Rose Cerullo is a professional home organizer with Inspiring Spaces.
“That’s the key thing about organizing,” says Cerullo. “By making organizing a process so you develop a system. That makes it fun. Organizing is constant change. For example, just putting 15 minutes a day over a month is hours, which is a movement towards your project, which makes you feel good. People think it’s going to take so long, but taking a baby step [you can] have enough energy to do other things. Do a little bit more, do a little more, like creating a memory that organizing is okay.”
Cerullo encourages her clients to organize things in 10- to 15-minute spurts. This way it becomes a regular practice.
“I’ve been doing this for four years, and when I started, I started helping clients who were pack rats,” says Cerullo. “They were collectors and didn’t necessarily tune into the energy of how it doesn’t feel good having all that stuff in their place. People who are organized, who are busy and are sensitive to how their environment feels – there’s a common denominator with all of them: they want a better system. They have other things that are a priority who ask for your services. I’m spending too much time doing this over and over and over again, how can I make it more efficient?”
Cerullo describes a client of hers who was magazine-perfect when it came to her décor, but needed help with a dozen work projects she was doing from home. Her file folders were flowing.
“I asked her do you use it [documents] regularly, occasionally rarely, or never? Then I asked her to get post-its in front of the drawers that she never uses. I had her sit at her computer and identify all the broad categories of her project for the next 12 months. And all the broad categories, I had her type them in caps – creating an index. Then the sub-categories were determined in small letters.”
Cerullo left her client with 15 minutes of homework and organizing an appointment with herself: to go to one of those drawers that she rarely uses and put those files in a banker's box in the order she had them in her drawer. Then they were to be labeled on the outside and relocated to another area in her room where she had extra space, like her furnace room. The client would e-mail Cerullo and this establishes the habit.
“The key is to schedule time and to follow through with the organizing. Then you feel energy to do something else. You can apply it to any area of your life in bite-size chunks and feel energetic after you do it – that’s the key thing you want to feel good about it.”
Cerullo says she is attracting more people who see the value of being organized. They don’t feel overwhelmed anymore. If you’re looking for someone who could help you organize your dream home or condo, look up the Professional Organizers in Canada for contact information to find someone right for you.
 |
