Peace of Mind Organizing

For me, this is what it is all about

16 July 2007

I just got back from an intense five days working with a client in another state. I know from her feedback and from what we accomplished that I really made a difference in her life. That’s what I love about this work!

I spent five days with this client about 10 months ago. Her house is extremely cluttered and last September we spent all our time in one room. In the time between my visits, she was able to make some more progress, and the weekly phone coaching we did more recently helped accelerate that progress and get her to the point where she could have me back.

We worked on two rooms plus a closet last week and the amount we were able to accomplish in that time was almost surreal.

To give you an idea:

The clutter was high and thick in the bedroom.

After two-and-a-half days of intensive work, the clutter in the bedroom was under control.

We were under extreme time pressure, so “after” pictures were taken before vacuuming or tidying. The rooms aren’t fine-tuned yet. The other important thing to note is that the house was in such a state that my client and her family had moved into a rental house three years ago. So it’s not being lived in, which allowed us to store the things the client wanted to keep in boxes awaiting the remodeling of the house once it’s decluttered and their eventual move back in.

Here’s another set of pictures:

This room had become unusable.

We tackled the clutter on this side of the room in just half a day!

My client deserves the credit for this. While her adult son and I did the physical lifting, she did all of the mental and emotional lifting. The amount of clutter we had to tackle was overwhelming. Yet she remained focused and plowed through all the clutter with single-minded purpose. She’s been in therapy and done a lot of internal work that allowed her to be ready to make these kinds of difficult decisions. And, with the exception of a couple of categories of items, her decisions about what to keep were quite reasonable. She got rid of a lot of stuff. Something like 123 33-gallon garbage bags were picked up by the trash hauler and an equal number of bags of donatables were given to Goodwill.

My presence allowed her to focus on the decluttering. She’d committed the time I was there (and money—it was a big financial commitment) to work on this one task. We had a goal, which we achieved, of clearing both upstairs rooms in the four-and-a-half days we had together. We worked long, but not unreasonable, hours. By my being there, she was supported emotionally, and I was able to provide the kind of physical support (sorting, packing, dispersing the items as she decluttered) that allowed her to create this huge change in her home.

The synergy we shared was exciting. I came back to St. Louis exhausted but excited for her and validated in my work.

I feel privileged to help people this way. This client and I will keep working together with weekly phone coaching and I’m sure that, thanks to the jumpstart of this intense time we spent together, she’ll be able to achieve her goal of remodeling and moving back into her home by the end of the year. If that didn’t give me job satisfaction, I don’t know what would!

Edited to add (in 2010): I’m happy to report that this client did get her house emptied and renovated and she and her moved back in in 2008! The last time we communicated, she was still struggling with being able to go through the stuff she had in storage. But her ability to get that house renovated was truly inspirational. She worked very hard.

Tagged with: clutter, coaching, decluttering, hoarding, synergy

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