Peace of Mind Organizing

Congratulations to my employee, Beth, on her CPO® credential

29 February 2024

I’m tickled pink to congratulate my employee of four years, Beth Hunyar, on becoming a Certified Professional Organizer®. She passed the rigorous exam yesterday.

This is a big achievement. In order to qualify to sit for the exam, an organizer must have 1500 paid client hours or 1250 paid client hours + 250 substitute education hours in the past five years. This is a solid credential that recognizes knowledge and experience.

The CPO® credential was established in 2007. At that time I didn’t have the hours to qualify for the exam, but I took it the following year and became St. Louis’s first CPO®. There are currently nine CPOs in Missouri (counting Beth). Nationwide, there are 332 CPOs, and seven from other parts of the world. And there are 16 emeritus CPOs. (You can read the list of CPOs here.) It’s an elite group.

Being a CPO is not a requisite for being an amazing organizer. Both Beth and my other employee, Lydia, have natural organizing ability, coupled with a deep understanding and compassion for our clients. They’re very skilled. One of the things I love, though, about the CPO credential is that it requires study and preparation and continuing education. Clients know that when they hire a CPO they hire an organizer with knowledge, experience and professionalism. (CPOs must adhere to a strict code of ethics.)

Those of you who have worked with Beth know that she fits that description to a T. I’m so glad she has achieved this milestone. She has worked hard gaining the experience and preparing for the exam.

If you’re interested in reading take on on the value of hiring a CPO, check out my blog post Why hire a Certified Professional Organizer.

If you’d like to read more about Beth and Lydia, check out our Meet the Team page. It will be updated soon with Beth’s new credential!

Organizing my charging cables

22 February 2024

I just got a new iPhone 15 Pro (I love it!). It uses a USB-C cord to charge rather than a Lightning cable. My MacBook Pro also charges with a USB-C cord. Each of those devices also has an optional MagSafe charging cable (iPhone; MacBook). I also have AirPods that use a Lightning cable. And a Kindle that uses a mini-USB. And an external hard drive that uses a micro-USB. And any of them might connect to a power source with either a USB-A or USB-C cable depending on what it’s plugging into. That’s a whole lot of cables to wrangle.

Earlier this year I did a cable clean out, letting go of cables that I no longer need. It was a huge improvement, but it didn’t feel easy enough for me to access what I needed. Then I came home to one day to find that my husband had bought an HDMI cable despite the fact we had several. He looked where he expected to see them and found none. They were big, so I’d moved to another location known only to me. A very bad idea. I wanted to rectify the situation

Here’s a photo of my first attempt, organized into an Elfa drawer:

When I decided I could do better, I took the suggestion of my brilliant employee, Beth, and bought a Short Medium All-In Modular Divided Box with 15 compartments from The Container Store. She had sent me a picture of how she used that bin to organize her charging cords in her house and I wanted to give it a try.

I went through my bins of charging cables again and separated out the ones I use most often for my devices, which are the USB-C and Lightning. I put them in a bin like Beth’s and then used the Elfa drawer I’d been using all along to store just the mini-USB and HDMI and printer cables.

Here’s how the divided bin looks. I’m particularly pleased with the labels!

And here’s how the other cords look, stored in the Elfa drawer. (The HDMI cables are back where Barry would look for them.)

I also keep a packing cube with my travel cables so they’re at the ready when I travel. That still feels a bit like a moving target as devices change so I went through it to make sure it contained up-to-date cables. And I updated my travel cord checklist. I’m writing this from North Carolina and it looks like I brought the right cables, so that’s good.

Here’s a photo of the travel cables.

So I have cords in three places, plus a few connected to the wall in a couple of places in the house. That’s a lot. But at least I can pretty easily find out what I have and put my hands on what I need. The labels in the divided bin will help me keep those cords organized. At this moment in time I’m feeling good about my charging cables!

What are you waiting for?

12 February 2024

If you’re like me, you have plenty of little organizing projects around your house. You look at them and say to yourself, “I have to organize that [fill in the blank].” I do this regularly and sometimes I’ll let the same little project go undone for months on end. And then when I complete it, it ends up taking very little time.

That happened this weekend when I finally reorganized my underwear-and-sock drawer. The sock situation in my drawer had gotten out of hand and it had become a bit of a struggle to grab a pair of socks in the morning. All my socks were stored together, which worked together when I had two types of socks and colors of socks. But now I have wool socks in five different lengths and they weren’t separated enough.

So on Saturday, I finally emptied the drawer, donated a couple of items, relocated a couple more (like a seldom-used swimsuit and coverup) and sorted what was left. I knew I wanted smaller sock categories. I use inexpensive IKEA drawer organizers (Skubb) and was going to buy another set to get the granularity I needed. But I found I actually had an unopened set stored with my other organizing products! So that was an easy organizing solution to implement.

So in about a half hour, a drawer that was a literal source of stress became an easy-to-use source of peace. Why didn’t I do it sooner?

What about you? What are you waiting for to complete a life-enhancing organizing project?

Why I became a professional organizer

6 February 2024

I’m in my 19th year in business. I consider my anniversary to be the day I joined NAPO, which was June 30, 2005. I am so fortunate to have chosen such a fulfilling career. I just reread this post, originally written in 2013, about why I became an organizer and why I continue being one. A decade later, all the reasons in this post are still valid and I’ll add another: It feels so great to have helped so many organizers get their start in their own businesses by working on my teams. (I now have employees, as well as independent contractors, and I’m thrilled they enjoy their jobs so much.) Peace of Mind Organizing® has helped hundreds of clients over the years and helped many organizers along the way. I feel so good about that. If you’ve ever wondered what a PO gets out of her work—which to some people looks decidedly unglamorous—read on.

