I am not a particularly untidy person, my little workshop gets in a mess sometimes, but then every so often I blitz it. So I have written this from an imaginary person’s perspective.
“Gunwales the upper edge of the hull an old sailing ship may seem not to rhyme with tunnels but it’s usually pronounced “Gunels”

The De Cluttering Of John Clutterbuck.

The engineer came in I heard him mutter, “How can anyone live in this clutter”
We navigated the passage between newspapers and tins, piles on the floor but nothing in bins
We traced the phone wire like roots underground, then in the end the telephone we found
The engineer told me “Your phone it still rings, it’s just you can’t hear it under all of these things”

At our local shop there’s a notice board, ten pound an hour declutterring, can I afford ?
I got home navigated the tunnels, everywhere packed right up to the gunwales
I slept on the thought, amongst other things, at least I should hear if my phone ever rings
So I phoned the nice lady “Can you help me tidy ?” “Yes I can, can I come next Friday?”

The week passed quickly Friday soon came, I opened the door “Debbie’s my name”
Single file we walked to the kitchen, to find her a chair was my first mission
“This pile of newspapers here is absurd” “But in there may be an unfinished crossword”
“And what about all these cans, what are they for?” “Just in case of a third world war”

“We’d best order a skip you know that John ? In your case it should be a very big one”
“We’ll start here with these old scratch cards, and all these daft poems by Meadowhead Bard”
“But in the scratch cards there may be a winner” “ I doubt it, and you’ll have somewhere to sit to eat dinner”
We found the table covered in dead house plants, and a bowl of sugar being eaten by ants

Up and down we went to the skip, shirts with no buttons, trousers with no zip
Magazines with pictures of celebrities in, why did I never put those in the bin ?
A window we had began to uncover filled with pictures and photos one of an old lover
“What is that on the floor there shining ?” after twenty four hours more of our mining

“It’s my wife’s wedding ring I shouted with glee, all this stuff was why she left me”
The house all clear, light shining in, a beautiful halo just above the bin
The carpet all clear except for worn tracks, even some hooks free to hang rain macs
My wife she came back, said I’d been a nutter, then gradually filled up the house with her very own clutter.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I wouldn’t throw those cans away just yet John !

All words Meadowhead Bard.