One of the reasons that looking after Mum has been so easy is that she is not a hoarder, she doesn’t collect random stuff and she it ruthless about throwing things away. My Grandad was the same and when he died, it made clearing his flat easy in a difficult time.

Overall the Hull’s are not into clutter, my Dad’s flat in contrast was a disaster. I went into it the day after they found his body and it was a nightmare. I couldn’t go back, that was the flat I grew up in and it was traumatising, I regret not being able to do it now but it was probably for the best. Mum and Ben, with help from Dad’s siblings did it, and they took a bunch of stuff and so much stuff was taken to the tip that we had to pay an excess rubbish fee.

I am a bit more hoardery than Mum, nowhere near as bad as Dad but looking after Mum has made me think a bit more about my space. A big part is, that right now I’m only here for four nights. I come home on Friday but I spent Saturday daytime at Mum’s. I need the flat to function and to be a restful place for me. I heard clutter described as ‘noise’ the other day and that’s what it is to me. If the flat is messy and/or cluttered it’s noisy to me and that doesn’t help my mental health.

I’m in a season where I don’t operate at my best because everything is hard and depressing – thank you SAD, and in a season of life that is just busy and stressful (work, menopause, caring for Mum). Recently, I’ve been so aware that I’m not doing this with the grace that I’d like to have and I’m an ‘action changes attitude’ person. So while therapy (and prayer) are helping a lot, I will feel calmer when I have a calmer space.

That’s reason enough think about my living space but I also am aware that as a childless, single person clearing my house is probably going to be done by my nephews or if it’s really bad by people they’ve paid. I don’t want to leave a mess and I’m working on it.

First there was housework to do, it’s ironic that while I do all of Mum’s housework (laundry, ironing, hoovering, mopping, and washing up), mine has been neglected. I caught up with all of it and that helped massively because then I just started putting things away.

I don’t have time to do a massive declutter of the flat but I have spent some time this week sorting the spots that have been really stressing me out. The clutter around the kitchen table is mostly allotment things, so I’ve rationalised all the piles into one pile not in the kitchen.

I put all the random jars that I swear had been growing on the unit in the kitchen away in the cupboard of doom and a tiny sort out of some of the things in the cupboard of doom. There was a pile of magazines on the sofa in the front room, so I sorted all of the magazines and threw a bunch away, which led to a tidy of the top of the cupboard in my bedroom. It’s all about putting things away and being more ruthless about whether I actually need them.

It’s wasn’t a massive clear up it took about two and a half hours of Sunday morning but it was to extra bin bags of rubbish and a massive amount of recycling. There is more to do, and I think that this is the way to handle it, keep on top of the regular housework, don’t bring g anything in until something has gone out and spend no more than three hours on it in one week.

What’s super weird but absolutely shouldn’t be is how much lighter I feel and how much easier it is to work and do just about anything I the flat. I don’t feel weighed down by the weight of the tasks I haven’t tackled and I’m energised by the idea of the next task to get done. I talk a lot about life being a series of lessons I have to constantly learn, forget and re-learn and remembering that my resilience in stressful times is directly linked to being in control of a clear space!

My next big jobs are going to be cleaning the oven, sorting out the seeds and having a clear out of the white cupboard in the living room.

Sometimes little things make massive differences!