Curious about what working with a professional organiser is like? Want to know if what you’re experiencing is normal? Here is an insiders view of a real life office transformation...

When we met the couple the situation was:

• They moved 6 months ago to a new home with their two children

• They had packed for the move thinking “we’ll declutter when we unpack”

• 6 busy months later there are still unpacked boxes in the living room,  the storage spaces were disorganised and the home office had got out of control

The family were overwhelmed.

They knew from previous attempts at unpacking and decluttering that they needed some help to guide them through the tricky decisions, to keep them on task and accountable.

All initial decluttering and organising sessions with Calm Space Professional Organising begin with a quick discussion, time for you to tell us your story and show us your spaces.

We used this time to:

• Discuss the family’s values and how they relate to their home and possessions.

• How they would like their home to look, feel and function.

• Learn more about the visible problems they were facing, clutter, disorganised storage spaces and the unpacked boxes.

• Acknowledge the internal concerns about decluttering decisions, how to donate and discard responsibly.

• A tour of rooms and storage spaces.

• A decision about where to start, an overview of how the session would work and how to work together safely.

The decision where to start can be difficult especially if there are multiple spaces needing attention.  The boxes in the living room were the most visual reminder for the family. However after seeing the home and talking about their needs we agreed on the home office as the starting place.  The wife works remotely from home and needed her office functioning again. 

4 things we did to get started

First 10 mins clearing rubbish and recycling.

This is a great way to kick start a decluttering session!  It creates an immediate visual impact.  We realised that there was already a large box of rubbish and a full bin; these hadn’t made it out of the house, time to finish that job.

Cleared the floor.

With the visible rubbish removed we focused on clearing the floor of other items.  This continues to help with the visual impact and also make the space safer for the rest of the work. This is the time to start collecting similar items together (like paperwork or kids toys, craft) and make some decisions to donate and put items in the Focus Basket

Set up a Focus Basket. 

The purpose is to keep your focus on the space you are working in. Items that belong in other rooms go in the basket, when it’s full put the items back where they belong.  This can be done after the session is finished but together we decided it would work better to do it during the session to make sure it got done. We filled the focus basket twice during our session!

Reviewed storage spaces in the room.

We considered what categories made sense to store in the office (the usual suspects…stationery/craft supplies/filing)

5 things we discovered!

There were a lot of mementos and keepsakes.

There were many treasures from travels, thoughtful handmade gifts from friends and mementos of loved ones passed.  There was likely to be much more of this type of item in the unpacked boxes.  To keep things moving we agreed to do a first pass only during the session. The family will need to do a thoughtful deep dive into their sentimental items together later.

Lots of things belonging to other people.

This is very common!  As a result the family will set up a ‘Go Box’ in a central spot. From now on these homeless items have a place to wait to be returned to their owners.

Unfinished tasks contributing to the clutter.

We noticed lots of excellent efforts to tidy, recycle and creative projects that were not quite finished. This was an important part of understanding what was causing the clutter to build up.  We talked about strategies for finishing off projects.

Boxes full of e-waste waiting to be recycled!

Luckily Calm Space removes e-waste for recycling to get you closer to your goal without all the running around.

Half a carload of donations!

No wonder it was a struggle to get organised.  The family was able to find out which charities their items would be donated to. 

The space took about 4.5 hours to complete.  The family had a few tasks to follow up and a plan for what to do next.  They also gained a huge amount of satisfaction as well as new skills and confidence for the future. 

Check out the before and after photos on this page.

If you would like to see a transformation like this in your home get in touch.