Clutter, Clutter, Everywhere - and Not a Place to Sit!

If there is clutter, clutter everywhere and not a place to sit then you are a hoarder. Hoarders have recently been the subject of much discussion largely due to television productions such as ‘Life of Grime’ and ‘The Hoarder Next Door.’ Everyone knows someone who fits the stereotype. Their homes are filled to bursting point with items that no longer fulfil any useful purpose and become virtual prisons for occupiers who will not part with their clutter.

If the walls are closing in and your available floor space is becoming smaller by the day, you may well have a problem. But what does your habit of hoarding say about you?

Many will view your habit as a sign of an untidy and cluttered mind but you could argue that you are in fact quite organised in conserving all these items for a future time when they might be needed.

How do you view yourself? You are literally putting obstacles in your own path. After all it is likely you who is being inconvenienced the most. No one is forcing you to battle your way through corridors of clutter whenever you make your way from one room to another. Surely being a minimalist would make life so much easier?

You can’t find something you are searching for and you know you have dozens of them somewhere but they are all trapped between several geological strata's of junk. So you go out and buy another one - this is how clutter breeds more clutter. No wonder people throw up their arms in despair whenever they enter your home.

Try to reduce your clutter gradually if you cannot cope with dramatic changes all at once. Enlist the help of friends but only if they agree not to get rid of anything without asking you first. This is the ultimate horror for a hoarder to find out that someone has disposed of something of theirs. The incorrigible hoarder will often empty bins to retrieve the lost items however useless they might have been.

Hoarders need to learn that they can be happier without all the clutter they surround themselves with and that household chores will be less time consuming without having to constantly shift things from one place to another.

Like many obsessive habits, hoarding can be overcome. Bin the rubbish, recycle what you can and take your excess items to charity shops where they can be appreciated by others instead of lying around for moths and mice to nibble.

Some hoarders can be incredibly clean and meticulously organise their piles of clutter into specific categories. The only real issue here is the lack of space to put their possessions. The worst possible type of hoarder does not differentiate between clean clutter and dirty debris. Their homes become veritable rubbish dumps that can soon become a health hazard to all occupants and visitors. Help with hoarding is available and no one need live in a mess when they don't really have to.

if every area in your home has lost its designated purpose then you have a real problem. If you can no longer work on your kitchen worktop or bath in your bathtub because it is full of clutter then you have a real issue you need to resolve.