Why I Became a Professional Organizer

I haven’t always wanted to be a professional organizer. In all honesty, until a little over 2 years ago, I didn’t even know that professional organizing was a career.

Half-way through my senior year of college, as I was browsing through Pinterest (real productive, I know), I came across this article: 11 Instagram Accounts That Will Fuel Your Inner Neat Freak. I was instantly intrigued. And that night I went down one of those internet rabbit holes that people warn you about but that you rarely see coming.

I immediately followed almost all of those Instagram accounts and scrolled through their feeds, captivated by the beauty and peace of it all.

And that’s when I knew - I was going to become a professional organizer. I had to. My mind began whirring and over the next six months, I began working on plans to start my business. I wouldn’t let myself actually start building my business before I graduated though because I knew if I did, I would want to give it ALL my time.

So six months and one Bachelors's degree in Business Management later, I started down the path of becoming a professional organizer.

Through my research, I had found was one program that I was sure would give me a solid head start towards building the business I wanted - Pro Organizer Studio. Thankfully, shortly after I graduated, the Inspired Organizer course and mastermind opened for enrollment again and I made my first major investment in myself by signing up.

I worked through the program as I launched my business, and the rest is history.

Looking back, I can see that my tendencies toward organizing started young.

I was always game to try a new folding technique that I saw on Pinterest or to marvel at an impeccable pantry. And while every Christmas morning was filled with gifts and joy, every Christmas afternoon was spent just as happily - integrating the new things into my life and preparing to let go of the things that no longer served me.

As a young Sunday school teacher, I wanted nothing more than to stay after class and overhaul the supply closet. I would come back week after week to find that the DVDs were no longer arranged by color and the shelves were a mess once again. I didn’t have the authority to enforce the systems I set up or make sure that they would last, and clearly some of the other teachers didn’t have the same proclivity for order that I did.

But I will admit, even though I have had organizational tendencies pretty much my whole life, I haven’t always been a super organized person (shocking, I know). That’s because I didn’t have the tools, knowledge, or resources to keep myself organized.

Even through much of high school, I would let my room get messy and then at the end of every week (or three) I would spend several hours on Sunday afternoon putting it back together.

It wasn’t until I read Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, that everything finally clicked and my room became pretty picture-perfect most of the time.

The idea that really transformed my life - well, my organizational habits - was that everything has a place. While it may take more time initially to decide where each item you own will “live”, when you know exactly where everything goes, it takes the decision fatigue out of the moment and makes it a million times more likely you’ll put things away.

Since then, I have been in the habit of putting away my clothes and anything I used during the day in the evening. This ensures that I go to sleep in a calm space, start the next day refreshed, and with a clean slate.

Since I haven’t always lived a perfectly organized life, because I didn’t quite grasp the systems needed to make my life so, I can empathize with my clients who are in the same place. Most of them just need some outside guidance and well-defined systems to find peace in their home once again.

Few things on earth are better than color-coding, file-folding, and helping our clients live the lives that they want - and that is why I became a professional organizer.

Until next time,

Carly

Photo by Mason Joel Photography