Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Heardshoal Haven. I'm a bit weird in that way, Like
I'm one of the people in this world that things
like mouse stoppings and rats don't FaZe me. I come
across all sorts of things.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Okay, hands up. Who isn't guilty of just hanging on
to stuff, Hanging on to stuff that might come in
handy one day, or stuff that's got some sentimental value,
or stuff you've inherited but is really beyond any use
to anyone. Stuff sitting in the back of a cupboard
that you never ever open. Gooday, I'm Pete Andrea, and
in this episode, our guest is a woman who just
(00:36):
loves sorting out other people's stuff, especially those who find
the prospect of decluttering their lives incredibly overwhelming. Kitty Brooker
is a professional declutterer, and there's absolutely no judgment when
she walks into your home looks around to determine how
she'll get stuck into the job of finding more space
in your place. Kitty operates a shoal Haven business called
(00:58):
clutter Cat, and it's a real lifeline on many levels
to people prone to hoarding. I started by asking her
when she knew she had this talent for knowing what's
worth keeping and what isn't.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
I find it hard to focus when I've got a
lot of things, a lot of physical things, or you know,
a lot of events or anything cluttering.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Up my life.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
I don't function to be well with that. So I
tried to keep my house and my life relatively decluttered
so that I can function. And like I'm a helper,
I like helping people. I love people. I love talking
with them and finding out more about them. And so
those two things kind of went hand in hand, and
(01:42):
I started helping people on a small scale just to
declutter like a wardrobe, for example. And after doing that
a few times, I thought, that's it. I'm ready to
go for the whole house and train myself up a
bit more and learn more about why people collect and
(02:02):
acquire and retain possessions. And from there we've done so
much work in the disability space in aged care. As
you can imagine, a lot of people need help at
that stage of life where there's a lot of upheaval
and change, downsizing going into.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Care, even just moving house, even.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Simply picking up a moving house, it's such an ordeal, Pete.
Dealing with your own stuff is so it can be
very stressful and overwhelming, and our clients feedback to us
is that we just take that pressure off them. Like
to take the example of moving house, you don't even
(02:45):
realize how much stuff you have until you are trying
to figure out how many boxes you're going to need,
and you never buy enough boxes, and then it's just
mayhem all the way up to moving day and everything's
been done at the last minute, you're screaming at your
family and you trying to figure out what to leave
out and what to pack and got the removalists coming
(03:06):
at a certain time, and then like that's all well
and good, you've still got to get to the other
end and unpack the staff into the new home.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
How long was it before you realized the need for
your services out there? You probably would have walked into
it thinking, oh, we'll get one or two, maybe ten exactly,
But how many were you surprised? How many people need
a hand to declutter?
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Oh, there is such a need out there just for
you know. We call it body doubling. Sometimes just us
being there and showing up is enough for our client
to spring into action when they would never be able
to do it themselves. It's not necessarily what you know,
I started out thinking it was a high end service
(03:52):
and you know, have everything arranged neatly, and you know,
all white walls and limited things on this display. It's
not about that at all, because you can go out
and hire a cleaner, you know, if you're really struggling
to get on top of things in the home, you
can hire a cleaner. But for example, how's the cleaner
going to do their job if there's stuff everywhere and
(04:12):
they can't white surfaces or mop the floor properly because
they're having to pick up and move things every ten seconds.
And so when I first started, we had so many
people in the age care and disability space going, wow,
if only we knew you existed five ten years ago,
(04:33):
where have you been all this time? Because we do
fill that gap, and it's it doesn't matter if you
have extreme clutter or if you're simply feeling a little
overwhelmed with the way things are in the home currently.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
What's the typical reaction when you, like, you walk into
a home and you go, wow, there's a lot of
stuff here. What's the difference between clutter and hoarding? Do
you think, oh, that's.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Such a good question. The term hoarding gets thrown around
quite a lot, and it feels a bit It can
feel a bit judgmental, and our clients use it on themselves.
