Where to start? The emotional toll of clearing out a lifetime of possessions

Garrick Smith had no idea where to even start packing up his house.

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The four-bedroom home in Dunlop he'd shared with his husband, Robert McKenzie, for the past 16 years had all the signs of a full life.

But the time had come to move to somewhere much smaller, and the prospect was daunting.

There was the usual build-up of photographs and books, mementoes and homewares, plus two wardrobes, cupboards full of clothes, and Robert's 55 pairs of shoes.

Garrick Smith and Robert McKenzie contemplate the boxes in their new places with Melissa Freasier, founder of Downsizing With Care. Picture by Karleen Minney

But where would it all go?

It's a familiar scenario for families all over Canberra, whether they be downsizing, decluttering, or clearing the home of someone who's died.

A skip bin isn't always the answer, no matter what well-meaning (or uncaring) people will tell you.

It was a relief when Smith heard about a service that could help the couple negotiate the clutter and downsize.

'Containerising and organising'

Melissa Freasier knew she was onto a good thing when she landed on the idea of helping people declutter. Sitting up with a new baby 10 years ago, she was pondering business ideas, and realised there was a part of her personality she could monetise.

"I like containerising and organising, and I guess I have always been on the slightly more minimal side," she says.

Her first official client - her own mother - sealed the deal.

"She'd resisted my free help for a good long time," she says.

"She's actually quite proud of the progress she's been able to make and things - she's on the, I guess, more maximal side."

She launched her business, Downsizing With Care, offering three different services: downsizing assistance, deceased estate clearance, and decluttering.

And she hasn't looked back; she now has a staff of six women, and a large lineup of mainly older customers. What's become known as "Swedish death cleaning" - an apparently Nordic ritual of intentionally decluttering in order to spare your loved ones after you've gone - is a necessity, rather than lifestyle choice, for most of her clients.

And after 10 years, she's seen some things. Misguided adult children steadily off-loading perfectly good items into skips. Families imploding over where to begin clearing a deceased person's house. Retired couples whose good times are cut short by illness and find themselves having to rush into a retirement village.

It's hard to know where to start when downsizing. Picture Unsplash

She's cleaned out houses twice - once preparing to downsize, and then again for the estate clearance.

And she's been into some real hoarding nightmares.

'A bit of the stigma's gone out of it'

Freasier has seen all ages come through, and many different rationales for needing help. She says over the years, she's even had younger people reach out for help with decluttering, with less shame around the concept that there used to be.

"A lot of people used to feel shame around it, but I think a bit of the stigma's gone out of it," she says.

But the stress is almost always there - stress and angst at the sheer amount of stuff a person has managed to accumulate, that they now need to make a decision about.

It helps to have an entirely objective and unemotional come in and help the process along.

Melissa Freasier started Downsizing With Care to help people with their clutter. Picture by Karleen Minney

"If it brings you pleasure, keep it, and if it fits in the available storage space, keep it," she says.

"We're never about telling people how to live."

So where's the easiest place to start on a full house?

"This is a boring answer - it's always easy to start at the garage because that's where things go to die. And then it can be a staging area," she says.

'A wretched way to spend your time'

She tries to keep Marie Kondo out of it, having read the Japanese cleaning guru's seminal book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, back when it came out in 2011.

Kondo is famous - or infamous - for insisting we evaluate each object in our homes by asking ourselves whether they "spark joy". Freasier is generally nonplussed by the approach.

"I thought, that's great for a 30-year-old Japanese single lady," Freasier says.

There's little time or place for this kind of sentiment, except when it comes to what she terms the "big brain" part of the job.

"It's a trite phrase maybe, but I think it's really useful in our line of work - that people do the 'big brain' work, and we do the hands-on stuff," she says.

"The big brain stuff is to go, well, what's sentimental to you? Take it out. We can clear the rest. Because sometimes families, if they just do it themselves, can be caught up for years dealing with a deceased estate.

"What a wretched way to spend your time. It's so emotional, and they find it so slow as well, whereas we're in and out in a week or two."

'Take a photo and chuck it'

This is the part that impressed Smith and McKenzie - the speed, efficiency and lack of judgement of it all.

