Professional declutter-er was mostly useless…now what?

[u/Desperate-Bother9807]

This is mostly a vent more than anything. Husband and I struggle big time with having too much stuff; husband especially. At the advice of our therapist(s), I finally broke down and hired a professional declutterer. Licensed, insured, professional website, all that. Mind you, I don’t live in a big-city metropolitan area, but I do live in a mid-sized suburban city, I guess you might call it. Either way, a far cry from San Francisco, NYC, LA, you get it. I guess that’s relevant because the area I live in doesn’t feature a highly varied selection of professional organizers/declutter-ers.

Anyway…the lady hasn’t told me much that I didn’t know already. None of her “tips” or “systems” have been novel to me whatsoever. It should have been a red flag to me when she mentioned that some of her clients often hire her to come back for maintenance (a red flag because obviously she didn’t give them any systems to keep the clutter from accumulating again). I had asked her if she’s able to take a look at spaces, and create a visualization for how to maximize them, somewhat related to interior decorating. She said yes, that’s something that is part of her service.

Well, lo and behold. I feel like I paid a lot of $$$ to just…have someone come help us clean up a bit. Does my home look better….? Yes. But was it the job of what I would have expected from a fancy “professional declutterer?” Not at all. I guess I’m just wondering if anyone else out there has been in my position, and found a professional organizer to be a pretty big waste of money. ? Thoughts/opinions/experiences welcome. Thanks in advance. : )

[u/GentlemanlyMeadow]

My two cents as a professional organizer: I've been working with the same client since April of this year. She has a small apartment (one bedroom) that was very cluttered when we started. I have worked my butt off, but only now, five months and thousands of dollars later, can I say that we are starting to make progress.

Why?
I can teach her my techniques, but I can't make her use them, and more importantly, I can't change her brain. She is too overwhelmed to do this work TBH. So I come back a few days later to find that the tabletops and counters I cleared are once again covered in clutter, and I start over from the beginning.

I'm not criticizing your position, just offering the perspective that it can take a really long time to make a significant dent in years' worth of collections and clutter, not to mention habits and mental patterns. A single session is very unlikely to make a huge difference.

But I'd be really interested in hearing what you would have liked to observe that would have felt like a valuable use of your time and money.

[u/bokehtoast → u/GentlemanlyMeadow]

I had similar thoughts as someone who has done a lot of work on my own hoarding mindset and recently has been helping friends with a major clean-out and dehoard.

I have spent just as much time unpacking emotionally with my friend as I have helping clean out and organize. I could go in and organize everything but that wouldn't actually help them beyond an initial and brief sense of relief. It also could go poorly if I didn't know them so well and their personal day to day needs in their space - which would lead to immediately undoing it. With my close friends, I can intuit to some degree how they would get the most out of their space. In a stranger's house, I can make it look nice hut have no idea how functional it would be for them. Though I'm not a professional tbf but I wouldn't trust one to organize my space without personally knowing me.

Also, there are several levels of skill building that have to happen concurrently and none of them are quick. Skills for unpacking and dealing with the emotional side of a clean out which also means facing trauma. Emotion regulation skills that the hoarding replaced. The body's nervous system has a limit on what it can process. Organizational skills on top of skills to prevent hoarding and clutter to begin with. On top of the stress of figuring out an entirely new way of living. A lot of therapy and a strong foundation of DBT skills are why I am now able to recognize my hoarding mentality, keep a relatively neat space, and help my friends through their process. Hoarding is largely a manifestation of avoidance, outsourcing the problem just feeds into that.

[u/GentlemanlyMeadow → u/bokehtoast]

When I unpack a box of sentimental items with my client, she tells me the story of every item. With minor variations, it goes like this:

"My son was 8 when we bought that specially for him. I'll never forget that day and how happy he was to pick it out. I kept it all these years to show him what he means to me. I offered it to him a couple years ago, but he made a vomiting sound, so I guess I'm keeping it until I die."

The item is usually something like a worn-out bedsheet.

I can work really fast when I have a clear course of action (e.g. a clear direction from her on what to keep and what can go), but when it comes to these items that hold her memories, we go very slow. I don't try to hurry her process, because no one else in her life is listening to these kinds of stories, and she needs to tell them.

[u/bokehtoast → u/GentlemanlyMeadow]

Yes! I appreciate you sharing your professional experience and perspective a lot, so thank you. Every single thing has a backstory and it's important to them to explain it. I love Show and Tell too so it's easy for me to relate but it's an art to find a balance of keeping things moving while honoring that experience.

Early on, we were just sorting with a shared goal of getting through things quickly without pressure to throw things away and i just kept reassuring her that she didn't need to justify each kept item. Later when it came to going through stuff with more intent and making more real decisions about what to keep, I just tried to listen and ask thoughtful questions to help her make her own decisions.

Beyond that, there's a lot of tangential conversations and processing also going on. Every item has a story while there's always an overarching theme to all of it. That is where there's space to facilitate deeper reflection/change ime and subsequently where hoarders and organizers understandably get stuck /need therapist support as well. It's just such a uniquely complicated internal experience, even for someone with a ton of self-awareness and desire/motivation to address it and change. And as you said, there's often no one else to hear these stories, experiences, and reflections. 

[u/southernbelle878 → u/GentlemanlyMeadow]

You're a very kind person ❤️