Introduction

I am a procrastinator and a hoarder. I always have been. It's genetic. My father is a hoarder, his mother was a hoarder.

Before I got married, my bedroom at my parent's house was full of clothes and shoes. I had so many clothes that I couldn't fit them all in my wardrobe so they ended up literally in a mountain overtaking my whole bedroom. I had so many clothes that I could just about never wear the same thing twice in one year!

When I moved out into my own place I discovered that many of the clothes I had were doubled and tripled up. I also discovered that I had 4 pairs of the exact same shoes! (as well as about 40 other pairs of shoes, most of which I never knew I had).

I decided that when I moved out and got married that I would keep my home immaculate at all times...that really didn't last very long at all.

I got so "busy" doing other things that I didn't have "time" to clean the house. And lets face it...cleaning the house is no fun is it!

So, I then thought that when I got pregnant and went on maternity leave that I'd have time to organise the house. I may have had a 5 and a half week break between starting maternity leave and giving birth to my daughter, but I didn't think about how hard it would be to move and how uncomfortable I'd be in those last few weeks. So the house stayed messy.

Then I had my daughter and thought, when she's asleep I'll clean the house. Well, she didn't sleep much and for long and when she did sleep I did too because I was so tired.

Eventually I got down to trying to throw things out. Only, I couldn't do it. I would feel so guilty if I threw out a body lotion set that I'd been given as a gift because I thought that the person who gave it to me would feel hurt by me doing that. I couldn't get rid of clothes because even though I hadn't worn the item for a couple of years "I might wear it one day"

I made a decision in my head a couple of years ago that I needed to keep the house clean for me and my family. I was so sick of visiting friends whose houses are always immaculate and I felt embarrassed about the thought of having people visit and I wouldn't let them come inside.

I've realised that hoarding is often about forming an emotional attachment to things. For this reason, I had to make the decision with my heart.

At the start of 2010 I re-joined FLYlady (http://flylady.net/) and have also joined The Brat Factor (http://www.thebratfactor.com/). Through these websites I have learnt that I don't need to do everything at once, in fact, if I even try to do everything at once I'm setting myself up to fail! Doing even 15 minutes of decluttering and cleaning a day is better than not doing anything at all.

Throughout the year I'm on a journey to take some control over my life.
The major part of this is keeping my home ordered and ready for company at any time. This doesn't mean keeping it show-home perfect, but keeping it looking like humans live there, not pigs.

I hope that others will join in my journey and hopefully by reading about my journey I might help someone else.