Here you can see before and after pictures of some of the assignments I have worked on.
It can be sensitive to show your mess. If you as a client don't want me to show before and after pictures of the organizing assignment, I won't. I adhere to SBPO's ethical guidelines and I have obtained the customer's consent in all cases when I show situations before and after sorting and organizing.
Th studio / hobby room
This customer needed help clearing and sorting in their studio. The space is a combination of studio, office and storage space, which has its specific challenges. Creativity needs a place, as do office supplies, while cardboard boxes need to have somewhere to be.
This is what it looked like before sorting:
Work in progress:
After decluttering, sorting and organizing:
The sewing studio
An artist needed help with sorting and organizing among their fabrics that had been accumulated for a while. I started with emptying out the space and together with the client I sorted the decluttered pieces of fabric into "keep" and "toss"-piles.
After that it was time to start color sorting and organizing the fabrics. It is important that artist materials such as fabric in this case are easy to find and access when an artist feels inspired to start creating.
I started with rough sorting and folding.
Since there is quite a distance between the shelves you get "bad air" as I call it, i.e. the space is not used to its full capacity. I suggested two different ways the client could fix it and have the folded fabrics lined up side by side.
Alternative 1: Get more shelves. Since I want the client to be able to access all the fabrics without having to move stuff around, this would mean that the shelf would swallow twice as many fabrics.
Alternative 2: Purchase a couple of wooden boxes and place them so the opening is facing towards you. This way the client can place the fabrics side by side both inside and on top of the boxes. This doubles the space and prevents "bad air".
This has a couple of advantages: she will access all of her fabrics without needing to lift or move anything else. else, and since they wouldn't be in a pile but side by side, fabric at the bottom of the pile is not stressed, which means it lasts longer.
For now, we were content with getting the fabrics sorted and organized until she had decided how she wanted to proceed. However, it is an advantage if you avoid this kind of pile formation, as it can easily lead to irritation and you cannot easily reach what is at the bottom without having to tear out the rest of the fabrics. So it needs to be fixed. But that will be at a later date.
The tip I gave the client to get a satisfactory fabric supply is the same I give to clients who want to sort their linen closet or wardrobe: always place folded fabrics standing side by side for clarity and easy access.
The office
Office shelves can easily become dumping grounds and quickly become cluttered with all kinds of paperwork and rubbish. This client needed a major upgrade in his office as the shelf had been neglected for a long time.
Luckily, getting your office in order is usually not as emotionally exhausting as, for example, clearing the attic or going through old photos. The office is a place where you work and the emotions are not as overwhelming as they can be when you start going through old memories.
Therefore it can be quite liberating getting rid of old paperwork and sorting notepads where they belong. It is often easier to separate yourself from work related items than your personal stuff.
The office is something you see every day. A messy and cluttered office environment requires enormous resources and brain capacity completely unnecessarily, and you easily get tired and stressed just having to put up with the mess. Therefore, I always recommend a 10 minute decluttering session before the end of the working day. Declutter and put your items in order, and prepare for the next day. That way, you don't have to start the day with visual noise and a stressful environment.
Visual noise
Noise in the workplace is a huge disturbance, and a lot of research has gone into understanding how noise affects the psyche. However, what many people don't think about as much is that the visual "noise" takes just as much energy away from you. Visual noise causes stress and increased cortisol levels in the body, and that is something you definitely don't need first thing when you come to the office.
First, we cleared the space and then we started sorting and discarding what was no longer relevant. Old documents could be thrown away and much of the shelf's capacity was taken up by cartons and other things that could be discarded immediately.
"The zombie pantry"
A family I helped has a pantry that they call the "zombie pantry": a pantry for unexpected events and crises (or zombie apocalypses!) After all, MSB (the Swedish authority for social security and preparedness) recommends that we have a pantry that covers the family's needs for 72 hours (i.e. 3 days ). This family has prepared for more than that and could easily last a month or more.
But the pantry itself was a "bit of a disaster", to quote the family themselves. I helped the family get things in order so they could sleep, safely assured that should the crisis occur, they would find what they needed in the pantry.
Since this storage was located in a closet with deep shelves, I used wooden boxes to make the most of the vertical space. This way, the family also sees more clearly what they have, and what may need to be supplemented.
I also advised the family to invest in another shelf to accommodate twice as many cans. When it comes to emergency storage, you need to make sure that what you need fits into a designated space. Although I'm a strong proponent of clearing out, it doesn't apply in a special case like this when you want to fit even more into a small space.
