The funny thing about drawers is that some of the most (seemingly) organized homes I’ve been in still suffer from messy drawers. There have been a number of homes I’ve worked in that are so orderly to the naked eye that I wonder where the mess is.  Many years into this career, I know now that these facades indicate that we’ll be spending a lot of time organizing drawers.

Last week I had the wonderful full-circle moment of working again with my VERY first client. Mike hired me in 2001 when he saw my ad in DC’s City Paper. I had no experience as an organizer, and stated my rates at $25/room and $80/for a whole home. Mike knew a good deal when he saw it and my strategy was to get some “firsts” under my belt.

Years ago I helped a woman who could barely see the floor in her living room, bedrooms, and hallway. While sorting clothes, she shared something as she noticed it was happening.

“Kacy, everything I touch, I want to keep. Everything you touch, I want to let go of. How about you hold everything up as talk it through.”

It’s not often that I see an approach to organizing that is totally novel, but it happened when I worked in LA last fall. I helped a client organize a home office that was adjacent to her master bedroom.  As I was frittering away with supplies in the office, she was slowly covering her bed and bedroom floor in at least a dozen piles of paper, each no more than a couple inches thick.

Creatives, especially artists, get a bad rap for not being organized.  I know one though who is quite organized now that we’ve worked together, and was fairly organized before we met. She’s also an art teacher who is in a relatively new position.  With that new role, she reached a critical mass of teaching materials for school, teaching materials for various other classes, and her own work over the years.