Dilly Carter on being abandoned as a baby as she shares her adoption story on Sort Your Life Out

Dilly Carter is a professional declutterer who has been on the Sort Your Life Out team with Stacey Solomon since series one and, on tonight’s show (March 24), she opens up about her adoption.

Dilly, 45, was abandoned as a baby and adopted when she was three years old. And her adoptive mother is the reason that she became an expert in decluttering…

Sort Your Life Out’s Dilly Carter began decluttering to help her mum who has bipolar disorder (Credit: BBC)

Dilly Carter shares adoption story on Sort Your Life Out

On tonight’s show, Dilly helps a couple who have adopted a little girl. When they got her, she had hardly any belongings. So, to compensate, the little girl’s parents became reluctant to throw out any of her things.

Dilly says that she can sympathise with those feelings, having been adopted herself, telling them: “I get that whole process.”

Abandoned as a baby and adopted aged three

Dilly has previously been open about her adoption story. She was adopted from Sri Lanka when she was three years old after being abandoned as a baby at a Sri Lankan orphanage. Dilly was adopted by English mum Freda and Sri Lankan dad Daya.

“They rescued me, aged three, from a Sri Lankan orphanage. Abandoned there as a baby, all I had was the metal cot I slept in and an uncertain future. Without Freda, who couldn’t get pregnant and was the driving force behind my adoption, I dread to think how my life might have turned out,” Dilly told the Mail back in 2023.

Speaking to Adoption UK, she also described her relationship with her adoptive parents as very functional, but I was never short of love”. She added: “My parents were working so hard to give me a lovely life, but we didn’t spend a lot of time together.”

Speaking to Good Housekeeping at the start of 2025, Dilly echoed the same sentiment, but added: “We lived in a semi-detached house on a lovely cul-de-sac, and I never wanted for anything.”

The star also shared that she didn’t have any professional help to understand and process her life story until she was an adult.

Dilly Carter’s tribute to her adoptive mum

Back in 2024, as Freda celebrated her 83rd birthday, Dilly shared a picture of the pair and told her mum: “I never underestimate just how much you have been through from such a young age. An early hysterectomy lead you to adopt, and thank goodness you did. But what made you adopt? What made you think back then in the mid-70s that was the thing to do?

“It wasn’t easy, especially being married to a very proud Sri Lankan man who didn’t ever discuss I wasn’t his natural daughter. He hid my adoption files under the bed and rarely spoke of it. But you both did it, spent hours filling forms, writing letters, visiting courts, going back and forth to Sri Lanka, until you finally brought me back to England in 1983.”

Touching on Freda’s mental health struggles, she added: “Since then you both worked tirelessly to give me a good life but in the end it affected your own so severely it impacted your mental health, your marriage and your ability to work. The way you both worked yourself into the ground will always be my reminder of why we work to live, not live to work.”

Freda lived in her own self-contained flat at the end of Dilly’s home for years. However, at the end of 2024, she moved her into a care home. “Sometimes the hardest things to do are also the kindest things to do, for everyone involved,” she said at the time.

On her mum’s bipolar, and how it decided her career path

Dilly started to declutter from a young age to help her mother, who has bipolar disorder. Dilly wrote on her website: “I started my business as my mother has bipolar and her home was in chaos.”

The star added that, growing up, she “often felt suffocated by the clutter” at home. As a result, she moved out aged 18 to live in a flatshare with a friend.

Dilly also told the Mail: “It was the experience with Mum that pushed me towards setting up my business in the first place. Who better to sympathise with and understand the difficult and chaotic situations people can get into than me, having lived amid clutter for all those years and seen how it affected my mum’s mental health?”

And that’s why she’s a natural on Sort Your Life Out. She told Good Housekeeping: “I’m tough. But people need tough love. I spent the first three years of my life in an orphanage [in Sri Lanka], so I don’t feel emotional attachments to things. I had no one, so people matter to me, not possessions. Nothing is irreplaceable.

