![]() |
||||
![]() |
I Needed to Spend Some Time with Creative Clutter BugsThe truth is, I'm a professional organizer. So while I didn't have too much of the clutter problem, I had the Creative side-I really wanted my home to look right but didn't have a problem throwing things out. So I decided to spend some time with the creative clutterbug clients that I had who previously had been unable to get organized FOR YEARS. They had beautiful things and really appreciated beauty but since there was so much clutter in their house, you couldn't even tell! I wanted to help them so I thought like a traditional professional organizer thinking, "Let me help them get the clutter out of the way and then they can go ahead and get her house looking beautiful." Well, because the clients couldn't part with anything, I'd leave their houses feeling frustrated and so would they that progress wasn't being made. They were too attached to the clutter to part with it! But there was a light at the end of the tunnel...One friend and clutter client and I decided to take a break from organizing. She decided she wanted to go ahead and do fun things like painting and hanging curtains, improving the overall house's appearance without hiring me to do anything with the clutter. It was still there when I left, and how! She called me months later and said, "Rivka, I want you to come see the changes I've made to the house." I said, "Sure!" (Not expecting much, to be honest). I was completely astounded at the transformation of her home! Where was the clutter? It used to be that the clutter was falling out of her closets, children’s books that she couldn’t part with were filling up her bookshelves, stashes of old kids toys were being saved “just in case”, etc, etc, etc. The clutter was gone! She had a yard sale for charity and sold all of the kids toys and books, something she would NEVER have done when I was working with her, and her place was simply elegant. I asked her what her secret was. She told me that when she started making her house beautiful, the rooms were becoming special- and “sacrosanct”, was the word she used. Since her home was now beautiful, she didn’t want to clutter it up again! I began doing this with all of my sentimental clients who were previously unable to get organized. Decorating and rearranging first, and then organizing, hence the name DECORganize ™. The method may seem quite backwards to the traditionally organized person, but if you are traditionally organized, you probably aren’t reading this (unless you are a professional organizer :) I am still amazed when I think about my client. This was a person who would definitely be considered “chronically disorganized” struggling with disorganization for more than 10 years. But because she is CREATIVE, she needed beauty to get her started on the road to organizing. And so, my formula was born. I worked it on another client. A woman whose kids were all grown and had all of the Parenting magazines saved from when they were little, crying over every one because she had wanted another child after her 3 and never did have one. She wanted to save birthday cards from people she didn’t even remember who they were, a very sentimental woman. After feeling frustrated and sad seeing her so distraught over her items and the stuck energy that was permeating the room, I suggested we do a “blitz”. I said, “Let’s rearrange the furniture of your bedroom and make it gorgeous, and see how you feel afterwards.” We both needed a break! We emptied the room enough so the furniture would have room to be moved around, shifted the position of her bed and other furniture-giving her master bedroom a more romantic feel with the king sized bed now resting under the window in the center of the room rather than off to a corner, where it was before. We finished moving things around and she loved it! Then I said, “Okay, let’s get the boxes of clutter back in so we can decide what to keep and where things should go.” She said, “OOOOOhhh no you don’t! I’m not bringing those boxes of clutter back in here! It’s going to mess up my room!” Do you see where I’m going with this? My sentimental client, who had previously been unable to part with ANYTHING, was now telling me that she didn’t want any of her stuff back in her room! Either she would look at it later, or just dump the whole lot of it into a garbage can, she didn’t care! It's all ready been a few years, and counting!
|
|||