Full text from A Home Organizing Project. Show all testimonials.
A Home Organizing Project
I was extremely lucky to have met Shirley at a Wellness Fair in Mahone Bay. While walking around, perusing the booths, my five-year-old niece saw an enticing basket with some little pieces of paper next to it and I explained it was for entering your name to win something. When I read that the prize was a free session with a professional organizer, she said I should definitely try to win. She had been trying, herself, to help me tidy up and sort my papers, but had found the job too big for ‘just a kid’.
I had never considered hiring a professional because I believed that getting organized was something I should be able to figure out myself. I have been chronically disorganized since… well, probably since I got my own bedroom as an adolescent. And the problem has only gotten worse over the years as the amount of space at my disposal has increased. Like a goldfish that grows to fit a larger tank, the clutter and chaos that surrounded me continuously multiplied to fill every room of my home. I have known for years that it was quite possibly the biggest impediment to my growth and success, and therefore have made many attempts at getting organized, once and for all. I have read several books, made dozens of lists, inventories and assessments, tried all sorts of tools, systems, and programs but have always wound up back at square one. For someone who has accumulated this much stuff and has years of well-formed disorganized habits, books can fall short when you start to get overwhelmed. Other peoples’ systems can be hard to maintain if they don’t feel natural to you. And lists and inventories are not helpful if you can’t focus.
When Shirley stepped in, I realized that I really couldn’t do it all on my own. I was in deep and floundering. All of my books and groundwork, though, were not useless as they gave us a jumping off point and helped to narrow down ideas that might work. We were constantly evaluating the process and tweaking it, shifting the approach when it didn’t strike the right chord. When I would get weary, we would take a break or switch to a different task that was less mentally taxing, and then we would come back ready for another round! I would get more accomplished in the few hours Shirley was here than I would on my own in a week… or two. She kept me focused by reminding me of the goals – short-term and ultimate – that we were working toward. She kept me from feeling overwhelmed and defeated by pinpointing the progress we’d already made, and she knew what questions to ask to help me see what decision to make. Her comments and suggestions were never judgmental but, geared toward figuring out what solution or method would work for me, with me. A pivotal moment was when she asked me what I planned to do with the myriad empty jars of all shapes and sizes, huddled on the kitchen counter. I told her I was going to clean them up and use them to store spices and other dry goods. But then I told her how long they’d been sitting there, waiting to get cleaned up. She asked me how much of my life energy I wanted to put into this project and if I could think of anything else I would rather spend that energy on, such as one of my long-neglected hobbies. This gave me a new perspective and I have since referred to that moment in my memory when making other such decisions. I kept only a few uniformly-sized jars that were stackable and we filled a blue bag with the rest. What a feeling when that bag went out the door and I could see my empty kitchen counter!
The bulk of the work we did was on my study – it was the biggest priority for me and the biggest disaster. I learned that I was trying to fit too many activities, and all the materials that go along with them, into the space for its size. Once we’d sifted through the bulk of the clutter in the room, and gave it a distinct purpose and identity, it really started to take shape. The only items allowed to remain in the room were those that would support its function in some way, which made it clear what had to go. Now I have a space that is truly functional, comfortable, and that I enjoy spending time in. Plus, with the excess stuff out of it, I can start to see what I might want to add in the way of décor, art, and other creature comforts. It is great to finally be able to work at my desk in relative peace, knowing where everything I need is, and still be able to look out the window at the big spruce tree.
Some areas of my house are still very much ‘works-in-progress’ but I have some momentum now and the task doesn’t seem quite as unfathomable! I can go into a space and get a good sense of what I need to do, and most importantly, feel that I’m going to be able to do it. I know it will take time, dedication, and maybe a little trial and error, but I have a different perspective of how to get through it now which I think will make all the difference!
Amy’s top ten favourite things about working with Shirley:
10 → She is results-oriented. I saw more resolution and cleared space in a few hours of working with her than I would see working on my own for a week or more. Spying a dispersed pile of kids’ craft supplies and crafts in various states of completion, in the living room, she suggested seeing how far we could get with it in fifteen minutes. I had not touched it, I guess because I wasn’t sure what to do with it. She helped me clarify which items to keep, how to decide quickly and where to put the rest. In fifteen minutes we had it all picked up, bagged up and the remaining supplies stored for future use.
9 → She gave me one space where I could walk in and breathe a sigh of relief. Even though every room in my house was cluttered and disorganized, her targeted guidance and assistance in one particular room gave me one place in the house I could go and not be stressed upon entering. It offered a reprieve from the panic I felt when I looked around and saw the overwhelming amount of work to be done everywhere.
