17. Piling in heaps and a clothing rail

‘I want to book in a cleaning company to give the whole house a going over. So I want to start consolidating what we've done. There's no point in having them if they can't get into most of the rooms. Let's start with the spare bedroom.’

The spare room used to have piles of clothes everywhere making it virtually impassable. Since Stella had bought the extra dress rail*, she could now have all her clothes in her bedroom.

Stella wanted to shift some of the furniture around so we moved a large cupboard, first removing the contents and a chair. This is the room where the Christmas decorations and wrapping are kept. We took the opportunity to organise it all.

Then we spent time moving boxes around, basic piling-in-heaps. Piling-in-heaps is the first step to organising things. In order for a client to see how much and what they have, it helps to get one category of objects in one place. Stella is particularly fond of this part of the process; she calls it "like with like" and finds it has cut costs considerably. She can find things even before they really have a home so doesn't go out and buy more.

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*There are lots of clothing rails on the market. Many have lots of pieces and require complicated assembly. The results are often unreliable and not very sturdy. The best rails come in 4 pieces: 2 ends which click into the bottom piece and then a top bar that fits onto the side pieces. They can be put up and taken down in less than 5 minutes and are perfect for coats at big parties. Stella has found it invaluable to have a stable rail like this with wheels.