What we’re about
A Friend
At Declutter Deliberately, we like to think of ourselves as your friend at the door, online or in the community. A true, good friend is there when you need a hand. They listen, they don’t judge, they tell you straight and then roll up their sleeves to do anything they can to help. Essentially a good friend is all in with you when you need them and for you for what you need not with any hidden agendas or clutter traps of their own.
Someone at your door
It can feel difficult to have someone in your home but with the right people, with the right training, experience and understanding people report feeling well at ease and incredible relief as the burden is lifted. For some the friend at the door has meant when the knock came it was the greatest relief looking back, because now it wasn’t the landlord, the worker, authorities or just that person that’s going to home shame you.
Whether you jump at the idea of having a friend, whether you’re tweaking and maintaining working areas or struggling with spaces that seem to have snowballed out of control a friend can help.
What Changes Can Decluttering Make?
Making changes can be the difference between staying in your home, ageing at home, keeping kids at homes, not having a family breakdown or friends stop visiting, getting on with neighbours, feeling healthy, avoiding accident or injury or a fall out with others. It might also just be to simply be happier. I’d say that’s a good gift to yourself or another.
Our Team
Our Director
Sandra Montgomerie, B.Lib, MASW is the founder and Director of Declutter Deliberately. Declutter Deliberately, (nee LifeStylers Global) has been supporting the community to regain time, space, harmony, happiness and sanity since June 2017. With many programs up and running now we know needs are individual and we’ll always be there with you to set goals and actionable tasks that are guiding beacons not batons.
Our Consultants
We work with trusted consultants trained to support and apply our professional programs. Programs are designed to improve productivity and make daily life simpler and more enjoyable. Learning to realign the everyday with the big picture we’ve transformed lives and homes.
Brett Montgomerie
Brett is a trained Small Engines Mechanic that has a mind for all things mechanical, in fact there’s not much he can’t fix. Working in sales and customer service for thirty years Brett is passionate about people and getting things working efficiently, logically and simply. Together we manage a great deal of resource recovery; repair and removal work with a focus to declutter ethically and with an eco-friendly commitment to eco-organisation.
Linking With You
Linking with industry leaders and community groups we can buy, sell, swap, donate and move items quickly, ethically and efficiently. As eco-organisers and working to the AASW (the Australian Association of Social Workers) Code of Ethics we’re committed to ethical practice that is good for you, good for the community and good for the planet.
Lived Experience
There is always only so much you can get from books and learning ever notice that some of the best learning is the learning that life dishes out? Well as a family owned business we’ve had plenty of real life learning. There’s a lot to be said for lived experience, would you want to hear how to manage headaches from someone who’d never had one? Why go to a mechanic that doesn’t have a car or a financial advisor who’s flat broke? Of course not it’s the definition of insanity.
When it comes to clutter and hoarding beyond visiting countless homes managing clutter and home organisation issues we’ve been there too. We have lived with weekly decluttering to try to keep on top of the house and still seeing no end in sight. Sincerely, we’ve had sheds built to house yachts full to the brim with well all things from junk to clutter! We’ve had endless days where we’ve wondered will we ever get past this and still stuff keeps miraculously coming in? Gee I wonder how that happened? As this goes on the house gets messier, less hygienic and just unbearable. Who spilt sauce all down the cupboard and didn’t clean it up? Really why is there a ‘???’ dumped in my front yard (you get the idea). We’ve been house-shamed by the best of them and we’ve felt hopeless.
I’ve felt like both a victim and a contributor in this. I’ve felt like a hoarder and an OCD neat freak going insane with my own and with inherited mess. The point is both Brett and I (and our kids) have all had to learn through our own lessons how to get beyond this and maintain a new way of being. With this though comes understanding, knowledge, and strategies on how to work through obstacles, when we’ve all got different values and expectations on how we want to live, what’s really clean, what’s clutter and what’s valuable. What I’ve learnt is I am not my stuff and my stuff is not my memories, I have these without the clutter, the important things stays with us.
Those lessons, painful as they were, are truly valuable. We aren’t always perfect but we now know how to have life workable, harmonious and happy and really isn’t that what we all want? You can also feel assured that we know what we’re doing and we’re damn good at it but not just that, you can be certain we’ve seen it all and you won’t be judged. This will be the call you wish you’d made sooner.
The Experience We Draw On
For the past twenty years Sandra has supported people though all walks of life with hoarding, squalor, cleaning, decluttering, coaching, skill building, connecting with community and supports, managing and overcoming obstacles and trauma, disabilities, mental health, eco-education, various Social Work services and more.
From families to individuals, kids to teens, adults and seniors Sandra has moved many people from feeling stuck or overwhelmed to living more organised with modern pressures. Sandra has supported and worked with areas including; Disability SA and Disability Services, the Department for Child Protection, Retirement Villages, Family by Family with The Australian Centre for Social Innovation and with Uniting Communities, The Department for Transport and Urban Planning, Switch Start Scale and various community groups, individuals and families in the general community.
With this in mind all programs have been developed with sound Social work practice based on empowerment and change management principles and practices so you gain the best services and supports for your needs.
