Professional Organizer?

Can anyone recommend a professional home organizer? Looking to do a kitchen organizing project. Thanks!

 

What exactly are you looking to do? Pantry organization, refrigerator reorg, cupboard organization or actually redoing shelving, etc.?

I am looking into doing this professionally but haven't gotten started yet. I've done organizing (including but not limited to weeding out unused items, sorting, making things more accessible, etc.)/given design advice, helped purchase accessories, arrange pictures in groupings on wall/paint color selection/landscape designs plans for numerous friends and am ready to take it to the next level.

If you would like to discuss, please PM me. Have a great day!

 

My friend, Michelle Beauchamp, is a former Broadlands resident and a professional organizer. She owns an organizing business called Neat Families, and can be reached at 703/282-1372. She helped me organize several rooms last winter and I highly recommend her. She knows how to organize! Good luck!

 

Thanks! I found Mandy Purucker, www.mporganizes.com , and she's going to help me whip my kitchen into shape.

 

A good friend of mine also does organizing AND bookkeeping.

If anyone's interested, please contact:

Kimberly Gleason
Gleason Organizing and Bookkeeping
571)918-4188
areuorganized@aol.com

 

Well, Mandy's done and all I can say is WOW! She is really gifted, and the project was worth every penny. I'm now looking all around my house and seeing more places where I could use her help. She took a kitchen that seemed too small to fit all the bulky machines (crock pot, bread machine, Foreman grill, etc) and a pantry where we couldn't fit another thing, and she fit everything in where it made sense and improved the flow. There are even some empty spaces. I cannot believe it's the same kitchen. Every time I reach for a mixing bowl with one hand (versus pulling out the 10 glass nesting bowls from under the snacks in the pantry, a 5-minute project) - I am amazed at how much better sense everything makes. I highly recommend Mandy - she's very nice, didn't make fun of how disorganized my space was, she knew exactly how much time she needed for the project, and she took into account my family's habits and preferences.

 

It was by the hour, and she came to my house to provide a free estimate. With me doing the "homework" of pulling and sorting, she estimated 3 hours for the cabinets and 3 for the pantry. She was right on her estimated time in both cases. She supplied some inexpensive organizer trays which were additional, and provided lots of links to suggested items for me to purchase if interested (bins, file boxes, etc), but was sensitive about asking me to buy anything and worked with what I had on hand as much as possible.

 

I found:

"you can count on the AVERAGE hourly rate for a professional organizer in the United States being between $45 and $65 an hour."

 

If you're interested you should definitely contact Mandy - she'll give you her rates and estimate. I found her rates to be reasonable but more importantly worth every penny and then some.

 

I want to give Mandy another plug - since doing my pantry and cabinets, she came back and did my fridge and master bedroom closet. She really does a great job. Even though I SHOULD be able to organize my fridge and closet, it was much more productive to have Mandy come in to help put everything where it made more sense. She also took specific problems I noted and built solutions into the result. For example, my fruit in the fruit drawers would get forgotten, so now fruit is front & center where it will get eaten. Maybe I'm weird, but I think this would make a GREAT Christmas gift - some help organizing some part of my house. The coolest thing was this - once we were done with the closet there was a stack of stuff headed out for charity. Mandy offered to take it away then & there, and send me back the receipt. This is above & beyond, possibly not a big thing for her but for me it was nice to be DONE when she left the house. Oh - and my closet looks like one of those high-end clothing stores now - wow!

 

how much??? - never mind, I didn't realize this was an older post.

 

I saw your post a few months ago. I would love, love, love to have a professional organizer help me with my kitchen, but my husband balked at the idea. He thinks I should be able to do it myself, and I can't convince him otherwise. I wish I could hire her, but doesn't look like it's going to happen.

 

Who spends more time in the kitchen? You or your husband? Makes sense to me that if you spend the majority of the time there and this process will improve the workflow in that area, he should acknowledge it and be supportive of it. There are a lot of things that people think they should be able to do themselves and well, guess what people...everybody needs help with something all the time.

I would have the organizer come in and give you an estimate of her time and cost...then present the idea to your husband. Nothing wrong with getting a free estimate!

 

You also might find out exactly what this person would be doing for their money and lay that out for your husband. That might make it a bit easier to "sell" the scheme. It might disarm your husband's assumption of "what? Pay $300.00 just to rearrange some pots!"

There is probably more to the job (I hope so for that money!) than just rearranging the pots. Showing your husband what exactly will be done for the money spent is a good way to get his buy in.

 

You hit it on the head! I think I will arrange for an estimate. Organizing the kitchen is a much bigger job than I can tackle on my own. It's too overwhelming for me. Thanks everyone!

 

I can sympathize. I've been told the same thing by my husband, mother, mother in law, etc (accompanied by lots of snickering). But the fact is I'm good at a lot of things - setting up storage systems is not one of them. Mandy is a truly gifted person in my opinion. Ask for an estimate and plan on doing the homework yourself (eg check your own expired labels, get rid of your own unwanted things ahead of time) and you will probably find the estimate a LOT lower than the $300 mentioned above. I can't say because she'd really need to see the space to estimate but she was done in exactly the time she said in her proposal.

Anyway, I'm not her chief marketing volunteer but I have found her work to be very worth the money and wanted to let people know what she does.

 

I used Mandy too, and she was awesome.My kitchen is now very organized and makes sense! And even after several months, it still is pretty much the way she set it up.I had her come in and do everything , and told my family I spent two days organizing the kitchen.

 

sometimes you have to factor in how much your time and sanity are worth- AND- whether or not yuor mind works that way. I can't organize ANYTHING in my home no matter how hard i try, yet I can choreograph a dance routine while driving to the gym. my mind simply doesn't know HOW to make sense of it all. I would definitely consider this a valuable expense if it makes my home run more smoothly, and gives me more time with my family doing fun useful stuff rather than searching for that @)#%*)%* rice cooker or pawing through the junk drawer for the 1000th time for scisors... lol

thanks for the rec Audrey!!

 

I agree. I so often try to figure out how to best organize my house, and figure out what type of containers I should get or whatever ... then I walk through the store but I am clueless. I admire people who have a nicely organized kitchen, but mine just isn't ... and neither is my office. I can clean it, but it doesn't stay that way because stuff just is not in a place where it is easy to get to and easy to put it back.

I may have to give a professional organizer a try one of these days.

Marianne