I got a call around 8pm one evening from a soft spoken woman who said she had found my website on Google, liked what she read and wanted to consult about her long-overdue organizing project. I need help getting organized in Stamford, she explained - I have a special events cakes and pastries business and need to invite clients to my living room for tasting. She had given a year-and-a half long hiatus and was now ready to invite potential clients she met at various events to taste her unique treats to commemorate their special occasions.
Her living room was decorated in the English style: A couple of light color couches and two arm chairs with complimentary flower print patterns, a pretty dark wood library that held too many books, a TV 
cabinet with doors that wouldn't close due to the miscalleneous items portruding from the shelves, and solid color, tall curtains. It was here that she wanted to sit down with her guests, offer them a 5 o'clock tea experience, and hopefully convert them into paying customers. She owned elegant china tea sets. She needed everything tip top from the entryway to the living room.
The trouble was that her living room floor had become a gigantic holding station for everything that had accumulated over the months due to her preoccupation with recovery efforts. When company called, she would ferry the stuff, the bags, the overflowing magazine holders into the adjacent study and move them back out afterwards because she couldn't reach her desk otherwise.
Then she took me upstairs to show her guest room. The guest bed had been converted into a large platform to hold her sample sugar arts, cake forms, decorating supplies. A large quantity of paper products were lined up against the wall. She wanted her guest room back to accommodate her children when they came to visit.
She had interviewed other organizers, but they had insisted on her throwing out some of the old, worn-out stuff - which she didn't want thrown out. She did have a basement, which had limited lighting, poor quality shelving and parts of the unfinished floor tended to get slightly wet after heavy rains.
She wanted to be ready for the wedding season - she asked if I could get her organized by early February, two weeks away.
We started work the following day and I worked with her and her husband as often as her schedule allowed. We did away with most of the cardboard boxes she kept her stuff in. I brought along an assistant who helped with sorting & organizing the many small pastry decorating supplies some of which were highly perishable and needed to be labeled so and placed in appropriate containers. It was nitty gritty work but easily learnable, and an assistant cost the client a lot less than my hourly rate. I also introduced the client to a handyman who raised sections of the basement floor in half a day using water resistant 2 by 4s. He bought sturdy metal shelving from Home Depot and erected a whole new section to serve as her store room. We added better lighting with high wattage lights. I exposed all her supplies to daylight, sectioned off items by categories and took pictures of her newly organized space which she blew up to remind her how to get it back into order, just in case.
She regained her guest room, re-arranged her basement and was able to move everything extraneous out of her living room. She supplied the initiative to get the job started and was there with us along the journey. My assistant and I supplied organizing ideas and the hands-on work to make it all happen. The handyman's help was crucial, both to construct storage space and to carry the heavy boxes from upstairs to the basement. Our team effort brought the project to a successful completion, on time. The
client agreed that she would not need help getting organized in Stamford for a while to come.
On Valentine's Day we all received beautiful hand decorated sweets from our client. They were YUMMY!
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