"My house looked like it had been burgled after my marriage broke down - now I help other hoarders clear out their clutter"

A messy single mum whose house looked like 'it had been burgled' after her marriage broke down now helps others clear their cluttered homes and overcome their hoarding habits.

Janine McDonald was always neat and tidy until the breakdown of her marriage, post-natal depression and the looming threat of redundancy took a toll on her mental health.

The 52-year-old was constantly trying to keep on top of the mess at her house in Salford, but said she always found an excuse to put it off - leaving it cluttered with everything from clothes that needed putting away to children’s toys and paperwork.

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As her home grew steadily messier, Janine began to see the impact it was having on her mental health and decided to act.

“My house looked like I’d been burgled,” she said. “There was stuff on every single surface. I knew things had to change so I started saying to myself ‘just do three things every time I went into a room’.

“I’d choose three things - pick them up, tidy them away, throw them away, or give them away.

“It helped tremendously and wasn’t overwhelming. After not very long I was finding that in every room I went into you could see the progress which was really heartening.”

Janine was made redundant from her job as a corporate manager, leaving the single mother-of-two to live on her £800 monthly Universal Credit payments.

Knowing she was unlikely to find this in the corporate world, Janine decided to inquire at the Job Centre about setting up her own business.

Just a fortnight before the first lockdown in 2020, she started 'Clear the Clutter Now' which has gone on to help scores of people to overcome their messy habits.

Janine uses her first-hand experience