They say, Oh, I'm the worst hoarder you've ever seen.
We don't care if your home's like if the walls
are dripping, and you know, if it's flaw to ceiling clutter.
(05:22):
We have no emotional feeling about it whatsoever. You were
a human being who has done an incredibly an incredible
thing of asking for help, and you've allowed us into
your home, and we just walk in thinking, wow, that
is so special that we've been given this opportunity, and
that the person was brave enough to put their hand
(05:43):
up and say, hey, can't do it myself.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Have you walked into a house though, where you've gone krike,
look at this mess?
Speaker 1 (05:52):
I wouldn't say that I've walked in and been shaved
like I'm a bit weird in that way, like I'm
one of the peace in this world that things like
mouse droppings and rats don't FaZe me. I come across
all sorts of things just in my day to day.
So even if you walk into the house and it
(06:12):
maybe is quite visually chaotic, or you can't fully open
the door, or there's a you know, the smell. I'm
not going to say I'm phased by it. Our main
concern is that the client is okay, because often you
can imagine it's that's their house, what's their quality of
life like? So no one of our workers. So it's
(06:34):
me and my two girls, Carissa and our most recent girl, Kiri.
She is actually a mental health counselor, and so that's
really provided us the boosts that we've needed to work
on some of the more heavy duty projects where maybe
it is flaw to ceilings, but maybe you can't even
open the front door because there's stuff in the way
(06:55):
or there's tracks through the house. We can deal with
the stuff, no worries, but Kiri really gives us that
boost to make sure that the person, the client who
owns the stuff is being treated in the correct way.
So we all have that knowledge of how to work
(07:16):
with clients who have hoarding behaviors or who have trauma,
which comes up a lot when there's a lot of clutter.
But yeah, we definitely have that extra skill set now
in the mental health space because those two things are
so closely related and when we do our work, the
whole point is to make the person's life better, not
to retraumatize them in any way.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
More soon of our conversation with Kitty Brooker from Cluttercat,
and will also meet one of the grateful clients whose
hoarding had pretty well overtaken her life until Kitty arrived
on her doorstep bin an hour.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
I heartshoal Haven. I heart shoal Haven.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
So when does someone need to keep stuff go to
the next level of hoarding the shoal havens. Kitty Brookers says,
you can't just barge into someone's house and start chucking
things out here and a team at clutter Cat can
often take months to work with a client to ease
their way to feeling able to deal with the physical
act of removing stuff, and one such client is Sue
(08:20):
from Nara. What was your experience like when Kitty and
the team came in.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Well, I was a bit nervous at the start, and
also I had a bit of shame about hoarding stuff
and feeling a bit weird. I've got into a situation
in my life where I just felt overwhelmed with everything,
(08:47):
as well as a bit of conflict to his life
the modern world. Should I say that everything everything is
disposable now very fast and quick, and I'm still I'm
still valuing things that the good can be used, repurposed,
(09:11):
And so I had a lot of stuff like that.
And with their cloud Cats, they were absolutely fantastic. Right
from the word though. They respected my situation and they
respected me as a person.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
When did you realize that you needed a hand?
Speaker 3 (09:35):
I've kind of always been a little bit that way.
My partner, former partner mentioned that I was possibly a hoarder,
and I thought, but no, I'm not. I'm not an order.
