A woman from Chatham-Kent is taking her decluttering talents to the small screen.
Cas Aarssen, who was born and raised in Chatham and now lives in Puce, is the star of HGTV's new show Hot Mess House.
In the show, Aarssen helps families tackle home organization and live a clutter-free life.
Over the years Aarssen has risen to recognition for her savvy organization skills and tips, however, that wasn't always the case. To this day, she jokingly refers to herself as a "recovering super slob."
"For the first 30 years of my life, I thought I was just a naturally messy, disorganized person. I was running a home daycare, drowning in clutter, drowning in toy clutter, feeling like a failure as a mom," she explained. "I thought 'I'm just going to try again.' I tried and failed so many times to get organized."
Aarssen quickly realized that her way of organizing wasn't what was traditionally seen in magazines or television and that she had her own unique way of decluttering that matched her unique needs.
Once this proved successful, it wasn't long before she was giving out advice to friends and family members and eventually taking on clients. Aarssen then started sharing her experiences on YouTube and social media while growing her Clutterbug brand. She now has nearly 143,000 followers on Facebook and Instagram combined, as well as over 420,000 YouTube subscribers.
"It was a hobby for me, it was a passion," she said. "I love organizing I love helping people change their lives through organization like it helped mine. I never went into this as a business. My husband literally said to me 'please stop talking about organizing' and he bought me a camera and said 'record a video or something, post it online'...and that's what I did... before I knew it people were following me and I had a blog."
Aarssen and the Clutterbug brand have since been featured on the Marilyn Dennis Show, the OWN Network and in The Huffington Post as well as giving a Ted Talk, writing several books and hosting a podcast. Aarssen is best known for her philosophy of four distinct organizing styles that help people find what decluttering methods work best for their personal situations.
Those unique organizing styles will be featured on Hot Mess House, which is part of HGTV's self-shot series.
"It's the type of show I want to watch on TV, so I'm so excited to be a part of it," said Aarssen. "We're going into people's homes virtually. We're actually not visiting people, we're doing it all through Skype and helping them identify their organizing style so we can break through the clutter, declutter and set up systems that work for them and their unique organizing style."
Aarssen promises that viewers will get to see some big transformations on the show and a variety of different circumstances, including people who have over 20 years worth of clutter built up and rooms that are inaccessible because of how much stuff is in them.
"We have a family, just like my family, a wonderful couple and three little girls. They have never decluttered any of their toys ever and the oldest is [13-year-old. You can't even walk in the toy room...we were able to get rid of all the toys that the children didn't play with, which was so emotional, for mom more than anyone else, and give a space that's more age-appropriate," said Aarssen.
According to Aarssen, viewers will walk away with valuable advice and systems for every different organizing style.
"We have so many organizing tips, for closest and for toys. We give concrete rules when it comes decluttering like if you haven't used it in the last year, if you wouldn't buy it again and if you don't love it, why would you keep it? I think those three rules are for everyone," she said.
For the woman who started her journey watching organizing shows on television, Aarssen said she knew this was an amazing opportunity to help out and offer advice to others.
"It's completely bonkers... I never in my wildest dreams would have thought this would happen," she said. "I've never done TV, it was never even on my radar. Then a production company contacted me. At first, my insecurity was like 'I can't do this, I don't belong, I'm not worthy of this.' But, I thought, this is such a dream for me."
Hot Mess House premieres on HGTV on June 24 with back-to-back episodes at 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Each episode will also be available on HGTV GO the same day as the TV episode premieres.