Organizational Consultants: When to Hire Them and How They Will Change Your Life
Whatever did people do back in the days before professional organizers were an actual thing? (Besides hand wash their laundry and bathe in big steel tubs near the stove, that is.) These days, you can hire someone to help you with almost anything — from hanging heavy pictures to fixing your dishwasher to walking your dog. It’s all within reach. So why would one need a professional organizer, and what, exactly, do professional organizers do?
According to NAPO (National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals),“A Professional Organizer supports evaluation, decision-making, and action around objects, space, and data; helping clients achieve desired outcomes regarding function, order, and clarity.”
That sounds a bit more scientific than we thought. However, as professional organizers ourselves, we’ve put our own little spin on it: We help you organize YOUR way. Which means that we don’t just come into your home or office, look around at what needs to be changed, decluttered, fixed and/or re-organized, but rather assess first. Get to know the way you already do things, and teach you ways to improve on that. You’ve heard the saying, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Well, as professional organizers, we teach you how to fish.
There are myriad times when a professional organizer could help make your life easier. There are big life moments, transitions where you need to prepare for a shift or change, such as a birth, a new puppy, or, sadly, a death in the family. It is during these life transitions that simple tasks can feel overwhelming, no matter what your Pixie type is. You could be a Classic Structure and experience a tragic loss that could change your life (and your way of organizing your space) forever. You could be an Organic Freedom and be forced to finally confront your freestyle way of organizing because you suddenly found out you were pregnant….again. There are moments to mourn as well as moments to celebrate, but a professional organizer (and a Pixie Professional Organizer in particular) will provide you with a customizable plan of attack when it comes to organizing your living or work space.
Another impetus for hiring outside help when it comes to organizing is lack of time. This is a huge one for many people — whether you’re a working mom or a bachelor who runs a company full-time, you’re in dire need of solutions that work for you. You’d normally organize your way, but time is of the essence and you just don’t have a moment to spare. This is the perfect time to bring in an expert who can help you decide what to keep, what to store, and what to toss or donate. As professional organizers ourselves, we can help you decipher which type you are, determine what your organizational habits already consist of, and come up with suggestions that fit your specific mold. For example, if you’re a Fun Freedom, we aren’t going to suggest that you use a filing cabinet to store important papers, or a cubby with labels for each member of the family for homework, school papers, and bills. If Fun Freedoms don’t care about something (like bills or paperwork) they won’t want to organize it. If they can’t see something, they forget about it almost instantly, leaving things like cubbies and other opaque containers out of the question as organizing tools. By the same token, as personal organizers, we will find what does matter to the Fun Freedom and capitalize on organizing that.
Maybe you’re just tired and you don’t have the energy to organize an entire house, filled with children, paperwork, and endless amounts of stuff. No Shame, No Blame, people! This is where we come in, and before we begin working with clients, we have them take our Pixie Personality Quiz, which tells us what type you are (which then tells us how you tend to organize your space).
Let us count the ways! First off, hiring a professional organizer will take the pressure off of you to ‘do everything’. A professional organizer will not only assess your situation, but offer easy and doable solutions in terms of keeping things organized on a continual basis, even after the pro has left your vicinity. That is the point — to empower and inform. To provide you with better, more efficient organizing solutions and tools so that you can devote more time to life and less time to laundry (and etc.).
A professional organizer will also help you make decisions — often crucial ones — about how to deal with clutter and other ‘questionable’ materials that you need help either getting rid of, storing away for later, or donating. Professional organizers are not relegated to one room of your house: they can work anywhere, with anything. If you use us Pixies, we’ll give you a set of principles to guide you, a quiz to help figure out how to organize YOUR WAY, and techniques and tools once you figure out what that is. How could you go wrong? Visit our site today to find out more about professional organizing and how it can help you turn your home into a haven.