the books.’