8 → She kept me motivated. As I began to see ‘pockets of organization’ here and there in different areas, I gained momentum and started feeling less defeated by the daunting task of organizing the entire house. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I also learned that bringing perfectionism down just a few notches can mean the difference between something that works good enough, or better than it did, and something that does not work at all.
7 → She kept me focused in a practical way. Without her, my tendency was to either get side-tracked, bogged down by details, or otherwise simply give up on an organizing project if I didn’t see results quickly enough. When she saw me getting distracted by indecision, tangential projects that inevitably sprang up, or frustration, she would remind me of our immediate goal for the area we were working on. She refreshed my perspective so that we could finish one task, see and appreciate the accomplishment, and then deal with the other issues in their own time. Left to my own devices, I would have started a dozen things and finished none.
6 → She is capable of comprehending and working with different organizational styles. Despite the stack of organizing books and guides displayed on my dining table when she arrived, I still didn’t know what format was going to work best for me. Through her insightful questions and observations, and some trial and error, she was able to navigate me toward the methods, tools, and systems that would make sense to me, and therefore be more likely to stick.
5 → She is sensitive to the emotional and physical demands of tackling a complex organizing project. As anyone who has tried to declutter knows, this kind of work can be very draining on several levels. If she noticed me becoming weary and getting that glazed-over-eyes look, she would suggest either a little break, or just a change of focus for ten or fifteen minutes. Once, while laboriously poring through stacks of old mail and piles of various papers, she perceived this fuzzy-headedness setting in so we went and broke down some of the cardboard boxes clogging my basement to give our brains a break for ten minutes. It was the perfect switch. And when I started to tear up upon the discovery of a poem I wrote when my grandmother died, and that I hadn’t seen since, she handled it with a professional and gentle manner, warmly sympathetic in a way that respected the personal nature of the emotions I was feeling.
4 → She is resourceful. One of my stumbling blocks to getting organized has been not wanting to add a huge pile of stuff to the landfill. Shirley was completely supportive of my environmental concerns and provided me with an extensive list of places that would accept donations of different sorts. She also rounded up current information on recycling in my community, and helped me stuff dozens of bags full of old but still usable clothing which we put right in my car and I dropped off the next time I was in town. Those clothes might very well be still sitting in my basement had we not taken this may-as-well-do-it-now action. She also helped me to find within my home plenty of under-utilized objects to employ in our quest instead of having to purchase a bunch of new things that may or may not work.
3 → She gave me a new perspective and attitude toward organization. I have been chronically disorganized for half my life. I have thought for many years that if I could just get it all cleaned up once and for all, then I would be able to pursue my life goals and dreams more effectively. But every time I started over with a clean slate, I fell back into the same habits and patterns that got me in the mess in the first place. Shirley didn’t just come into my house and help me clean up the mess, she helped me develop systems for dealing with my stuff before it becomes the mess. But these are well-worn habits and they don’t change in a day, or a week. Sometimes, I backslide and things start to get away from me. When that happens, I recall the steps she taught me to deal with it when she was here and I get back on track. It is something I will have to continuously keep in check, to avoid those familiar but unfruitful behaviours.
2 → She taught me to consider how I spend my precious energy. While taking a little tea-break, Shirley noticed the numerous jars spread over most of my kitchen counter. I explained that I planned to wash and reuse them for food storage. Then she asked how long they’d been sitting there and I honestly wasn’t sure. Definitely more than two months. They had faded into the scenery of the kitchen and I no longer even noticed them. I was putting off the washing of them because I had to soak and scrape the label glue off in order to deem them usable. And I wasn’t quite sure exactly what was going in them. Or which ones I had fitting lids for. Shirley gently pointed out that I could recycle these mismatched jars of all shapes and sizes, saving only the ones that fit actual mason jar lids. That way, my jars would all be uniform (so I would know how much of what would fit in them), stackable and I could always get properly-fitting lids for them. Her reasoning was solid but I wasn’t totally convinced until she asked me, “How much of your life-energy are you willing to give to these gluey jars? What else could you do with that energy? Work on some writing? Painting? Gardening?” That was a profound, and pivotal moment in my organizing journey. I have repeated this question to myself many times since then.
1 → She is respectful and non-judgmental. My messy, cluttered and dysfunctional home has been a source of embarrassment, shame, tension, and endless apologies for years. My mother could never refrain from commenting on how I’ve always been a clutterbug and my house looked just like my room did when I was a teenager. My stepmother threatened to send my name to one of the television programs that make a spectacle of cleaning up severely messy houses. And I can only imagine what strangers who came through when the house was for sale must have thought. My mother has since acknowledged the great strides and progress I have made with Shirley’s help. But Shirley never ever made me feel insecure, inadequate, ashamed, or hopeless about my so-called disaster area. She assessed my mess objectively and with every confidence that it was conquerable, if extensive.
~ Amy
