21 Unexpected Things You’ll Find Your Organizer Doing
When you think about what organizers do, you might think of Marie Kondo, The Home Edit, or Hoarders: Buried Alive. You imagine that organizers only sort things, help you decide what to keep and discard, and then arrange your items in an organized and useful way.
That is certainly a big part of what we do, but what we love best is that every client situation is different and we often get to be fun and creative in our work. We encounter so many surprises during our work that we need to be prepared for anything. Sometimes, that means doing some of these 21 things:
Negotiating with your cat to convince it to stay out of the donation bag. For some reason cats like to try to get themselves donated!
Talking to your stuff: asking items why they are where they are and where they might want to be instead.
Playing around with several types of containers and their fit. It’s Tetris for organizers.
Sniff testing old lotions, candles, spices, and other products to see if they are still good.
Testing your kid’s pens and markers while setting up their art station.
Looking for the best angle to capture the worst of the mess in a photograph, so we can have a dramatic before and after photo.
Measuring spaces using random items (or our arms) because our tape measure is in our bag in the other room. (Or, if it’s me, because I left it at my last client’s house.)
Adding felt sliders to the bottom of all your furniture.
Doing a little dance when an organizing plan comes into place.
Playing detective to track down information: a missing email, directions for using an appliance, a place that will come to clean your carpets.
Fighting with your printer after you mentioned that there’s a line on all your prints.
Crawling behind and under furniture to pull out long-lost items.
Sitting on the floor surrounded by piles of categorized papers. It’s our favorite way to sort papers.
Acting as fashion show judge as you decide what clothes to keep or donate.
Rearranging furniture to make an organized space look even better.
Searching for dead loved ones. Yes, people have lost the remains of spouses, parents, and pets, and we track them down.
Having a conversation with Alexa after she thought we were talking to her about making decisions.
Playing a game of “find the oldest expiration date”. We love finding things that expired before we were born.
Doing a mad search through piles of papers to find that one important document that went missing last month and that you need for a meeting tomorrow.
Begging things to “just stay” as they balance precariously after we remove the first bit of clutter.
Handing out gold star stickers for a job well-done!
