For Your Clients: Organize, It Just Feels Good
By Cindy McNatt
RISMEDIA, July 3, 2010--(MCT)--What happens when you don't have the time or the correct brain parts to make all your stuff make sense? Enter a professional organizer in an industry that has been built on stuff and what to do with it.
Gail Gray of A Fresh Start Professional Organizing in Costa Mesa, Calif., is a card-carrying member of the National Association of Professional Organizers and National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization.
Gray makes stuff make sense in home offices, kitchens, garages, closets and even supervises a move. More, she conducts workshops to help you help yourself.
Gray says that organizing is natural for some people, but believes it is a learned skill for most of us.
"I was a messy teenager and a collector," she said. "But I taught myself to be organized when I went off to college. Nobody wants to room with a messy person."
Gray explains that there are different kinds of unorganized - some people are collectors, others procrastinators, others too busy. Hoarding is in a class of its own - more of an emotional issue than an organizing one and an area that takes someone trained in hoarding to be successful.
"I try and get inside a client's head and find out how they think. You want to find out how a person retrieves their items in order to organize them in a way that works for them," Gray said.
We tagged along on a day of organizing for client Robin Barr in Mission Viejo, Calif. Barr likes to clean and keeps her home organized, but lacked the time to keep up.
"She's an extremely busy businesswoman who just didn't have time to think about how her house functioned," Gray said.
Gray found kitchen items stored in the bathroom, the linen closet was in disarray. Gray started the project by removing every single item.
"You don't just want to shuffle things around," she said.
Everything came out of the cupboards, they were cleaned and lined with shelf paper and then the items were put back in a way that worked for Barr.
"That linen closet overwhelmed me," said Barr. "It didn't fit into all one category. I had personal care items, cleaning products, storage for things I bought on sale, and my linens."
Barr did have a bit of what Gray calls "product remorse." She couldn't throw away some products past their expiration date because it seemed wasteful. Some items were purged, some donated and the rest went back into the cupboards, labeled for use.
"When she was done with everything, it was aahhh," said Barr. "It just gives me a sense of peace."
All in all, for a busy woman like Barr, organizing just feels good and takes some of the chaos out of her daily routine.
"If you're a really busy person, with kids and a stressful morning routine, you'll find out that organizing just makes it all more manageable," said Gray.
The most satisfying part about Gray's job is not when she is done, but months later when she discovers that a client has kept up.
"My ultimate goal is to phase me out of their lives," she said.
Find out more about Gray at afreshstartorganizing.net.
(c) 2010, The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.).
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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