There's a difference between being messy and being disorganized. In today's blog post, I answer a common question about what separates messiness from general disorganization. Can you guess the answer? What's considered messy: a few papers on the kitchen counter, a closet full of coats, boots, and hats ready to explode, toys all over your kid's room? There is a difference between being messy and being disorganized. For example, I am an organized person, but my house can get qu

Why The Client Called Me I’ve been working with this specific fabulous woman for a few years, each session tackling an organizing project that seemed large and daunting: think garage, closets, storage units, moves. This time, though, she wanted freedom from something that stared her in the face daily: to clean up her desk drawers. Solution There are three ways to deal with drawers - let’s call them, ah-hem, junk drawers. Try any one of these methods if it sounds appealing, an

You are B-U-S-Y. I get it. Guess what? Me, too. And I’m not being sarcastic here…I really understand. However, rather than pontificate about how we are loosing ourselves in craziness and our culture is drowning in information overload, I want to give you some tactical resources to do something about it. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to review various support services that I have personally used - or I know someone directly who has - to give you a place to go for help.

Confession of a professional organizer: This is a real-life photo of my own daughter's closet. BEFORE. (Just wait until AFTER...) I spend so much of my life helping other people declutter that sometimes... I just don’t feel like doing it at my own house. I love all the benefits of feeling organized (relaxed, things under control, not stressed, efficient...) Yet - it can be hard work to get there, right? So, I enlisted my children on a closet decluttering project - which invol

Last week I wrote about 4 Common Ways we get in our own way of organizing. I touched on the problem of putting low-use items in the ‘high-rent districts’ of your home or office. Let’s inventory a few keys areas - like your desk, kitchen, bathroom, entry/exit area - to help you identify some potential roadblocks to your organization efforts...and resolve them. Your kitchen. Small or large kitchen, your countertops and cabinets are high-dollar real estate. Any of these culprit

Let's face it...mornings can be rough. It's 7:45am and the toddler is making a mess on the floor, 2 other kids screech through the kitchen asking for permission slips and wanting to know where their cleats are, your husband or partner is racing out to catch the train for work, and then there is you...tired, but trying to finish making some sandwiches and check your phone at the same time. More often than not, we run out of time before everyone needed to be happily on their w

I recently helped a client close down her storage unit after 30+something years. What was in there, anyways? Old tennis and bowling trophies from kids (who are now in their late 30s); swim team ribbons from her daughter’s high school swim meets; few old chairs, books that don’t fit on her bookshelves, materials from when she retired from her job. Leftover Holiday Decorations and throw pillows she hasn’t used in years. It’s all just stuff…overflow stuff that was hard to let g