Why You Might Hire a Professional Organizer

The following article is from realsimple.com. I found it via unclutterer.com, another excellent source of good organizing tips. One of the organizers quoted below is Annie Rohrbach, owner of Letting Go and Lightening Up, whose training I took last year. I'll be seeing her in April at the National Association of Professional Organizers conference in Reno.

Should You Hire a Professional Organizer?

Have you ever considered hiring a professional organizer? The reasons for hiring one are seemingly endless. They can help you find order in a specific area of your home or office (a bedroom closet or managing e-mails at work) or they can come for many sessions and help you with your entire space. At a recent conference for professional organizers, I met with some of the most respected professionals in the industry and asked them the following question: "What would you like potential clients to know before hiring an organizer for the first time?" Their responses were refreshingly candid and insightful. Here are some of their answers:

Before you ever pick up the phone, "consider your goals and motivation for hiring outside help. Have a rough idea of what you'd like to accomplish by working with an organizer, even if you don't know how it will happen. Ask yourself why you've not been able to do it alone, and communicate the answer to the organizers you contact. It will be helpful for them to know what your roadblocks are." -- Monica Ricci, owner of Atlanta-based Catalyst Organizing Solutions

"Personal organizers are not mental health professionals, but they still want to get to know you well so that they can help you solve your organization problems. Don't be surprised by the personal nature of questions on new client forms. An organizer may ask you if you've been diagnosed with ADHD or if you have a reading disorder. Clients obviously don't have to answer these questions, but the best solution for a person's needs may stem from truthful answers to these inquiries." -- Geralin Thomas, owner of Cary, North Carolina-based Metropolitan Organizing

A good organizer may meet with you for the first time and realize that there is another professional organizer out there who is more qualified for your specific needs. A great organizer will take the steps to get you in touch with that person. -- Annie Rohrbach, owner of San Francisco-based Letting Go and Lightening Up

If you're someone who is only looking for a little motivation or a new perspective to get started with an organization project, it may be worthwhile for you to hire a professional organizer just for an assessment. -- Kathy Waddill, owner of Orinda, California-based The Untangled Web

Other valuable points that arose in conversation:

Don't let price be your sole reason for choosing one organizer over another. It's important that you can work it into your budget, but there are other factors to consider such as the person's people skills and experience. You're hiring a person who will be delving into the personal and business areas of your life, so it's important you trust them and feel that they have your best interests at heart.

If you're a business professional who is nervous about competitors or clients learning about your need to seek outside organizing help, you can ask your professional organizer to sign a non-disclosure agreement and arrive at sessions without company branding on his or her clothes and car.

If you're choosing to work with a professional organizer for multiple sessions, you should expect to have homework between the sessions.

The most common question asked of a professional organizer is if your space is the worst the organizer has ever seen. Even if your space is the worst, they probably won't admit it. In most cases, though, your space is not the worst.
Have you used a professional organizer? Any tips or stories to share? To find a professional organizer in your community, check out the National Association of Professional Organizer's online referral system.

I Have a Picture in My Mind

I am sitting sorting through pictures, cards and memorabilia this morning trying to follow the advice I give my clients. Do I really need every Mother's Day card my kids gave me? Every picture of every trip no matter how out of focus or even forgotten? Now, where was this cobblestone street scene? I was prepared to throw out quite a few but my toss pile was embarrassingly short. And my enjoyment level very high.

I did create some order, even putting all the pictures of houses I've lived in, along with houses of parents, grandparents, even great-grandparents into one album. Till now they have just been collected in a bit of a jumble in large envelopes. Now I have an album for friends, one for trips, one for my kids, one for my husband and me in a variety of poses and countries.

I discovered a poem I wrote in 2003 in Suriname, where John & I were serving in the Peace Corps. We were riding on what we called the boom bus (for the loud, Caribbean music that played as we wove through the crowded streets) and I noticed a billboard with a little boy sitting on the floor trying on a man's dress shoe. Here's what I wrote:



