An Organised Me

I'm trying to find my way back to being an organised me.

I used to be neat and organised - through my youth, while living at share houses while studying at uni, my first solo house... but when I moved into a big house with my partner, my possessions multiplied to fill up the spaces. I never threw anything out as I never needed to - there was always room to stash it somewhere. So I became less neat - as new things came in I never rearranged how I stored things to accommodate the changes. It still looked pretty tidy in my house, but it was always on the edge of being messy. My wardrobe (which of course was never seen by visitors) in particular was ridiculous, my clothes spread between my walk-in-robe, my husband's walk-in-robe and a built-in in another room.

And then life got very complicated. My husband died very suddenly and unexpectedly. As if this wasn't challenging enough I was pregnant with twins. So all of a sudden I had a house which was full of my things, our things, his things and I had to make space for two little people who were going to be needing an awful lot of things but who wouldn't be tidying up after themselves for many years. So all of a sudden I effectively had to deal with 4 people's worth of possessions - at a time when I wasn't even able to look after myself!


That was now three years ago. I'm still in the same house and in some ways it is still full of things that don't need to be here. But there has been a lot of progress over that time - some times it feels like all I have done for three years is throw things away.

Having had to deal with the experience of the death of a partner and going through their possessions has given me a different perspective on a lot of things.

My need to be organised is no doubt part of trying to feel in control after so much of my recent life has felt out of control, but it's not only that. It's also the process of recognising how important or unimportant some things are. In addition there is the thought that before too long I may move house to something a bit more suited to my new life - having less would mean a smaller house would fit us, plus who wants to move more things than they have to?

So I have been throwing things out for three years - but I didn't start dealing with my wardrobe until the last 18 months. What I plan to share here are all the techniques that have helped me get rid of (so far) what I estimate to have been about 75% of my clothes.