Too many people start the other way 'round and set themselves up to fail

No shit. I bought plastic sleeves for all my comics and boxes to store them, then they just sat there until my son came up for Christmas. He was so bored, he stuffed all the sleeves for me. Until then, all they were was more clutter.

I also wrote it into my contract that there was an extra charge ($20 ) per hour, if the client chose to 'work with me'.

I love this.

If I could do it full-time, decluttering would be a dream job.

I LOVE getting rid of stuff. I always look at it as buying more room for myself. Space is a luxury. I also really like things getting used and loved, so cool stuff which does nothing but sit in a closet or a drawer can go to someone who will use it. Good for me, good for them, good for the stuff!

Mom has a Rule of 3 for cleaning, every day she has 3 things she's going to do for the day and then during the day, (like say during a commerical break on tv) she tries to pick up and put away three things.

The additional charge had a practical motivation in addition to being a 'hassle tax'. Working with a clutterer who thinks they want order is torturous. A LOT more therapy goes into those hours and my therapy clients pay alot more! So I found myself doing hard physical labor PLUS therapy for much less money. Not a good equation for me.

Only one client ever took me up on that and it was...as predicted...hard.

I love the rule of three erika. I should adopt that.

And Scrappy is me with regards to letting stuff get used by people who will use it.

Watching "Clean Sweep" on TLC is almost painful, especially when they have people who refuse to let things go. The organizers on that show have to go through so much therapy on camera in between trying to clean out (usually) 50-70 percent of the stuff in these people's rooms.

The Boy has hoarder tendencies. Not of the magnitude that lands people on Oprah, but still -- the second bedroom in the house is appalling. In fact, *it* should be on Oprah -- it's that bad. (The rest of the house is not, and from what I understand, it's better for hoarders to have a proscribed space that's theirs, to muck up as they wish, as long as it doesn't spill into the rest of the house.)

The problem in this house is the utter lack of closets/built-in storage. There are 2 closets in the entire house. Two. One in each bedroom, and that's it. No linen closet, no front hall/coat closet, no random closet in a hallway somewhere -- none. And no built-in storage like shelving, etc.

So there's NO place to put things, except flat surfaces, like the dining-room table, and the desk, and the end tables, and and and.

I'd happily pay a declutterer to make sense of this house, and help us figure out our needs for storage so that we could build/buy shelving, etc.

Watching "Clean Sweep" on TLC is almost painful, especially when they have people who refuse to let things go.

But The Boy's biggest problem -- which goes with the hoarding tendencies -- is that he can't let go of stuff. He gets panicky and freaks out. I moved in about 14 months ago, and when I moved in, he put an old chair on the front porch because there was no room inside for it. And it sat there for over a year. He finally put it out to the trash last week.

That's the problem -- he can't just weed through a room (or a closet, or a pile of papers) and start tossing stuff. He has to get used to the idea of getting rid of stuff, and accept that "Maybe I'll use this one day" is never going to happen. And that? Apparently takes a long long LONG-ass time.

But progress does....progress. Very very very slowly. Glacially. Because the front porch is now cleaned off, for the first time in 14 months (and, in truth, longer than that, because it was chaotic even before I moved in).

I would do it so much faster, but it would make him lose it, and that's not worth it. We're getting there, but -- oh my god, so much slower than I ever imagined.

a delicious Spanish-style omelet... should reheat well, like a quiche, no?

I love tortilla espanola cold.

You guys are tickling my de-clutter bone. If it wasn't for The Oscars I'd get started tonight. Will there be a watch-n-post here in Natter?

I would have an immaculate, clutter-free house if not the for the three other damn humans who live with me, and bring needless crap into the house, and take perfectly tidy things and strew them all over the place.

My current de-cluttering issue is I can't stand to throw things away, because hello, environment!, but it is incredible effort to usefully dispose of things, and sometimes near-impossible. I mean, I have two functional 35 mm cameras (point and shoot). What the hell am I supposed to do with stuff like that?

Also, we are still settling into this house (yes, we've been here 6 months, but children = no free time) and some stuff does not yet have its place, so it is clutter.

I've never gotten much out of watching Clean Sweep, but I like How Clean Is Your House? very much. Occasionally some of their clients are certifiable, like the woman with 20 parrots flying free around her house, but most of them are nice people who've lost their way.