Anita's bedroom was piled full of clutter and clothes that had accumulated over 15 years that she had not tidied. Photo / This Morning
Anita's bedroom was piled full of clutter and clothes that had accumulated over 15 years that she had not tidied. Photo / This Morning
A mother-of-five who accumulated so much clutter she hasn't been able to reach her wardrobe in two years has had her bedroom overhauled by a professional organiser live on morning television.
Anita Morgan-Williams - who has five children aged between four months and 15 -admitted she felt so 'embarrassed' bythe amount of stuff cluttering her three-bedroom home in Aberystwyth that she stopped inviting friends round.
Desperate for help to clear out the 15 years-worth of junk, she turned the This Morning team, who sent in professional organiser Vicky Silverthorn - who has spent years helping hoarders to develop tidy habits, reports Daily Mail.
Vicky said the 40 bin bags full of clothes they cleared out of Anita's bedroom "broke a record" for her, while some viewers tweeted their astonishment at the scale of the "disgusting mess".
"That house on This Morning scares me I don't know how people can live with that much clutter especially with kids, how does it get that out of hand?" asked one viewer on Twitte.
"I just can't bring myself to get rid of anything. I always think, 'oh, I might wear them' or 'they might come in handy', when in reality they don't.
"I am extremely embarrassed of it. To the point where we hardly have any friends round because of the mess," she explained.
Dylan added: "The house is hectic, it's bursting at the seams really.
"The girls do dancing, they do gymnastics, they have something on every night of the week. If we have got five minutes, the last thing we want to do really is do any clearing."
When Vicky arrived she had to negotiate the crowded hallways in between rooms, only to discover that inside each one, every corner was jam-packed with clothes, toys and other items.
There wasn't a space to be find on Anita's chest of drawers as it was covered in piles of junk. Photo / This Morning
Anita confessed that it had been "maybe two years" since she'd been able to get inside her wardrobes, and when Vicky began clearing her belongings she found clothes that were 25 years old.
They divided all the clothes into three piles labelled "keep", "charity" and "recycle", and within six hours had piled up a staggering 40 bin bags.
Vicky explained the mindset of hoarders: "This is a big challenge because we're not only working with the physical de-cluttering of the room, but we're working with Anita's emotional feelings and emotional attachments to a lot of the items here."
But thanks to Anita's Ruthless attitude, and tricks from Vicky like using slimline hangers to gain extra space, using plastic tidies and plain duvets to give a clean and fresh feel, the mother's bedroom was transformed.
"This is amazing there is no clutter! It's like a totally different room," Anita said.
