Without any doubt, the most common question I am asked about tidying, cleaning and decluttering is how to find the motivation to start. When we live in messy, dirty or cluttered homes our energy is quite literally drained from us by the mess. It turns out that living in a messy home will actually cause you stress and anxiety, which in turn makes tackling the mess that little bit harder. This is the vicious clutter cycle. You are stressed by your mess, so you are unable to tac

It is no secret that children are not great fans of tidying up; it cuts into their all-important and hectic playdate schedules. So much to play, so little time to tidy. Yet teaching your littles to help out around the house needn't be like pulling teeth, nor do you need to resort to threats and bribes (been there, done that, bought the t-shirt). Sick of tantrums and tears from children asked to tidy, I decided to turn tidying, cleaning and decluttering into exactly what a chi

Before I began my own journey towards a Tidy Life, I was deeply sceptical as to whether or not there was a link between physical clutter and mental mess. Could my messy home really be a sign that my mental space was far from clear? My mum regularly told me when I was a teenager that she could predict an oncoming episode of depression, low mood, anxiety or self-doubt based on whether or not I was picking up my dirty socks. Like an earthquake expert, she could see the signs bef

Without a doubt, the problem my clients, friends, family and online followers present me with most often is "Claire, I'm so overwhelmed by my house and I just don't know where to start." So nothing too big, right?! I'll let you in on a secret: sometimes I'm overwhelmed by the length of my to-do list. You're not alone! There's laundry falling out of the hamper, bags waiting to be donated to the charity shop, food going bad in the fridge and 15 half-finished projects. In recent

If I asked you to guess how many items can be found in an average Western household, I promise you wouldn't come close to the right answer. Nobody I have asked has guessed correctly. My mum guessed it must be thousands. "Maybe 5,000?" My sister reckoned that was an underestimate and doubled it. "At least 10,000." Guesses ranged from the hundreds to about 50,000 - but that guesser thought this would be the very high end of average. None of them are even close. Because amazingl