 After 8+ years of helping people organize their homes, you can bet I’ve seen it all. One of the things I love most about being a professional organizer is that every project is different, with varied homes and unique clients.
While each client has a specific reason for needing my help — just moved in, about to move, busy family life, inheritance, downsizing, new baby, and more — I’ve noticed some organizing errors that crop up in just about every home.
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 As a Certified Professional Organizer, I connect with my clients, unleashing creative solutions to help develop competence and confidence in the way they organize so they can find contentment in their homes. Each of the five C-words in this sentence—Connection, Creativity, Competence, Confidence, and Contentment—impacts my organizing work and together they represent my core values. We hold many shared values—for example truth and integrity—but your core values are the unique combination of motivating beliefs that drive you to do what you do. Core values are the WHY behind your WHAT. Let’s explore how my 5 C core values impact my organizing work with clients. Read on... Be sure to watch my episode of the This Organized Life podcast or listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. Host Laurie Palau and I explore the impact of knowing your core values.  I love decorating for Christmas—it’s so fun to give my home a festive atmosphere. But this year I noticed that I got equally excited when I put away the decorations. With the cool winter light streaming in through the windows, my house looked lighter and more spacious. I felt like I was starting the year with a clean slate.
And then I immediately started to fill those clear spaces with a flurry of ideas for ways to reorganize, redecorate, and reinvigorate my life. “Wait a minute,” I told myself. “You’ve just worked to put things away and clear some space. Live with it. Enjoy it. Don’t go filling it right away!” I realized I was charging ahead in the same way a lot of my clients do with their organizing projects. They get excited to buy sleek new bins and containers before they’ve even figured out what they’ll put in the bins and how they want to use the space.  I recently had the honor to do two interviews and I want to share them here with you so that you can learn more about who I am as a Professional Organizer. The video is my interview with Laurie Palau on her always-fascinating This Organized Life podcast. The written blog is a phone interview I did with Nat Miller of Sunbound relocation services. Both Laurie and Nat are seasoned interviewers and their questions elicited answers that give a clear overview of my organizing style. You'll learn how I connect with my clients and find creative solutions that help them develop competence and confidence in the way they organize so they can find contentment in their homes. This Organized Life Episode 298: Partner Spotlight with Kate BoschSunbound Asks: Professional Organizer Kate BoschHow long have you been a professional organizer?
Over 6 years, almost 6.5 years in business. How’d you get into professional organizing? It’s something that was on my radar and something that I wanted to do for a long time. I probably started thinking about it when I would watch Clean Sweep with Peter Walsh on HGTV almost 20 years ago. There was also another professional organizer in my area, Lisa Griffith, who spoke at the Mothers of Preschoolers group that I belonged to and then mentored me as I got my own professional organizing business started. What’s your favorite type of project to work on? My favorite type of project is working with people to help them sort through a backlog of stuff, and really get a handle on their home. I love to help them streamline the systems of their home and make it the type of place that reflects their values. It’s really exciting when I can help a client get unstuck from a place where they thought they couldn’t dig out of.  .Have you ever noticed how small changes can have a big impact? Tiny stars make the night sky seem bright. A silly joke can lighten an intense mood. In the spring, little purple crocuses poking out of the ground make the whole landscape prettier.
Little changes to the way your home is organized can make it feel lighter and easier to maintain. While I love a big garage clean-out as much as the next organizer, it’s just as satisfying to realize that small efforts can still get you to your organizing goals. A PICTURE’S WORTH…  January: New Year, New You! GO Month: Get Organized and Be Productive! Have you made your resolutions? Hitting the gym every day? Are you crushing it?!
Um, not so much. Honestly, once I clean up from the holidays and start getting back to the reality of a normal schedule, January is nearly half over! It’s natural to want to set some intentions for improvement. What’s unrealistic is thinking that you’ll accomplish them in the first month. This year, to take on your organizing projects, make January your regrouping and brainstorming month.  What comes to mind when you think about holiday preparations? You’re probably thinking about getting out the decorations, baking yummy treats, juggling the party and event schedule, and wrapping gifts.
This season, I invite you to prepare by paring down. Simplifying and lightening your load is a great way to give yourself more time and space to enjoy your family and friends—and your home—during the holidays. I like to focus on paring down these three areas:
 One question I always ask a new client is, “Do you think your space has the problem of too much stuff or is it just that things are not properly organized?”
I admit that this is a bit of a trick question because nearly always the answer is “both.” Having too much stuff will always stand between you and organization as you struggle to maneuver around the excess. Sure, you can file-fold your entire t-shirt collection and just barely manage to cram it all into your dresser drawer, but those shirts will be so jammed together that you’ll struggle to pull one out without others coming with it. Not to mention that your t-shirts will have permanent wrinkles from being so tightly packed. And I’d like to see you maintain your composure while trying to put it back into the drawer!  In her indispensable, bestselling book Organizing from the Inside Out, organizing and productivity expert Julie Morgenstern introduces her SPACE acronym to define steps of the organizing process.
SPACE stands for Sort, Purge, Assign a Home, Containerize, and Equalize. My organizing format incorporates the SPACE tasks, while grouping them into phases: Discovery, Take Shape, and Live & Learn. Each phase takes into account the bigger picture of what you wish to accomplish so you can truly organize your home for the life you want. Yesterday, I did a spot for our local NBC-10 station about the latest organizing craze, Swedish Death Cleaning. Click here to read the article and click below to watch the video! |
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