“But also, I’m the first one to cry. I get emotional because I can empathise. I’ve been through so much in my life. I understand where people are coming from, how they’ve ended up living that way, and I know how to help them out of it.”

Dilly joined the Sort Your Life Out team in 2021 (Credit: BBC)

How old is Dilly Carter?

Dilly Carter was born on November 11, 1980. She is currently 45 years old.

Dilly grew up in Surrey, but now lives in the town of Tring in Hertfordshire.

Is Dilly Carter married? Does she have children?

Dilly Carter has been married to her husband Charley Carter for more than 10 years. The pair lived together in the US before coming back to the UK in 2012. Dilly regularly shares adorable pictures with her husband on her Instagram.

Dilly has a daughter named Neely-Reet with husband Charley. On Instagram, Dilly described her daughter as “our entire world and more”.

Dilly Carter on her womb cancer diagnosis

In April 2023, Dilly revealed she had been diagnosed with cancer of the womb. Later that year, Dilly opened up about her cancer diagnosis. Posting on Instagram, she shared she was told she had the disease in October 2022 and had undergone treatment.

“One year ago today I was told I had stage 1 cancer of my womb. I went into a three-week post-op appointment following a major surgery called a myomectomy to remove 12 fibroids thinking I was having a routine check up of my scar. But it was to tell me the fibroids they removed were cancerous which had spread from the lining of my womb.

“This would mean I would have to undergo a radical hysterectomy to remove my womb, ovaries and fallopian tubes to stop the cancer spreading. Our journey to have another baby naturally had just ended abruptly and unexpectedly during a somewhat routine procedure that I had paid privately to happen because the NHS waiting list was two years.

“Had I not paid, had I waited two years, I may not have been here to tell the story. But I can’t dwell on that.”

‘I never thought I would die’

Dilly added: “I think that if this last year has taught me anything, it is to appreciate what I do have, not what I don’t. To worry about what I can control, not what I can’t, and to look forward and carry on as best as I can with what I have.

“I never thought I would die, the positive and powerful side of mind took control and for that I feel very grateful. I knew I had a choice to prevent that, and I won’t ever take that for granted. Some people don’t get that choice, and others I know who have been in my position or similar will always know that feeling of survivors guilt. Why did I get the chance to be okay, when others didn’t.

“Millions of people lose their life to cancer, I haven’t.”

She then continued: “Thank god for those who I had around me who held me up when I was on the floor in pain unable to walk or in agony from the internal and external burns from radiation.

“My body may feel slightly different, and may not be as strong in places, but the scars that are left across my stomach are just a reminder that I survived and how amazing our bodies are at bringing us back to a better place.”

Sort Your Life Out star Dilly Carter admits she will ‘carry weight of cancer forever’

World Cancer Day 2024 saw Dilly post again: “Cancer changed my life forever. It changes a whole family’s lives forever. Not only did it take away my ability to have children again it has affected my daily life forever – from the way I eat to the amount of time I can spend on my feet.”

She added: “The scars and the daily side effects are just the physical reminders. The mental effects are with you forever. No matter how much you try to ignore it and carry on. You will carry that weight around forever.

“What it didn’t do however is take my life. I am eternally grateful to the surgeons and doctors who operated for five and a half hours to stop the cancer spreading by removing it.”

Return to hospital

Back in May 2024, Dilly was forced to return to hospital. Dilly endured a “barbaric” treatment whilst suffering with post-cancer issues. “I feel much better than I look. Once this tube is out today I’ll be home and back to normal,” she said.

A month later, at her six-monthly cancer check, she shared the news that tests had come back “clear”.

Read more: Inside Sort Your Life Out star Stacey Solomon’s stunning £1.2m Pickle Cottage home

Catch Dilly Carter on Sort Your Life Out Tuesdays at 8pm on BBC One.

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