Creating a Lovely Home – Or How to Declutter as a Busy Mum (Part 1)

“Oh, I’ve got such a lovely home,” breathed Pat, clasping her hands. “It’s such a nice friendly house. Nobody … nobody … has such a lovely home. I’d just like to hug it.” – Pat of Silver Bush (1933)

Do you ever feel this way about your house? No? Me neither, and I don’t think anyone I know actually does. Now, don’t get me wrong, I actually adore my house. The crying shame is that it’s just filled to the brim with clutter.

I took quite a long time mulling over what to do next after the twins were born last year. You see, I wanted this blog to inspire us (you AND me) to live a little more aligned with the lifestyles showcased in classic books. Not all classic books, obviously, and not all ascribed lifestyles either, but the ones that take your hand and walk you through sumptuous gardens a la Elizabeth von Arnim, and bid you to sit down for a lazy afternoon picnic. And most importantly, where you have said picnic and then go to put away your dishes and… that’s it!

“What a happy woman I am living in a garden, with books, babies, birds, and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them!” – Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898)

Whereas just now, I try to prepare the picnic and get distracted by the random piles of clutter on my desk, in the kitchen, and beside the sofa. I decide to put on a load of laundry and come across some of yesterday’s dishes and – oh here’s the dummy one of the twins lost the other day, better sterilise that! If we do make it outside, the same procedure happens again as soon as we come back in. Sometimes I’ll even feel distracted by the ‘clutter yet to come’ while we’re sitting outside trying to enjoy ourselves.

“The average 10-year-old owns around 238 toys but plays with just 12 of them on a daily basis.”

Did you know that, per a 2010 article in The Telegraph, the average 10-year-old owns around 238 toys but plays with just 12 of them on a daily basis? 16 years later, I’d bet my hat (if only I could find it in all this mess) that the first number has grown exponentially.

Does any of the above sound familiar? Well, I want to start doing something about it. Won’t you join me?

I started 2026 with a grand plan of decluttering ONE small space per day. Some days it’s a drawer full of junk, others it’s just one small shelf with all our randomly collected mugs. I’ve not done amazingly well at this so far, and for a few weeks I’ll admit I got sidetracked and forgot entirely about this ‘resolution’ of mine.

But Lent’s now started, and Lent is generally my one time of year when I actually really do what I’ve set out to do. So I’ve crammed every resolution of mine into that, and, as such, I’m stopping consuming any added sugar, not using AI at all (that’s a story for another day, but I got sucked into the mental health cesspit that is AI for a few months last year and promptly deleted it a week or so ago when I finally realised how bad it is for you – and this is now my way of weaning myself off it for good and learning how to ‘research’ again without Google’s bizarre ‘AI summaries’), decluttering a small space every day, reading the Bible daily, writing down between 1-3 items on my Pollyanna-style ‘glad list’ on my phone, and exercising every evening with my top friend and most enthusiastic human I know, our 4-year-old July baby.

Now before I prattle on further (here’s where my web provider shows me that I should use their garbage AI Assistant to improve my SEO and make myself more readable – but I’m nottt a robot, so I won’t!) I want to share today’s little space with you. The aim is, as I said above to feel a sense of real love for your home – like our dear Pat from Silver Bush did. So, get rid of anything that no longer makes you happy or serves any kind of purpose. And, for goodness’ sake, if you’re only going to make 50p off it on Vinted, just chuck it in a donations bag instead. The one trip to your local charity will be far more satisfying than the 27 to the petrol station, where you’ll stand in the rain wondering how you ended up so miserable while someone shoves a massive Tesco bag into the last remaining InPost shelf.

So here is today’s space – our coffee table. Funny enough, each space takes me a good 5-10 minutes, and since I only declutter one each day, it really doesn’t take up much of my time. So it’s surprising, perhaps, that it took me so long to get started, but I’m on a roll now. For instance, yesterday I threw out a ton of old candles I’d kept ‘because they were nice’ – note, they were nice, but these are candles which no amount of fire could have re-lit. Anyway, back to my coffee table: as you can see, I’ve just removed a lot of the toys and random books (see my little ’90s Spice Girls book there? So glad the September baby found that the other day……) and added books that suit the season instead. And honestly, the impact is lovely.

What space will you declutter next? Are you planning to get rid of a lot of excess ‘stuff’ this year too? Tell me about it in the comments.