Stroud News and JournalEvery home has one. A room or a cupboard that never sees the light of day. That's where we keep all those 'really useful' things we don't need at the moment but who knows, one day... Rodborough's Rachel Stark, who runs Clutter Free, is building up a clientele of people swamped by clutter who just don't know where to start. Tamsin Treverton Jones, a self-confessed hoarder, took a deep breath and took Rachel down into her own junk-filled cellar. VISITORS to my home do not normally get a guided tour of my cold, dusty cellar but Rachel Stark was most enthusiastic about seeing it. Sitting down there in the cold, her breath rising in little clouds, surrounded by cardboard boxes full of old photographs, stacks of framed pictures, carpet off-cuts, half-used cans of paint and a redundant fridge, she had obviously found the key to a clutter-free life for me. Rachel is a de-clutterer. She is the person you have been meaning to be for a very long time, the voice of clarity and reason. "Procrastination, hoarding, not being able to let go - people come to me because they are at a stage in their lives where they know they need to move forward but they need supporting through the necessary process of change," she explains. We are increasingly bombarded with images and information exhorting us to buy the next best thing. This, by definition, means dumping the old in favour of the new but we rarely do. "But I don't ever tell my clients what to throw out or how their house should look," said Rachel. Back to the cellar. The boxes of photographs beckon but the stacks of unhung pictures speak to me first and, with Rachel's gentle advice and unassuming presence, I am able to detach the pictures I like from the frames I don't and firmly put the unwanted parts in a pile. I can suddenly see the carpet again, the room looks bigger; I feel a bit light-headed and am suddenly tempted to just chuck the entire contents of the room into a skip, there and then. From Stroud News and Journal, March 16, 2005.
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