A few weeks ago I drove from my home in Silver Spring, Maryland nearly two hours to Winchester, Virginia.  The scene accurately matched my client’s story.  She told me ahead of time that she felt paralyzed by her piles. 

Some of my clients think “If I only had a bigger office, I’d be more organized.” Offices of all sizes are plagued by clutter though.  This was the case with a large home office that I organized over a couple of years ago; this set of photos is from back then.

A common question I hear is “how long do you typically work with a client?”  Most clients start with a package of time, be it 9 or 18 hours, and usually work into a long-term relationship. Others only need a nudge and some fresh ideas, and my two hour intro session suffices.  

It’s hard enough to organize things we can see, feel, and touch, so how do we organize time?  It’s usually a different process for each client that then needs to be tested and tweaked until we land on just the right combo of solutions. In this case, we laid it all out on a board propped up in her office. One of my clients is an interior designer specializing in medical offices.

While some days we clear vast expanses of floor or desk space, or let our creative juices flow in creating fabulous new systems, other days I simply help my clients open their mail.  This may precede creating smart paper flow systems, happen immediately after, or years into our relationship

We are all too hard on young people to clean their rooms, when our own rooms need cleaning just as much in some cases.  Like their parents though, they don’t always know how, but enjoy the process once walked through it.