organizing, decorating and home staging solutions 
Get Help Conquering Clutter
Professional Organizers help manage the mess
By Madeline Kallio
It’s your dirty little secret. Your immediate family knows, but no else does — not your friends, not your co-workers. You keep it behind closed doors, not just because you’re embarrassed, but also because you cannot even get the door open. It’s your clutter-filled _____ . (You can fill in the space, so to speak.)
When you want to clear the clutter — or just get a little more organized — and you don’t want to tackle the job alone, you may want to consider hiring a professional organizer.
According to Professional Organizers in Canada (POC) — the first Canadian incorporated association of professional organizers — professional organizers help their clients to find balance, restore order and maximize their time and resources at home, office and workplace locations by creating customized solutions to increase the efficiency of a space. Services vary widely, depending on the area or range of specialization.
Caroline Conrad, an Ottawa-area professional organizer and owner of Get ORGANIZED, notes that professional organizing services can include anything from residential and office organizing to event planning, time management training or education sessions. Most people, she says, are really too busy to get to that major organization job; they find themselves overwhelmed and just don’t know where to start.
The first step on the road to hiring a professional organizer is admitting you are having some issues with organization and recognizing a desire for change. Some people balk at the idea of paying someone to help them get organized but Heather Cameron, a professional organizer with Edited Interiors and a POC member, notes that professional organizing services offer clients a valuable commodity in return. Time.
“A professional organizer can buy you time — time you don’t have to spend organizing and time you don’t have to spend searching for things that have gone astray. We can even save you the time and money it takes to buy a replacement of items that you may already have purchased but have misplaced,” Heather explains.
When professional organizers meet you for an initial assessment at your home or office, they want to see what you have been dealing with, warts and all. “It’s important that people understand that we are not cleaners,” Caroline explains, “but we do ask that clients not tidy up before we see the space so we can get a good idea of the scope of the job. I like to reassure them that they are not the only people surrounded by clutter.”
Communication is key to any organizing project — it is very important to understand the client’s perspective. Caroline listens to what they have to say and asks questions to understand her client’s issues. She then presents a number of ideas and works with the client to make the organizational project fully functional.
“It’s really about interacting with clients, understanding their lifestyle, their needs and the way they think when it comes to organizing,” Heather explains. “We must devise a system that works for them. A professional organizer can come up with a great organizational system for managing paper or toys or whatever, but if it is not tailored to the client, the client cannot or will not maintain it.”
Caroline notes that a project may involve simply rearranging a space so that it is more functional, working with contractors when a house is being built or renovated to make areas more useful, choosing colours and designs that make an area more livable according to the client’s tastes, or helping a client who is downsizing. Her company also caters to clients’ physical disabilities: for example, a woman with knee problems was provided with a map and an inventory list of the redesigned space so that she could send someone else downstairs to find items.
Heather likes to focus on both form and function: “You want the space to be efficient but you also want it to be aesthetically pleasing,” she says. “I find that if a space is organized and attractive, clients are even more motivated to stay organized.”
For some clients, organization does not end with the completion of the initial project. Professional organizers find that many customers sign up for maintenance programs so that they can get help in conquering any future opportunity for clutter.
Heather’s advice for anyone — living with clutter or not — “Examine each item in your house and ask yourself: ‘Do I use it? Do I need it? Do I love it?’ If you don’t answer ‘yes’ to at least one of these questions, the item probably doesn’t belong in your home.”
Heather Cameron operates Edited Interiors, an Ottawa-area business that offers professional organizing, home staging, and interior decorating/redecorating services. You can contact her at 613 831-6398 or visit www.editedinteriors.com.
This article originally appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of Due West/Due East magazine, a publication of Coyle Publishing Inc.
Copyright 2007, Edited Interiors. All rights reserved.