Peace of Mind Organizing

Oprah to the rescue

13 November 2008

In case you missed it, yesterday’s Oprah show was the debut of Oprah’s Clean Up Your Messy House Tour. Oprah is sending organizer Peter Walsh, of whom I’m an unabashed fan, around the country with a “clutter crew” of helpers (in VW Bugs) to help people get rid of clutter. (In this first episode, they were in New York City, knocking on doors of unsuspecting people.) Designer Candice Olson of Divine Design is also on hand to help with beautiful storage and design solutions.

I’m going to cut to the money-saving chase here (and then move on to some comments on the show): Oprah’s offering discounts! For 48 hours after the show (i.e. by 11:59 p.m. PST on Friday, November 14) you can get a free custom 20-page photo album from Snapfish. That means you’d need to select your photos and upload them today or tomorrow. If you can do that, you can have a nice gift or remembrance that otherwise you’d pay 30 bucks for. (You have to pay shipping.) Here’s the link from Oprah’s website.

And there’s more! The wonderful Container Store is in on the deal too. They’re offering a 20 percent discount to Oprah viewers with a special coupon, good for in-store, online and phone purchases. Here’s the link. This one expires at 11:59 p.m. CST on November 19.

There were things I loved about the show and things I wasn’t so crazy about.

First the love:

• Working on-one-on with these surprise clients, Peter Walsh demonstrated how quickly you can declutter a space when you focus on it.
• Both Peter and Oprah made the point that in these troubled times, we should concentrate on what we can control. And a peaceful, organized space is within our reach.
• Peter, through Oprah, is offering a six-month decluttering program with step-by-step solutions for getting organized. By joining up, you’re committing to spending 10 minutes a day decluttering. I love the power of 10 minutes a day!

Now the things I wasn’t crazy about:

• TV organizing always creates unrealistic expectations. The folks in New York with whom Peter worked were all able to make very quick decisions about keeping and parting with stuff. That’s certainly not the case with all of my clients.
• Decluttering is typically only temporary unless habits are changed. In the case of the single woman with the very messy apartment, I didn’t see anything that would lead me to believe that that client will be able to maintain her space. I’m sure working under normal circumstances Peter would have transferred skills. And maybe he did. But it wasn’t apparent on what aired on TV.
• There wasn’t a plug of any sort for working with a professional organizer. I would have loved to have heard NAPO or NSGCD mentioned.

I see that future Messy House Tour visits won’t be surprise. You can sign up for consideration for a future show (they’re looking for people in Washington, DC and Atlanta.

Tagged with: clutter, container store, decluttering, oprah, order, peter walsh, snapfish

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