Organizing gadgets come in all forms, sizes and shapes. And over the years I’ve been pinning my favorite organizing gadget things in my Stylish Home Organization Pinterest Board.
Here are some of my picks of the smart solutions I love on that Board that always give me ideas and inspiration:
Yesterday I found myself doing a bit of re-organizing in my kitchen. Not because it was disorganized, but because I had decided it could be better, and better is always good, right?
People sometimes think of us professional organizers as anal in the way we want things organized and maybe they are right. But anal (and one not meant in the biological sense, of course) is a harsh term so we would probably like it (the way we want things organized) to be referred to as a calculated, or somewhat meticulousness behavior.
When I experience something non-optimum or not pleasing in my own environment, I want to change it. Like when I was preparing food on my kitchen counter the other day and didn’t have as much counter space as I wanted to prepare everything. I knew stuff I had kept on my counter just had to go, and I already had the bare minimum on it. And although I didn’t know where it would go to at the time, I set in motion a decision it had to go someplace else.
And that’s all it took – a decision to change the space.
I stood back at eyed the room from a slight distance. From there, I stepped back in and let my eyes roam through my cabinet spaces and everywhere else in the area. Being one of the smallest kitchens I had ever had, it has always been a challenge, even after extreme down-sizing my kitchen stuff before moving in.
The solutions I found were there all along but I just didn’t realize it until I looked. That’s the thing with professional organizers – we can look at a space and find other, better solutions for it. I believe a lot of other people can do this as well once they actually look.
And I think that’s where our expertise comes in – in finding other, better solutions that others couldn’t come up with on their own. We can compare that to interior decorating or remodeling. We hire professionals to redecorate because we feel we don’t have the eye for it. And maybe some of us don’t.
The thing is, there are 4 simple steps in embarking upon changing a space:
So, I changed my tiny kitchen counter space and I’m happy for now. Who knows, it may need tweaking again sometime in the future. But for now, I have more counter space and that was my goal.
Here’s the side of my kitchen showing the counter space I put my attention on:
If I can help you with your organizing goals, just let me know!
Recently I was reflecting on how I got my start in this business and where I’m at today. I’ve come a long way in building my professional organizing business, yet today I find myself at ground zero in marketing my services as The Organizing Lady. That is because I have a new company name and a new website and people are not finding me as easily as they used to.
See, starting HandyGirl Organizers in 1994 meant going to a lot of networking events, passing out flyers all over town, running ads and pounding the pavement visiting businesses to leave my brochure. It also meant putting a website on this new thing called the Internet of which I wasn’t sure anyone would find, let alone search for it.
For 19 years I had grown my HandyGirl business into a profitable enterprise until I had to retire from it due to body-health issues at the time, and turned the business over to my daughter who had worked with my organizing clients for 10 years. I focused my attention on my other skill sets – like web design, internet marketing and video production – all of which I learned on behalf of building my HandyGirl company.
It wasn’t until a year ago that I decided I was well enough to get back into “the biz” and established myself as The Organizing Lady to service the Valley areas while HandyGirl aimed at servicing the other Los Angeles city areas closer to my daughter’s location.
By this time, I’ve accumulated 21 years in the business of professional organizing. The rewards had always kept me going over the years, no matter how hard the work was. I knew I had made a difference in many people’s lives and wanted to continue making a difference. But my expertise and experience has not given me a leg up in the industry.
Times have changed and people seem to be shopping for professional organizers like shopping for a good pair of shoes, except the best fit isn’t always their choice. Often times the choice is about the lowest price. And many of the newbies in this profession start out below industry rate standards, which makes the competition more stiff.
With the economy the way it is today, who can blame them? But to lessen the value of my service is something I have not been willing to do. Because my 21 years of experience, knowledge and skills is what I bring to the table for my clients and my rates are actually way below the value in that (since other veteran organizers charge $100 /hr or more).
Writing this is more like therapy for me, since I’m not even sure people will be reading this. After all, my new website hasn’t climbed to Google’s page one ranking (yet) and people are not finding me as easily as they used to. But if you are reading this, you may gain a little more understanding of my roots and where I started and will know me a little better. After all, knowing me better is liking me better. I hope.
This is an article I wrote about professional organizers and how they make a difference in people’s lives.
The rewards of the professional organizing profession are numerous and professional organizers are often called “miracle workers” after they put order in.
Source: 10 Ways A Professional Organizer Changes Someone’s Life |
As a professional organizer since 1994, I’ve seen incredible results with clients whose lives are transformed after order is established. It’s one of those benefits of this profession that make it all worthwhile, no matter how laborious it can sometimes be!
The reason I wrote this was to show my students starting out in this career how much of a difference they will be making for people. That’s why it is posted on the Professional Organizer Academy site.
But I realized it is also something that others should know – that the expertise of a professional organizer is something they can count on to help them improve their situation or lifestyle. And that’s why I’m sharing this with you here.
I just love posting daily updates on The Organizing Lady’s Facebook page. It started out with some nice pictures from my Organization Pinterest Boards and quickly moved to daily “Funnies”.
In my Internet search for “mess” and “disorganization” and “clutter” I found some really funny images. And, I just had to share these findings on Facebook, of course.
What I’ve found is that people are loving these images and commenting on them every day. The problem is, they are commenting on my personal Facebook account where I’ve shared the post to my network. So my Organizing Lady page doesn’t get much action (especially with less than 100 page Likes so far). Well, everything new has to build its way up in time, I suppose.
If you’re readying this, I hope you’ll visit my Facebook page and “Like” it to follow my daily postings of fun stuff … ORGANIZING LADY FACEBOOK PAGE
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