Working with a home organizer can be a positive, life-changing experience! But some people are reluctant to reach out for help because of misinformation about what professional organizers do. Here are 5 myths — and 5 truths! — about working with a home organizer.
MYTH: Home organizers will make you throw things away.
TRUTH: We at reSPACEd are horrified and appalled when we hear about other organizers doing this, particularly on organizing-related tv shows! Throwing things away without the client’s consent is rude, traumatizing to the client and ultimately ineffective at teaching the client how to live a more organized lifestyle. So we put the client in charge of deciding what they want to keep and what they want to discard. No exceptions.
MYTH: We are rigid perfectionists.
TRUTH: The vast majority of home organizers are not perfectionists, because it’s actually hard to be a perfectionist in this industry. Organizers don’t have ultimate control over the finished project (only you, the client, have the ultimate control!) so that reality tends to scare off people with perfectionist tendencies from this field.
MYTH: We will judge you/make fun of you/gossip about you behind your back.
TRUTH: We know a lot of our clients feel a great deal of shame about their space. Often times, we organizers are the first ones to enter the client’s home in years. We feel deeply honored to be trusted by our clients to help them with a such an important, extremely personal project, and we don’t take that privilege lightly. We never forget that we are guests in your home. As such, we never judge, tease or gossip about you or your home.
MYTH: Organizers spend their days putting chalkboard labels on Mason jars and alphabetizing spices.
TRUTH: Most of our days are spent side-by-side with our clients, coaching them through the decision-making process, and project-managing their organization project. We are knee-deep in stuff, wearing comfortable, closed-toe shoes, on our feet for hours, moving heavy boxes around and running items up and down stairs. It’s physically and cognitively demanding work with nary a glue gun nor chalk pen in sight. I’m not sure who is putting chalkboard labels on every inanimate object on Pinterest, but it sure isn’t professional organizers.
MYTH: Home organizers will be exhausting to work with.
TRUTH: We at reSPACEd consider it extremely important to work at the client’s pace. We want to make sure organizing sessions are not too overwhelming or exhausting. So we set a timer to go off every hour to remind the client to take a short break and drink water. We check in with our clients throughout the session to see how the pacing feels. We have multiple strategies for either speeding up or slowing down the organizing sessions, depending on what the client wants. Clients tell us they don’t feel rushed when they work with us. We are glad to hear it!
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