What's an Organizing Session?

“Is it normal to be really nervous?” asked Rebecca* as she greeted me at the door. “I don’t know what to expect!”

Yes, it’s common to feel anxious the first time you have an Organizing Session with a Certified Professional Organizer.® Maybe you’re worried I’ll judge you because of your mess. Definitely not! Far from being judgmental, I’m impressed when someone takes the step of hiring a professional to help them get organized.

Nerves also stem from being unsure of what exactly we’ll be doing. Will I be directing or doing the work with you? How exactly will we tackle your project?

Let me demystify the Organizing Session by telling you exactly how it works.

1. SET A GOAL
If we don’t know where we’re going, we can’t figure out how to get there. We’ll discuss how you want the end product to look and feel. Organizing is about making your home work for you, not about what Instagram thinks it should look like.

Try to express your goal in actions and feelings, such as, “I want to open my closet and easily be able to choose an outfit, instead of fighting to find things and feeling frustrated.”

2. OUTLINE THE WORK
With the goal in mind, I’ll look at the space and plan how to work toward that result. Using my CALM organizing method — Clear, Assess, Locate, Modify/Maintain — we’ll decide where to start clearing things out of the space and assessing what we have by sorting items into categories. I’ll be working right alongside you, guiding you as we dig into the work.

3. MAKE DECISIONS
A huge part of organizing is making decisions about your stuff. YOU are the brains of the organizing project.

My job is to get into your head and help you define your values around what to keep and why you’re keeping it.

The organization starts to take shape as we determine where to locate different categories. For this step, I’ll ask you about your habits, your preferences, how you want to use the space, and how you want it to function and feel.

Expect questions such as:

• Do you need to be able to see everything or do you prefer things stored behind closed doors?
• What do you use on a daily/weekly/seasonal basis?
• What items do different family members need to access?
• When you come home, where are you used to putting your keys, coat, and bag?

4. ARRANGE THE SPACE
This is where it all comes together! I’ll compare the space to the volume of stuff in each category, consider frequency of use, and come up with an efficient way to store it all for easy access.

This is the “bins and baskets” phase of organizing that puts the finishing touch on your organizing system. It comes at the end of the organizing process because we need to know what we have before we know how to store it.

If your space needs custom solutions, I’ll research options and help you purchase the products. We can install them during our next session or on your own with my guidance.

5. ORGANIZING SESSION WRAP-UP
At the end of the session, we’ll pack my car with your donations. It’s fun to see how much you’ve been able to let go!

We’ll tour the space, making sure you know where everything is, and talk about how you’re going to live with and maintain your newly-organized space.

I’ll go over my notes with you and we’ll talk about next actions — things you’ve committed to doing, what I’m going to do next, what we’ll do together next, and how we’ll follow up with each other.

As I pull away from the curb, you’ll wave goodbye to your clutter and enjoy your organized home!

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BONUS QUESTION:
Q: Do I need to be there when you’re organizing?
A: Sometimes, but not always.

When there’s decluttering to be done and a lot of sorting, you need to participate in the process. Although I can and will make recommendations, only you can decide what you keep or let go. For sorting, you know how you use your things and how you want to use your space, so your input is essential.

Sometimes, though, an organizing project involves fewer client decisions. These are projects with minimal decluttering and letting go of things, such as unpacking and moving in or a room in which all the things are needed but it’s not well organized.

For these projects, I often bring on a team of organizers so we can work quickly. We’ll still discuss your goals before we get started and check in with you throughout the process, but you don’t have to participate in every step. At the end of the session, you’ll swoop in for the big reveal of your beautifully-organized space!

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*Name changed to protect the disorganized.