A Method For The Madness

Hello and welcome to my first Method for the Madness blog post! I love to write but have never done this before – I thought I’d use my first post to introduce myself and share a little about why I decided to become a Professional Organizer.

For my whole life I’ve had an inclination towards categorizing, editing and rearranging, though I never recognized it until hindsight kicked in. I used to love categorizing my possessions, rearranging my bedroom furniture and pouring over photo albums that my grandmother made for our family.

As a grown up I landed in a fashion merchandising career at Nordstrom and when I became a buyer I quickly discovered how much I loved editing. I loved ‘shaving off’ the excess from an assortment and honing in on the best items. Sometimes editing was hard, but I found that generally I could make decisions pretty quickly and move on from the items that I liked but didn’t really fit into the assortment. Whenever I had to make a really difficult choice I would remind myself that the customer was never going to see the item that I edited; she would never miss it! The point was to make sure I was:

Selecting things that she would love and want to buy.
Selecting enough choices to make a compelling assortment.
Not selecting so many choices that they would exceed the capacity of the sales floors I was filling.

I’m following a thread here, but it’s a relevant thread as my experience buying apparel really helped shape how I think about possessions, the best way to accumulate them and most importantly enjoy them! Buy the right things. Edit things that no longer work in your ‘assortment.’ Make room for new things. Repeat.

As time went on I had some kids, well actually 3 of them. As they grew and accumulated a bunch of (ahem) stuff I would take fiendish pleasure in purging the toys/clothes/misc crap that no longer worked in the ‘assortment.’ As they grew older they participated in the process with me so they were making the decisions about what they wanted to keep and what could be donated. It got to be kind of a ritual and now that they are grown and leaving home I’m hopeful they will take that skills with them into their adult lives.

As my husband and I grew in our careers and bought our second, much bigger home for our tribe of 5 we landed quickly on a place that had a ton of potential but hadn’t been updated since it was built in 1965. A house with great bones that needed a complete re-do was an exciting prospect, especially for me. I was able to (with the help of a Design-Build firm) plan out not only the aesthetics of our new home but also lots of built-ins and storage that enabled us to optimize our space for lifestyle and family. I wanted to design a space that had plenty of places to put things away as well as spaces for display. A place that made it easy to keep things neat and haven-like, because when you have a busy family and the schedule is insane and you are outnumbered by children you don’t have time to be constantly tidying up. It needs to be easy. It needs to take 5 minutes. It needs to allow time to relax before you make dinner. And a mess is not relaxing.

A few years ago my mom had a second stroke and could no longer live at home with my dad; she had to move to an Assisted Living situation in a Retirement Community where my parents had already planned to eventually live. My dad was preparing for the eventuality of putting their house on the market and I offered to help him go through their things and prep for the downsizing. I was still in the throes of a busy corporate career but my kids were getting older and that afforded me the time to go over to their house every weekend, where my dad and I went room-by-room through the house, sorting, editing and prioritizing what should be kept. It was a big project, a daunting project actually, but I loved every minute of it. I felt such a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction at the end of each ‘session’ – and the best was seeing how much of a burden was lifted from my dad’s shoulders. He was so grateful.

Those are the background stories that bring me to the present. I recently retired from Nordstrom after 30 wonderful years and after taking some time off was pondering next steps. After considering jumping back into corporate life I realized I was ready for that chapter of my life to be over. Instead, I was really energized about the idea of helping others who were going through any of the many transitions we experience in our adult lives by doing what I’m really good at: organizing homes and lives and designing systems to easily sustain both.

I want everyone to feel a sense of calm when they come home. A sense of pride. The satisfaction of knowing that everything is in its place. I’m excited to start on this journey of defining a Method for the Madness! Thanks so much for joining me!