"The great thing is when you get the downsizing people in, they know all the tricks of the trade," Smith says.

"Who to give the clothes to? Who to give the furniture you don't need? We had two fridges. What were we going to do with them? How do we get them out of the house? They took care of all that."

The old teddy bear with the arms falling he's had since childhood? Take a photo and chuck it.

We're sitting in the manicured gardens of Goodwin Village in Ainslie, where he and McKenzie moved just a week ago. Their small but well-appointed apartment is still filled with boxes, but at least they know now it will all fit - when they get around to unpacking it all.

Their house, meanwhile, is empty and will soon be ready for sale. Smith maintains he couldn't have gone from one place to the next without help, and it wasn't just because of the couple's mounting health problems.

"The thought of leaving that four-bedroom house if we both died to family members to come do it, who'd have had to do the same thing - only for them, it'd be getting rid of it all," he says.

"The easiest way for them to do it would be [he mimes lighting a match] and walk away. That's what we almost thought with this place."

The Downsizing team also convinced the couple, eventually, to set a firm date and stop the process from going on too long.

Smith says he's finally been sleeping properly at night, and can now think more clearly about the future.

But he was, like many people, embarrassed about the amount of stuff they had accumulated.

"I used that thing - 'Now you must excuse the house we had a break in, and they trashed the joint', and [staff member] Rachel was terrific," he says.

"I said, 'So how bad is it?' She said, 'You cannot believe what we have seen. This is good. At least we can walk through your house.'"

In the end, he says, the process took a few months - expensive but worth it.

Downsizing With Care charges $121 an hour, and recommends three-hour sessions a couple of times a week for a minimum of three months to clear out a house. Clearing a deceased estate is usually a one-off fee. The staff can identify which things have resale value, and organise the sale through auction houses or online marketplaces, and don't take a commission.

'Mental headspace'

But not all downsizing looks the same.

"A lot of people downsize to stay in their home as well - it's not necessarily downsizing for moving," Freasier says.

"We do get contacted by people who say, "'want to downsize to stay in my home, and I may be forced to move in the future'. That plays on people's minds.

Marie Kondo's philosophy can sometimes be useful. Picture Unsplash

"I guess something I do want to mention is it's not that the older person who has accumulated a lot in their house is sitting around necessarily going, 'La la la, life great'. It really is that they feel genuinely stressed about that."

Decluttering ahead of downsizing is, she says, a way of getting "the mental headspace for a nicer living environment", a state that can feel impossible when faced with a house filled with 40 or 50 years' worth of stuff.

"People have accumulated things from their kids or things from their parents, when they had to clear out their houses as well. So it's a multi-generational family load.

"They know they want to move, whether now or in the future, and whether younger, older, they'll be stressed about, should I be keeping this, should I be keeping that? That's where a little bit of Marie Kondo comes in."

But that, she says, is where the comparison to the queen of minimal ends.

"Our team are not white-box-minimal people at all - it's really about the people skills and about working with people to help them meet their goals."

People skills definitely come in handy throughout her work, and some of her staff have mental health training. It's not always easy to admit you can't cope and need help.

"Often people have had quite a few ups and downs, and it's often that their house reflects that," she says.

"The word 'hoarder' is overused. If people have accumulated a lot of things, it's not necessarily because they're diagnosed with hoarding disorder ... It's often that people either have mental health bumps in the road, or physical health bumps in the road, and then really find that it's just too much for them to tackle, and that's when we get called in."

'Do it before you have to'

So when is the right time to think about downsizing, or at least decluttering?

"If you're recently bereaved, leave it a year," Freasier says.

It can be a small window for some people; while downsizing is not an optimal project to take on while you're still working, things can go downhill quickly once health problems take hold.

Smith, having been through the process so recently, is adamant.

"If you want my honesty? Do it before you have to," he says.

"Everyone should spring clean, and nobody ever does it. Or they 'spring clean', as in clean the windows. No, go through those clothes."

This is where he brings up his husband's 55 pairs of shoes, that are now enjoying second lives elsewhere.