She’s the take-no-prisoners home-purger that we’ve all come to adore on BBC One’s Sort Your Life Out, but it turns out, Dilly Carter isn’t completely immune to the emotions that come with the show. In Good Housekeeping’s March issue, Dilly revealed that there was one episode that brought her to tears – and it’s probably fair to say, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
The stories that have stuck with her from the show, she explained, have been the ones with personal resonance, such as an episode with two girls who were adopted, and one about a dad who’d lost his wife to cancer.
“I instantly felt a connection with those families. I was still having treatment for cancer myself [Dilly was diagnosed with cancer of the womb in October 2022] when I went into filming the episode with the dad who had lost his wife,” she says.
“Seeing him deal with that, and having small children to look after… I couldn’t help thinking, ‘God, imagine if that was my husband having to look after our daughter without me.’ It was really raw.”
She described the show, in which she, Stacey Solomon and their team declutter family homes, as “emotional, exhausting, a real rollercoaster” – in many ways, much like her own life has been.
“Decluttering is so powerful,” she says. “On the last day of filming each episode – the reveal day – we know that we’re about to change this family’s life.”
She now has her sights set on education, revealing that she’d like to go into schools and teach kids how to run a household, educating them about tidying, budgeting and learning about the mental health benefits of an organised home. She believes those skills are fundamental to living well – and we couldn’t agree more.
Read the full interview in Good Housekeeping’s March issue on sale now.
To find out more about Dilly’s decluttering business, Declutter Dollies, or to sign up for courses, visit declutterdollies.com.
