‘I do my best to try and make people feel better about letting go of stuff’
Decluttering is the key to Stacey Soloman’s new show, writes Georgia Humphreys
From the moment she bounds into the room grinning, one thing is clear: Stacey Solomon is just as bubbly and giggly in real life as she comes across on Instagram.
The 32-year-old TV personality, who hails from Dagenham, east London, has made a name for herself on the social media site in recent years, and currently has 4.8 million followers.
It’s all thanks to sharing her organisation tips, storage hacks and upcycling projects, as well as candid posts and stories about family life.
And so it makes sense that the latest project for the Loose Women panellist – who rose to fame after finishing in third place on the sixth series of The X Factor in 2009 – is hosting a sixpart BBC series called Sort Your Life Out with Stacey Solomon.
The show, which first aired as a one-off pilot, sees the mum-of-four, plus a group of experts – organiser extraordinaire Dilly Carter, carpenter and upcycler Robert Bent, and cleaning fanatic Iwan Carrington – travelling around the UK, and coaching various families as they declutter their homes.
The first step is to take out all the home-owners’ possessions – from the everyday to the nostalgic – and lay them out in a giant warehouse.
The whole family can then look and decide together what they would like to keep and what they would like to let go of, leading to items either being recycled, donated, or sold.
In the meantime, the team will be reorganising and cleaning the family’s home, so they can return to a brand-new, beautiful, tidy space.
“People are holding on to things for so many reasons. We did a show with a single mum who split up with her husband, looks after her daughters, and there was so much she was holding on to just because she preferred who she was when she was in a relationship.”
She follows: “The last house we did, the lady had an accident, really hurt her back, and has been unable to get back to her normal life ever since. She really wasn’t happy with the way that she looked and she never addressed her wardrobe because of that. She never looks at her clothes, wears the same T-shirt every day.
“That was really, really sad because going through the wardrobe section was heartbreaking for her. It reminded her of a time before she had the accident, which I don’t think she’s accepted or feels that she wants to move on from because then she has to let go of that person.”
If it seems like one of the contributors is struggling mentally, it’s made clear that there’s more help available to them, Solomon adds.
“I’m not qualified; I can give a really good cuddle, but outside of that there does need to be professionals that step in and say ‘Hi, we think you need a bit more back-up than that’, and that is what they do. I don’t ever want to make anyone feel like I can fix those problems, because I can’t; I can do my best to try and make people feel better and more comfortable about letting go of stuff.”
● Sort Your Life Out with Stacey Solomon starts on BBC1 on Thursday 4 November