Why Hire a Professional Organizer?

People often think they “should” be able to organize on their own.  I recently had a client ask, “how much of this could we do on our own?”  My answer was brutally honest, “all of it.”  They have since hired us to assist with the process and keep them on the right track.  I recently read in one of Judith Kolberg’s books that professional organizers provide “a secure environment for change, objectivity, professionalism, and skill which support a disorganized person more than dogged, solitary self-help.”  Most of our clients have tried to organize by themselves at one point or another only to find that they don’t have the correct systems or habits in place to sustain it.  They haven’t thought about a maintenance program.  It is really not that different from keeping your car maintained or for that matter, your other house maintenance needs such as buffing floors, pumping septic systems, cleaning gutters and the list goes on and on……..You need to schedule an amount of time each day, week, month with goals and objectives.  For example, maybe you establish and mark it on your calendar that the third Saturday of every month you are going to pay your bills, and the last weekend of the month you are going to do all your filing and then hold yourself accountable.  And, if you can’t hold yourself accountable, assist the help of a family member to sit in the same room with you and they can act as your body double and hold you to task.  If that doesn’t work, there are more than 3,000 professional organizers that are happy to help (including us, of course!), and you can find them through an association we belong to called the National Association of Professional Organizers.