But I have got those tendencies, that's for sure. But
the cloud CAATs came in and they like it's quite
(09:58):
a personal thing to of people come in and help
you do close your life. Not to say stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
You would have been looking at things going and I
want to keep them, and then thinking to yourself, no,
they can go. It must be a real conflict for you.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Yes, well they understand that conflict and they they're very
gentle in the process. I must say I have I
had other people say to me, if you don't, if
you haven't used it in two years, get rid of it.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
But that's hard. It's hard, especially when you've got memories
and you think I'll use that again in the future.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Yes, and that's how that's how I think. And when
my mom passed away and we cleaned out the family house,
I've got some of their stuff too, a lot of
it was that was really it's been really quite a process.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
This glad you did it.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Oh absolutely, And oh my god, the way things open
up the covetant like, it's fantastic. Everything's all in order,
and I consume it. I've got and I would consider
Mike Lavicate a friend.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Kitty Brooker says Sue is very typical of her clientele
and the anxiety that comes with hoarding your clients. Sue,
is she pretty typical of the clients that you get.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Absolutely. Yeah. I can't speak highly enough of her and
her progress. And we've been fortunate to have worked with
Sue for a couple of years, not because of a
particularly huge amount of belonging, but it's pretty common for
our clients to you know, have a relatively normal amount
(11:50):
of belonging, you know, for the space that they live in.
We're not necessarily talking about the floors are covered and
you know, they can't even sleep in their own bed
or anything like that. This is just day to day,
like every week, the kitchen table is covered in things,
and it gets annoying trying to use the kitchen because
(12:12):
the bench is always filled up with things. And that's
just really common of a lot of our clients.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
So when these people reach out, are they telling you
that they need help?
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Eighty percent of the time it is the person themselves,
the clients that says, Hi, I'm struggling, I don't know
what to do. Please help. And a certain amount of
clients do get referred to us by professionals, whether that's
sort of like aged care facilitators, because it's been something
(12:46):
that the client has mentioned as being an issue. And
we've also had, you know, sons and daughters of their parents,
like elderly people who reach out to us and they go, oh,
can you just go to mom and dadgy and like
get a skip in and throw everything out. We keep
telling them they're hoarders, and they work with them and
we have to politely say no, it's it's got to
(13:09):
come from the person who owns the stuff. It's up
to the person. We never throw anything out without content,
and we never make a person feel like they're not
doing good enough.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, I can imagine some people would be watching like
a hawk, everything that you touched and everything you were
going to throw out. Do you see that? You know?
Do you see that? Do you see the fear? And
absolutely yeah, because it's a big change of life, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
For many of them?
Speaker 1 (13:39):
And there's many reasons for the accumulation of crutter, but
I'm going to just say the main reason is it's
just delayed decision making. So for whatever reason, whether it's
too traumatic, or you know, in more extreme examples, or
(14:00):
the person just doesn't have time or they don't have
the energy or the knowledge. Often it really just is
I don't have time to go through this stuff and
make decisions on it, because it's actually very exhausting to
make decisions, and especially when it's when you have emotional
connection to the things, as you do when you own them.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
So you get a lot of people and they go, oh,
this will be handy one day, or I can't throw
that out because it's got fantastic memories to it, and
then that's when they get themselves into trouble. But I
suppose for yourself, what's the biggest satisfaction for.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
You, Oh, when we've been working with our clients and
you know they might be seeing us off at the
door and we have a couple of minutes of saying
our goodbyees and thank you and we go, hey, just
turn around and have a look at that space again,
(14:56):
and you just see their face light up because they
hadn't taken it in from that perspective. You know, we
sort of work so closely in the space and you know,
doing the nitty gritty decision making and picking up each
individual item if that's the way that we happen to
be running the session, and then to actually take a
step back and survey the scene and go, wow, I
(15:19):
did not know my space could look like that, and
you just see a weight for well, it makes me
feel emotional thinking about it. That that gives us most
incredible satisfaction because we know that we've changed their life
just using our little skill set that we've happened to
(15:40):
have cultivated.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Kitty Brooker from Cluttercat a service that's changed many lives
in the Shoal Haven. As she said, there's no judgment.
The hardest part is actually realizing you might need some
help to reframe your living space. You can find out
more by going to cluttercat dot com dot au. I'm
Pete Andrea. That's iHeart shoal Haven for this week, proudly
(16:03):
supported by the new South Wales Government. I'll catch you
next time.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Iheartshoul Haven.