What to expect when we work together

Homes can take years to fill, and sorting can take more than a visit or two.

Clutter is a pile of hidden decisions, and finding out what's really in it is the work itself. We expect effort estimates to vary as we progress and we learn how best to work together to accommodate your needs.

What we bring: our best effort to work with you to create a tailored approach prioritising what is most important to you, your loved ones and your home.

If you'd like certainty, give us a budget and we'll do our best to make the most of the time inside it. Any time guess we give is there to help you plan, so please hold it loosely.

Often, yes. More hours, or more of us, and things tend to move quickly. The trade-off: bigger, broader decisions, less fine care, and a higher cost which can be emotional as well as financial. For example triggering a depression for someone with a hoarding issue.

If there's a deadline, tell us and we'll do our best to plan the fastest sensible route and price it before you book.

But organising has a maximum speed we won't normally go beyond: see the maximum honest speed, further down.

Because sorting means taking things out before they go back in. Halfway through, a room can look worse than when we started.

That's not mess; it's normal progress. Often the room is not finished at the end of a session, in which case, we always aim to leave everything as safe and tidy as possible.

Overstretching by trying to tackle too much at once is a common recipe for failure that we have seen happen only too often. This can lead to hours of effort moving things around with no real sense of progress. The most dangerous outcome is reinforcing a sense of overwhelm and helplessness.

Breaking tasks into small manageable chunks will usually maximise chances of a more sustainable momentum. A smaller but visible achievement feeds motivation and can bring a surprising amount of relief, satisfaction and hope, even if it's not perfect and there may still be a lot to do.

So we usually ask which room, and which spot in it, would bring most relief and we'll start there.

That's the one part only you can play: they're your things, and only you know what they mean. We aim to make deciding as easy as we can: anything we're unsure about goes into clearly marked sorting boxes for you to go through in your own time, or you can decide alongside us as we work.

How much deciding you want varies. Some people would happily wave the lot goodbye; for others, almost everything holds a story. Both are fine.

And one more thing: we're human, and in a very full home mistakes can happen. The more involved you are, the better chances of everything landing where it should.

As little or as much as you require and feel comfortable with. Please let us know as early as possible and we'll do our best to structure sessions to your needs.

Most important of all: you can't offend us, if something feels even slightly wrong, please tell us immediately.

We usually take a few before and after photos or short movies of the areas we work on. They help us track progress, judge the true size of the job, and sometimes can help us find things, or at least point us in the right direction.

If something unexpected turns up, we may photograph that too so we can show you what we found. All photos are private working records: you can see them any time, and they are not shared without your explicit approval.

If photos feel uncomfortable, tell us and we'll see if we can find ways to accommodate or not.

And a word on what photos are: they help us track progress, especially in a very full home, but they can't capture everything, so they're an aid to the work rather than a guaranteed record of every single item.

Our rates are on the pricing page. We confirm your rate before anything is booked, and invoices usually arrive as the work happens, so nothing piles up quietly. If something would cost you money (like a skip), we agree it with you first. Payment plans are there for bigger projects.

Our 20% community commitment: We are committed to providing 20% of our service capacity at a 20% discount to help those that need help with paying. At time of writing we have a waiting list to join our community slots so this is on a best endeavours basis.

Also please see our help with paying page.

Cleaning and organising are part of it, but the heart is support from someone who's been there. Kari has lived the other side of this work: a long deep depression, a recent ADHD diagnosis herself, a home she wouldn't have let anyone see. Tidying became her way of improving her mental health, and she has made it her mission to help others do the same.

She spent four years as an NHS Lived Experience Professional and two as a Recovery College peer trainer, supporting people by drawing on what she'd lived through, and that's exactly how she works in your home: not an expert arriving to fix you, someone who gets it, working beside you. It's why we say please don't tidy first, and why what we find is met without judgement.

It's not something we push on you but when it helps, yes: "I wear my heart on my sleeves". Kari isn't afraid to say "I know this one from the inside", because going first makes hard things easier to say out loud, and because she's living proof that things change.

Although Kari aced her recovery, the journey never ends, so it's not just "I have been there", sometimes it's literally "I'm here right now".

Please don't. We mean it. There is no state of a home that shocks us; Kari has lived in one she wouldn't have let anyone see, during one of the worst depressions of her life. Seeing your home as it really is helps us help you.

And there's a stranger, truer thing underneath, best said in Kari's own words: "The worse it is, the more I like it: the more satisfying, the more you see the progress. So it's not just that I don't judge. I truly enjoy it. Cleaning and tidying a house that's already spotless? For me, that's boring." New clients don't tend to believe this at first. Then they watch how happy she is in the thick of it, the penny drops (one client put it best: "so you really do like this gleaming disgustingness"), and that's usually when people relax.

We're organisers with lived experience, not therapists or clinicians, so we don't give medical, legal or financial advice. And we're not experts in everything: we wouldn't necessarily know how to assess structural damage, or exactly which specialist a situation needs. So if we find something that looks like it needs one (damp, pests, anything unsafe), we may need to pause that area and talk it through with you, and where we can, we do our best to recommend the type of help required. If we ever suggest someone, you choose and deal with them directly; a suggestion is us trying to help, not a guarantee. Saying "that's not us" honestly is part of doing this properly.