Cleaning cabinet
This family wanted to tidy up their cleaning closet, which has long served as a dumping ground for paper bags etc that they wanted out of the way. Since the cabinet is located in the kitchen, it is natural to put away boxes and other things to get them out of the way after shopping.
I helped the family declutter old broken grocery bags, as well as get the cupboard a little more organized.
Linen closet and towels
Towels and bed linen can be tricky. You often have what you need, and in a family with several children, both towels and sheets are used up at a furious rate, which means that you need everything you own. You cannot get rid of anything.
Just by finding a folding technique and a system that works for the particular space you have, you can often save lots of space.
Pantry
The pantry can be a difficult space to organize. This family had a fairly deep cabinet alocated to the pantry, which admittedly allowed a lot of space, but it was difficult to see what was inside.
My suggestion was to allocate a shallower cabinet to the goods that need to be seen on a daily basis. That way you see what you have and get a clearer overview. What was in the smaller, shallower cabinet before (dishes & bowls) got its place in the deep pantry. That way, you can place what you don't use on a daily basis further into the cabinet and store what you take out often a bit closer to reach.
Hotel breakfast buffet every day
This client drinks tea. Lots of it. But all the packages with a few tea bags in each package took up a lot of unnecessary space in her tea pantry.
The stressful moments during the morning can be many as it is. Breakfast tea should not be one of them. Since tea plays an important role in this client's life, I wanted to give her the luxurious feeling of a hotel breakfast every time she opened her tea pantry.
I replaced all the bulky tea packages with a single basket to give her the feeling of stepping into a hotel breakfast buffet when she chooses tea in the morning.
Since the tea bags now take up less space, they also offer a calmer impression in the pantry.
Storage / garage
When cleaning out this family's garage, I needed to clear EVERYTHING out to see what they had and how to find the optimal place for everything.
The space was used to store different categories of things including: Paint and painting, garden machinery, tools and storage for the children's skates, exercise equipment, etc.
It may seem like an unnecessary chore to pick everything out, but it has many benefits. On the one hand, you see what you have, which can give you aha moments, and on the other hand, you can start to see categories to start gathering similar things together and find a space for it.
Containers!
When organizing your garage or storage, it can be a good idea to bulk up with containers. If you want, you can invest in esthetically pleasing containers to get a rest for the eyes. But they are often expensive, so think twice about what you actually need to store and measure the space it requires. Don't buy anything until you really know what you want to clear out and how much space you need for a specific category. You also don't have to buy expensive clear plastic trays if you don't want to; cardboard boxes works just fine!
Outerwear
"The shoemaker's children and the blacksmith's mares are those who walk without shoes," is an old Swedish saying. This is actually my own family's outerwear wardrobe that I got to clear out. We don't have a coat hanger in the hall, so both we and our guests have to hang the outerwear in a wardrobe we have in the hallway
It quickly becomes an issue if we have too many outer garments, as guests have nowhere to hang their outerwear due to lack of space.
I was able to get the family to clear out a pair of shoes per person so we could fit the rest. I also put in a hanging organizer to be able to sort tote bags, gloves, hats and other items that also require their place in this wardrobe. What I would like as a supplement is some kind of lighting in the form of spotlights.
The Crafts studio
I helped a crafts association with sorting craft materials. I am a craftsperson myself, and have good experience with craft materials and the mess it can cause. Artists and craftsmen often have an abundance of materials, although not all are used all the time. For an untrained eye the materials may seem like rubbish: recycled materials, pieces of fabric, plastic bags. But in this case the studio had a bin of old, beautiful ribbons that the members of the studio use in recycled embroidery for example.
I think it's a shame if beautiful ribbons like these are forgotten in a bin. As an artist, you want to get inspired when you need to get something from your material storage. That's what I wanted to give the members of this association: inspiration and joy when they entered the material storage cabinet.
Kitchen drawers and cutlery
Cutlery is something most people have too much of. This family had a mix of everyday flatware, heirlooms and flatware sets for festive events.
I started by pouring everything out to see what the family really had in their kitchen drawers. That way I could see if similar items had ended up in different drawers.
When I started sorting, I discovered, among other things, that there was an abundance of kitchen knives of various kinds. It's good to see everything at once. Oftentimes it's not until you see the overwhelming amount of stuff you actually own that you can see the items that may never be used and therefore can be donated.
Containers are crucial if you want to keep your items organized. (The middle drawer could do with an additional sorting though.) This way, all the items have somewhere to "live" and in the future it gets easier to put the item back in its right place after using it.