Viewers of Sort Your Life Out with Stacey Solomon were left in floods of tears last night after the team helped a woman who was caring for their nieces and nephew after her sister had died from Covid.
The BBC1 series aired yesterday, with the team helping Raaj and Roydel, in Hertfordshire, who were living with their two nieces as well as their nephew and son in a cluttered three-bedroom property.
The couple explained the households had joined together after Raaj’s sister Tasharen had died from Covid at the end of 2020 in order to look after her three children.
The team helped them get to sort through their belongings, before the space was reorganised with clever storage solutions and a lick of paint to freshen up each of the rooms.
Many were left in floods of tears over the episode, with one adding: ‘Oh that was wonderful! #SortYourLifeOut You touched my heart tonight and I had a good cry. What a wonderful human you are. Beautiful. That dear family!
Viewers of Sort Your Life Out with Stacey Solomon were left in floods of tears last night after the team helped Raaj and Roydel who were caring for their nieces and nephew after Raaj’s sister died from Covid
The couple explained the households had joined together after Raaj’s sister Tasharen had died from Covid at the end of 2020 in order to look after her three children – leaving the space cluttered
The team transformed the couple’s home, giving the rooms a fresh lick and painting and finding clever storage solutions for their belongings
One wrote: ‘Love #staceysolomon (never judgmental, always positive) what a lovely family in tonight’s #sortyourlifeout – tough circumstances but their love for each other really shone through.’
Another commented: ‘It was sweet in the end. I don’t think some people realise how much stuff they accumulate.’
A third added: ‘What a lovely family. And the solutions are easy to use in any home.’
Stacey and her team, Iwan, cleaning, Dilly, organising, and Rob, carpentry, explored the home to see how they could help the couple.
Downstairs were two family spaces which were overrun with belongings, and had no real identity.
There was a cluttered kitchen which had nowhere for the family to sit down and eat together.
And upstairs, the master bedroom was overrun with mess, while the children’s rooms were packed with bags of clothing.
Stacey said: ‘Every single room is trying to be 20 million different things.’
Simran, 17, explained: ‘The reason we are all living together is because at the end of 2020, my mum had Covid. She just got worse and worse and two weeks later, she passed away.
Each room in the three-bedroom property was overly cluttered and packed with the belongings of two different families
The team transformed one of the living spaces into a dining room, giving it a lick of fresh paint and covering the fridge-freezer to help it fit into the colour scheme
Upstairs, the team found the three bedrooms were cluttered and unorganised and decided to reassign each of the different spaces
What was the master bedroom was transformed into a shared room for the teenage nieces, with a cabin bed providing privacy
Meanwhile the kitchen was also a cluttered, with little space for the family to cook and enjoy spending time together
The team added some clever storage solutions, including a wall rack for spices, freeing up space in the cupboards
‘Since then, my aunt and uncle and my cousin moved into our home.’
Raaj explained: ‘Coming into this house without my sister felt painful but I instantly felt I had to look after these kids and fulfil what my sister wanted for them.’
However when the couple moved into the property, merging their two houses was difficult.
Roydel said: ‘The kids need different things. We don’t have anywhere to actually put the items.’
Raaj said: ‘I think when we have a decluttered home, we’re going to have a new start.’
Stacey said she ‘didn’t want to overwhelm the family’, saying she felt ‘nervous’ because she wanted to make the home a place they all ‘deserved.’
The team planned to strip the entire house and display all the family’s possessions in a huge warehouse. They then had to decide what to keep and what to get rid of.
The presenter challenged the couple to get rid of 50 per cent of their belongings, with the team spending 10 hours packing up every single item in their home.
With the busy day of packing over, all of the family’s stuff was on the way to the warehouse.
Stacey revealed their mass of belongings, with boxes of the family’s stuff being laid out into sections so they can clearly see how much they had.
Among their belongings were 24 used toothbrushes and 105 Punjabi suits.
Meanwhile the two youngest members of the family were moved into a bedroom together to share
The couple’s huge king-sized bed was moved into the box room, creating a cosy and comfortable space for them to relax in
Stacey said the team would be dealing with the situation completely differently than how they would normally handle it.
She said: ‘We definitely need to make sure they’re happy with their decisions and everything they do today, they go home and feel comfortable with.’
Over the next 48 hours, the couple sorted their belongings into different piles, to sell, donate or keep.
Back at the base, Rob, Iwan and Dilly began working on storage solutions in the home.
After a week, the family returned to their home to see what the team had achieved.
The living room was clear from clutter, with new storage solutions in the lounge, and had been painted into a fresh pink colour.
Viewers called the Sort Your Life Out team ‘angels’ for how they had helped the family, with many saying they’d been left in tears by the episode
While Raaj said she ‘loved it’, Roydell said: ‘This is amazing.’
Stacey said they had tried to incorporate Tasharen into every space.
Meanwhile the second family room had been transformed into a dining room, with Stacey saying: ‘It was so important to get this back.’
Upstairs, the bedrooms have all been reassigned – with the teenage girls amazed by their new bedroom.
Raaj and Roydel’s bigger room was reconfigured to work for the girls to share, while the boys were also sharing.
The family were left in tears over the transformation, praising the team and thanking them for their amazing work.
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