Peace of Mind Organizing

A peek inside the client's mind

18 February 2008

When I visit the home of a client for the first time, I’m often struck by the trust that’s been placed in me. For some of my clients, I’m the first visitor they’ve welcomed into their homes in some time. The clutter has kept them from being able to open the door to people. I’ve always felt honored by that trust and recognized how vulnerable clients must feel. I ask them not to clean up the house prior to my visit—I want to see things as usually they are, in order to best help them.

Now I’m getting a taste of what my clients feel like as they open their doors to me. I’ve begun to offer training and coaching to people just getting started in the organizing profession. One of those services is role-playing. Tomorrow, for the first time, I’m welcoming a trainee to come in and assess my kitchen.

I’m happy to say that I’m able to welcome guests into my home. But, truth be told, I usually clean up a little before I open the door. And I trust that most people aren’t there to look in every drawer and examine at the details of my organizing systems (or lack thereof).

I’ve made no secret of the fact that all my life I’ve struggled with clutter or, more precisely, mess. I have a difficult time putting things away. And now that I’m spending my days helping other people deal with clutter pretty much the last thing I want to do when I get home is deal with my own.

So it’s taking all my power not to clean up and declutter prior to my wonderful trainee coming in to assess my kitchen. Believe me, there’s plenty to assess in my kitchen and I’m very excited about the ideas my trainee will come up with. But I do feel vulnerable and a little bit nervous (after all, I’m supposed to be the knowledgeable one!).

I think this will be a valuable experience for me (and, I hope, for my trainee). Not only will I get some great ideas for my kitchen, I’ll walk away with a better idea of what’s going through my clients’ minds when they open the door to me.

Tagged with: clutter, control, decluttering, kitchen, trust

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