Are you considering engaging the services of a professional to declutter and organise your home? Only you expect the person to do the job for you while you are working or taking care of the kids? If so, let me explain why you should get involved if you want sustainable results.
Partnering for Success: Your Role in a Decluttering and Organising Project
Working with a professional organiser on decluttering
First, only you can decide what’s important in your life and what does or doesn’t belong in it. A professional organiser is here to empower you to make decisions that are going to leave you liberated, not regretful.
One of my clients was very worried the first time we spoke that I would force her to discard things. Her prior experience working with a professional organiser had not been positive as the person had discarded drawings and paintings from her late mother while she was not around. Those paintings probably didn’t look good in the eyes of the organiser but my client was very attached to them. She was devastated and stopped working with the professional organiser immediately. It took her 4 years to find the courage to resume the process and engage my services.
Second, clutter hasn’t typically happened overnight, and won’t disappear overnight either. Decluttering can be a highly emotionally charged time and there is so much you can swallow at one go. What’s important to me is to be a catalyst in my clients’ lives. I equip them with tools, skills, motivation and confidence so that they can continue the process on their own. How can you learn if you are not physically present?
Working with a professional organiser on organising
One of the key underlying principles in organising is categorising your stuff so that you can easily find what you need when you need it by associating it with a category.
But the thing is that we all have our ways to categorise. Clothes may be categorised by occasion, type, colour, outfit, or combination of these. Shoes may be categorised by occasion, height of the heel, material, colour, etc. Personal documents can be categorised by topic, family member, etc. Once again only you can come up with categories that make sense to you.
Organising involves setting up processes, systems and tools THAT WORK FOR YOU.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to home, or workspace, organisation. Some claim it’s engineering work but in my opinion, the human dimension is by far more important. Because clutter and disorganisation are unconscious habits that form over time.
I strongly believe that we should embrace our habits instead of working against them when we organise our homes so that we have a better chance to make it work for us in the long run. For example, if you undress in the bathroom, there’s no point in putting your laundry basket in the bedroom. Otherwise, clothes are likely to end up on the floor and stay there for a while…
So yes, a professional organiser should know best practices, but her value will come from helping you adapt them to your needs and preferences, or come up with something completely different. She will make sure to check back on you after a while and help you make changes if and where needed.
A transformative change can’t happen if you aren’t involved in working with the professional organiser.
If you think of letting the professional organiser do the job for you – or if the professional organiser suggests doing the job for you – think twice. The benefits of her work will be short-lived. It may look nice and tidy once she’s done but you are likely to backslide and clutter to creep back very soon.
I have been working as a professional organiser since 2013. I blend decluttering, organisation and time management strategies to coach you through a lifestyle shift. Without your involvement, this can’t happen. We need to work together so that I can understand the emotional or psychological barriers or issues that have created the situation in the first place and so that together we can transform your home and create habits that stick.
Check out what past clients say about our work together or contact me whenever you are ready to start your organising journey.
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