Inner you
Best known as the organisational guru on BBC One’s Sort Your Life Out, Dilly Carter, founder of Declutter Dollies, shares how clearing our clutter can improve our mental wellbeing
When it comes to clearing our homes and spaces, the little fixes can make the most difference – changing the time on the oven clock to the correct one, organising your bookshelves or sorting through the old receipts in your purse. Yet these small wins are the things we often put off.
Research has shown that people who describe their living spaces as cluttered are more likely to be fatigued and depressed than those who describe their homes as restful and restorative. A clear home means a clearer mind, because it gives you a sense of control over your environment. You can choose to control what comes into your house, and taking back that control will leave you starting to feel more positive.
I know this – because I have seen it first-hand. For more than 20 years, I’ve worked as a professional organiser in people’s homes through my company, Declutter Dollies. More recently, I’ve become an organisational expert on TV. In every home I go to, people are amazed at how decluttering feels like a weight has been lifted from their shoulders. They feel a new sense of calm and clarity.
FINDING CALM
For as long as I can remember, I’ve found joy in order. I think it is because I was born into chaos. I spent the first three years of my life in an orphanage in Sri Lanka, where it was hectic and noisy and I was surrounded by lots of other children. We didn’t have much, and everything we did have, we shared. I’m sure this has shaped my view of material possessions – I don’t need much to be happy.
When I was three, my adoptive parents brought me to the UK, where I grew up in Shepperton. Both of them were naturally messy people and out at work full-time. They didn’t see keeping the house tidy as a priority. I hated the mess. As a child, I’d tidy their room, the bathroom and the kitchen, and when it got too much, I’d shut myself away in my bedroom, which was always lovely and spotless. Back then, just like now, I got a lot of satisfaction from things being in order, and my friends would call on me to organise their wardrobes or help with a clear-out. It roots back to that idea of controlling what I could amid the chaos of growing up.
Even as a child, I could see there was a link between a person’s environment and their mind. Throughout my teenage years, my mum, who has bipolar disorder, was in and out of hospital, where the environment was stark. By restricting patients’ belongings, it seemed to me that their personalities were also restricted. However, our home had the opposite problem: the clutter and chaos were also detrimental to her mental wellbeing. I realised then the importance of finding a happy medium