I sit on the sofa icing my back.
"Does it hurt when you do that'?"
Yes.
"Well, then don't do that?
Dad wisdom or a joke he told about a man going to the doctor.
I thought of my Dad yesterday on the #1 bus
when I saw the picture of the little black boy
sitting on the floor putting on one of his Dad's
black dress shoes -- it looked like one of those
Bostonian wingtips mine used to wear to work.
The ones he loved to have me untie and pull off his feet
when he got home from work and sank into his favorite chair.
My 4-year-old feet half filled them as I clumped around the den,
making my father smile and reveling in his precious attention.
When he was feeling particularly relaxed,
he'd let me have a sip of his beer with the foamy head
from the wide-bowled glass; I always tried to get more.
I remember how he'd dance me around the room
while I stood on his feet and how he sometimes
gave my brother and me horsey-back rides before bedtime,
trying to buck us off as we clung to his neck squealing
until our mother told him to let us settle down or
we'd never go to sleep, but looking quietly pleased
that he was playing with us and giving her a few minutes for herself.
Then her bad back, which I learned later was really a deep depression.
It kept her from roughhousing with us and made her take long naps
in the afternoon, during which we had to play outside
or go to the neighbors or try very hard to remember to play quietly inside.

I don't think little boys in Suriname have black Bostonians to try on
but they probably slap around in their father's flip flops. Do they
sip from their dad's Parbo beer bottles? I know they learn basic English
from watching Amercian cartoons and they get their impressions
of how blacks live in America from Sanford and Son reruns.

Here I am in Suriname, waking with my mother's puffy eyes
from an allergy to something that blooms in the garden,
with a bad back that won't lead to a stay in a mental institution.
No, I'll ice my back and put on my own shoes and,
remembering my Saturday mornings watching TV in Iowa,
when Buffalo Bob asked, "Kids, what time is it?!"
I'll answer, "It's Howdy Doody time!!"
And I'll spend a day in South America with a pale white moon
hanging in a piece of bright blue sky
between the branches of my neighbor's mango tree.


Other treasures I discovered as I sorted: a screenplay my brother, Alan, wrote at College of Marin, a story my daughter wrote in college about his death when she was a freshman in college, the obituary my husband wrote for the newspaper. In it he mentioned that someone at Alan's funeral called him the gift giver and his son called him "the man who loved to laugh." Members of the softball team he managed said he brought them from the basement to the playoffs and insisted they have a team song: Finniculi Finnicula.

I'm working with a client in Sausalito now who lives minutes from the industrial building overlooking the water where Alan lived and I drove by the other day just to look up at his window and imagine him there. He got free rent in exchange for being night watchman and he and his son lived in a tiny space together. He was 42, on his way across the Golden Gate Bridge on his blue Kawasaki motorcycle when he hit a pothole and lost control on dangerous Doyle Drive. It was one of his favorite routes because it brought him through the Presidio and I remember driving it one time when we were visiting him. He told us his brakes were going but he thought they'd be okay. That was so Alan. He was optimistic no matter what the circumstances. He made jewelry, silver and copper bracelets, and sold them on the street in San Francisco.

Among the photos, I found some of him when he was a baby, three years younger than me. There he was rosy-cheeked in a high chair; wearing a coonskin cap; dressed in full costume as Rusty in Rin Tin Tin; sitting barefoot on the grass with two of our neighbors from across the street.

I'll put some of the pictures in albums, some back in the envelopes and then into a box to be looked at another day. Some things you just can't part with.

Zenhabits.net

One of my clients told me about a website that is changing my life. It's called zenhabits.net and it's a perfect companion to voluntary simplicity. It gives ideas on how to simplify your life in a beautiful way. For one thing, it puts a new spin on GTD, Getting Things Done by David Allen, which I've talked about. That's the idea of gathering all those "to dos" that are cycling through your mind on paper, turning them into physical actions and reviewing. While sounding simple, the system can get a little too daunting at times, so Zen Habits makes it even easier.

It also has articles on minimalist decorating with ideas like: clear the flat spaces -- put things away and rotate just a few things you love on table tops; eliminate things that you don't love or find useful; find a place for everything and store things there; declutter your kitchen counters, desktop and entryway. It's nothing new, but a slightly different, gentler approach.

I spent time yesterday helping C organize her music and books on tape. It was a kind of meditation, finding the cassettes and CDs that belonged in the right boxes, discarding broken CD cases and slipping the CDs into plastic sleeves in holders. Labeling shelves in her CD tower and sorting. We listened to music from Turkey while we worked and her cat joined us as an observer in a chair at the table. Much of the music will be burned into her music library and books on tape will be sold on craigslist.

C is a very talented children's book illustrator and she autographed one of her books for my grandson. It's a beautiful Christmas story and her orange cat makes an appearance. My reading to him from her book coaxed one of his brightest smiles. We're all still reveling in the success of his weekend lemonade stand (by invitation only to reduce the possibility of infections) which netted $26 for the Lymphoma Society.

Life is sweet.