De-cluttering expert Sue Kay found herself drawing on the advice she gives to clients as she traded her East Finchley home for a central London pad. Johnny Turner talks to her about the move, our shopaholic culture and the psychology of having too much stuff.
In this must-have, must-shop world it is worth stepping back occasionally and wondering why we have accumulated what we have. When I moved six months ago, I went through two culls of paperbacks and still had two copies of some novels; ridiculous as it sounds, I couldn’t decide which cover I liked better.
And a pile of VHSs when I no longer have a working VCR?
Which leads me to a catchphrase that, however inappropriate when considering the clutter of others, is very tempting to use when looking at my own: ‘How sad is that?’
Sadness, of course, cuts to the heart of why it is difficult to let go of things. For Sue Kay, de-cluttering expert and author of two books on the subjects, a degree in psychology is a useful tool when dealing with clients. ‘It is emotional,’ says Kay over the phone from her new Marylebone home. ‘You’re coming across things from your past – maybe you’ve lost someone or had a difficult breakup.’
As in the song ‘These Foolish Things’, mementos trigger longing for what was: ‘A cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces / An airline ticket to romantic places / And still my heart has wings …’
So why should we part with what makes us nostalgic? ‘You’re moving your life forward, and to do that you have to let go,’ she says. But this forward motion is not without a price, as we all know. ‘There’s a always a tweak – and a tweak for me may be a pain for someone else.’
Our homes have emotional power in our lives; the need to feel secure is, after all, one of our most basic driving forces. Sue is very aware of this and with her easygoing, friendly style she makes it easy to look honestly at your habits with regard to your possessions. ‘I’m not here to judge or bully you,’ she says. ‘I would never tell you to get rid of something that’s important to you.’ The key to the de-cluttering process, says Sue, is ‘standing back and looking at something and asking “why?”’
I wonder whether, in moving from quickly gentrifying north London to Marylebone, an area that boasts a peculiarly urban mixture of the cool and the chaotic, she found herself having difficulty living by her own teachings?
‘I could feel the piles of paper starting to build up for a while – that feeling of, where are things? It’s good to reconnect with that.’ Somehow I doubt those piles of paper got too high, for she is a true believer in letting go of things that don’t serve a purpose. Clutter, according to Sue Kay, is defined as ‘things you no longer use or love’. Many people have a mistaken idea of the process, she finds. ‘Sometimes they confuse it with being puritanical but it’s not that at all. Being organised doesn’t mean you’re not a free spirit.’
And just as hoarding ‘things’ is a habit, so is that reflexive feeling of being quite content to dispose of things that fit the above definition. And at the heart of this philosophy, says Kay, is the ability to take an honest look at ourselves and why we feel the need to ‘over-have’ if you will - not to mention investigate the modern mania for shopping, owning, collecting, three ways of validating ourselves in a way that rather misses the point of validity.
‘Were all struggling with the way we live,’ she says. ‘Fast, furious, constant consumption. It’s hard to stop, hard to say enough. I can’t do IKEA – I get muddled and buy the wrong sizes, then I have to go back, which is not what I want to do!’
She has found the property market has a bearing on her work. ‘We’re living in extraordinary times, when people have all this stuff and don’t have a bigger home.’ And it works the other way around as well – after all, clutter is a good way to drive away prospective buyers.
The green movement is a sibling of the Sue Kay philosophy – and surely the best way not to waste things is not to gather too many things to begin with. Surprisingly, however, in some ways she has found her work complicated, not eased, by the new green awareness. ‘I’m pro-green but it adds an extra level of stress to de-clutter ethically.’ She laughs, ‘I got an email about old pill bottles: “What do I do with these?”’
With her client visits she is very careful not to judge; rather, she acts on empathy and frames her work in terms of the good it can do. ‘It’s my job not to feel overwhelmed. You have to manage their expectations.’ The most difficult consultations are when people veer strongly to one extreme or the other. ‘Either they have to agonise over everything or they want to throw everything away.’
She treads lightly when helping a client with those possessions that trigger particularly personal or painful feelings and memories. ‘When you come across your dead husband’s bus pass – that can be agonising.’
It is natural to feel vulnerable when clearing away life’s detritus, she says – particularly in the presence of a stranger. ‘People get very defensive and worried. It’s like someone seeing your knicker drawer – your muddle and your mess. Things you hide from the outside world, like if you haven’t paid your bills for six months.’
Having written two books on de-cluttering, she would now like to dig deeper into the psychological basis of keeping things well past their use-by date, and how this ties in with the all-consuming consumer culture. ‘Everything’s so cheap, we’re living in this Primark culture. Is it making us happy? I’d like to look at that. If somebody gave you a great CD, you’d enjoy it. If they gave you three – that’s nice. But ten? You start thinking, God I can’t cope with this!’
For now, though, she has taken a month off and is getting to know her new neighbourhood. ‘It’s certainly lively. I’m down towards the Edgware Road part of it – it’s lively , it’s noisy. I’m between Marylebone High Street and Oxford Street.’ One of the most cluttered areas of the capital, I can’t help but think.
Sue Kay’s books, No More Clutter and Hoarder To Order, are available at bookshops and online. Visit nomoreclutter.co.uk