Professional Organizer - My Overview

​What is it? What do Professional Organizers do? I found myself thinking about these topics and how I see Professional Organizers, how I see myself and what I do and stand for.

There’s a difference between a Professional Organizer and someone who comes to your house to clean and make it more organized and neat, like a housekeeper. Housekeepers or cleaners come to your house to clean up only or also to organize what is out of space, putting things where they belong. Also housekeepers come every week or every other week or so. Professional Organizers are, as the name says, Professionals. We come to your house/space to change it not only temporarily (not to clean the kitchen, bathrooms, etc), and our job can be a little more challenging, because we are there to fix the system of organization you currently have, with the mission of making your life easier, more productive and stress free as I always say.

Our job is to help you – yes! This is what I see and why I decided to do this. I believe that a neat place brings you calm, relaxes your brain which leads to thinking better; also, if your system is organized you will find what you’re looking for quick which saves you time. And who doesn’t like to see the house/office neat? Yes, we make it looks better, though this isn’t the main reason we do this job, but all these together are the math we make to see our clients happy and satisfied – mission accomplished.

• What and how you do it?

Well, here it is: we come to see you and the space you need some work on (kitchen, closets, etc – some organizers do digital organizing too!), we listen to your needs, frustrations, expectations first of all, then we study a way to get what you want and need, make a project and come back to get it done. It all takes some time, but since we are professionals, it takes us less than it would be for a random person to do it.

• How people end up as Professional Organizers?

I’ve read some stories of Professional Organizers and each of us have a different one, but the main reason is that we all are organizers by nature and we came with the talent “to solve the puzzles” the organizing job requires. In my case, I come from another country and my plan was to finish school (I was studying physical therapy in my country and I had 2,5 years of 5 done), but things here work a little different… I couldn’t just transfer my credits, the school is expensive, it would take me more years then I expected, all these things so I dropped it. I dropped my dream of becoming a physical therapist and decided that it doesn’t make any sense to go to school and pay (a bunch of money) for something that isn’t what I want and probably wouldn’t make me happy – and being happy with what I do and where I am is very important to me – life is short. So I started looking for options and there it was. So I searched more about it and made a self reflection – so I remembered how I used to rearrange the shelves while visiting a grocery store when I was about 8 years old, how I used to try typing up friends’ places, how I used to spend summer at the beach and organize my closet first thing when getting there (and almost every day). Oh! Last but not less important, how I moved from country to country 3 times, how I became a “home less” (long story) for 2 months and how I rented a couch and had just one closet to put all my stuff for 4 months (I’m so glad I have a house to live now). And the reasons just grow… After reading some books and reading some blogs, I also noticed that this profession can help people – what? But this was the motivation to become a physical therapist, wasn’t it? Eureka! I found something that I love doing and I still can affect people’s lives in a good way and it also brings me an income! How awesome is that?

The post got a little longer than I thought it would be, But I hope I have answered some doubts about this profession. If you have any questions, let me know!

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I am a Professional Organizer based in the DC Metro Area, and you can contact me on neataholic@gmail.com