My Decluttering Story

I grew up in a hoarded house. My dad called himself Junkman John with pride. He had piles of tires filled with black widows, rusting cars, a school bus, piles of 2x4 planks. He bought a dump truck load of shattered glass because he believed it would increase in price and he could resell it for a profit. A year later, part of our fence made of scavenged garage doors fell onto the glass pile and became the perfect summer basking and reading spot for his 12 year old daughter, me. My mom did her best to keep the house clear, but the stuff crept into the porch…then into the spare room…then in one elder brother’s bedroom when he moved out, then the next brother’s bedroom when he moved out.

As a teen, the shame of growing up in that home was intense, but as an adult, I can see with clear eyes that my dad had a deep pain inside him, and hoarding is a coping mechanism like any other.

As an adult, having moved 13 times since age 15 and having ended up across the country with just a carload of belongings, I didn’t have a whole lot myself. I had a few close calls with a spare room where things just began to pile up a la my dad, but the final straw was when I threw a foam mattress pad on top of the pile and I realized I had to get the room in order.

I found myself taking great joy in decluttering friends’ parents houses on holidays, turning a small garret into a lovely big dressing room, micro-organizing jewelry, tearing through closets. In late 2022, my boyfriend (now husband) and I went home to visit my mom and found that her small 2-bedroom apartment had descended into utter chaos. Her bedroom was full of stacks of boxes that hadn’t been unpacked in years. A blanket with vomit and feces from a cat that had passed away a year prior lay in a heap on top of a mish-mash pile. Her not-quite walk-in closet was full of both her AND my little brother’s junk. Every surface was piled with the bits and pieces that no one ever knows quite what to do with. I was amazed, astonished, aghast. What had happened here? How did it get so bad?

After unpacking her precious memories from the various moldering stacks of boxes, we evicted trash magazines and old VHS tapes from her beautiful cedar hope chest and filled it with the things she actually cares about. We dismantled her closet and made my little brother put his belongings in his own room…just kidding, he decluttered most of that too. We went through each drawer and looked under the bed. We threw out bags of trash, recycled dozens of boxes, donated carloads of belongings to the local thrift store, set up a row of laundry to be done. We wiped down and vacuumed, we arranged displays of her favorite things (rocks) on her vanity, we made her bedroom feel light, refreshing, and joyful.

After that, my mind really began to churn. What if I did this as a business? Do you just put up a shingle? How would I get people to let me, a total stranger, into their homes, a deep source of secret shame?

I ended up posting first to my neighborhood Next Door, of all things, which got me my first paying client. In all ways, Brenda was an ideal first client - I’ll post more about her someday but some of her before and afters are up on my home page. I’ve been decluttering professionally but part-time for two years now, and I find nothing more invigorating than clearing space for joy!

My parents are a big part of why I call my business Declutter with Compassion. Through them I’ve realized that most people who struggle with chronic disorganization, especially so-called ‘hoarders,’ are hurting deeply. Their brains create a safe little nest to protect them. What starts out as a small disorganization problem rapidly snowballs when people experience trauma, to the point that the only way their brains can cope with their coping mechanism is to put blinders on and pretend it’s not happening, or not that bad.