Often when I meet folks who learn what I do for a living, they’re keen on learning how I became a professional organizer. I explain the training I took and how I went about starting my business. (That’s all detailed in my blog post, Are you interested in becoming a professional organizer?)

But seldom am I asked why I became a PO, rather than how. I thought I’d spend a little time exploring that question.

In my observation, there are two sorts of folks who become professional organizers:

• Those who do it because organizing comes so naturally to them. Being organized is like breathing. It’s their passion. So why not make a living doing it?

• Those who enter the field because of their own struggles in getting and staying organized. They’ve spent a lifetime seeking solutions for themselves and want to share those solutions with others.

I fall into that second camp. As I’ve mentioned over and over, I’m a naturally messy person. I’m pretty organized in my space and I’m definitely organized inside my head, but I’m a bit messy and unruly. I sought solutions for my time management and clutter issues throughout my life and I learned a lot. I felt it was time to start sharing.

When I first contemplated starting my business, I was a freelance writer. I’d been writing about pets for ten years and had written hundreds of articles on various aspects of pet care. I’d had seven books published (most of which are no longer available) and contributed to several others. I was working on my last book, an ill-fated venture called Jane Goodall’s Return to Gombe co-written with the famed primatologist. The process of writing that book about killed me (and was never published) and I knew that in order to get through writing that manuscript I had to know it was going to be my last book. So I started looking for other things to do.

As I considered becoming a PO, I thought of several very important things that being a professional organizer would offer that being a freelance writer was not delivering:

• The ability to help people directly and tangibly
• Respect for my expertise (I was being very disrespected during the whole Goodall book experience)
• Payment at the time of service

That was very appealing and a big part of why I became a PO. But why do I keep doing it, after almost twenty years? The truth is that my employees do most of the actual organizing. But I still thoroughly enjoy running the business, communicating with the clients and seeing the huge difference my organizers make in their lives.

Those initial three reasons did prove to be powerful rewarding. In addition, here are some other things I’ve found to be very rewarding (as do my employees):

• We get to help people transform their lives.
• We help people feel better about themselves as we normalize (and sometimes empathize with) their messy behaviors.
• We can help our clients go from striving (and failing) to be perfectly organized to reveling in being organized enough.
• We get to effect vast, fast change by working in teams, rather than one on one.

Being a professional organizer has been life-changing work for me. And its results can be life changing for our clients. It is easily the most rewarding work I’ve done in a career that’s spanned four decades. And as long as it continues to be this rewarding, I’ll keep doing it. I’m so grateful to have the help of my wonderful employees!.

Look for me in Real Simple Organizing Basics magazine!

30 January 2024

Over the years, I’ve been quoted several times in organizing-focused editions of Real Simple magazine and it’s always a thrill. I’ve loved Real Simple ever since it debuted in 2000.

So I’m delighted to let you know that I’m included in the new issue of Real Simple Organizing Basics magazine. I’m part of a roundup of experts in an article called The First-Timers Club in which five experts “share their secrets for organizing success.” The other experts are Julie Bestry of Best Results Organizing in Chattanooga, Wendy Buglio of Wendy Buglio Consulting in Arlington, Mass., Schae Lewis of Mission 2 Organize in Chicago and Tanisha Porter of Natural Born Organizers in Los Angeles.

The four-page spread starts on page 20 of the issue, which is on sale through April 5 at newsstands and bookstores nationwide, as well as at grocery stores, home centers, big box retailers, drugstores and discount chains. Or you can order it from Amazon.

The whole edition is a second printing from 2022 (“Back by Popular Demand!”), which I neglected to mention on this blog then. So if you haven’t already, you might look for it. The ad-free issue is full of great insights and lovely photos.

The Elfa sale is on through February 19!

11 January 2024

Every year from about Christmas to Valentine’s Day, the Container Store has their Elfa sale. That means it’s Elfa sale time!

From now until February 19, you can 30 percent off everything Elfa.

It’s worth noting that, according to the asterisk on the website, the sale does not apply to installation.

I use Elfa in my own home, in a closet in my office and to store my yarn stash. I also use four different Elfa file carts in my office, one for my business archives, one for my genealogy papers, one for inherited memorabilia that I’m in the middle of processing and a fourth that I transformed to hold all my desk stuff when I switched over to a sit-stand desk. (You can see pictures of that in this post, Loving my new Jarvis standing desk.) That one lives right under my desk.

If you’ve been thinking about getting an Elfa system, now’s a good time to shop for it. You can explore the Elfa offerings on their website and make an appointment for a free design consultation, if you’d like one.

My 2024 Word of the Year

5 January 2024

I find it really valuable to come up with a guiding word every new year. This year’s word is ACTIVE. I want to focus this year on taking the more active option in any given situation. I’m looking to feel more nimble, less stiff, and all around more vital. There’s something about being in your 60s that makes you really think about how you want to age.

I initially thought my word was going to be STRONG. But after doing the exercises in Lavendaire’s Artist of Life Workbook, I changed it to ACTIVE, which felt like a better fit.

I’ve been choosing a word of the year for more than a decade and some words were more spot-on than others. It’s interesting to me to look back on prior words of the year because they’re little snapshots of my life that year.

I keep a list of them in Evernote. In case you’re interested, here’s the list:

2013: growth
2014: innovation
2015: recognition
2016: balance
2017: fearless
2018: connection
2019: expertise, processes, health
2020: intention
2021: ease
2022: generosity
2023: space
2024: active

If you’re interested in hearing more about selecting a Word of the Year, check out Episode 186 of the Getting to Good Enough podcast, in which Shannon and I spent 15 minutes talking about it. (We’ve stopped recording the podcast, but the archives are still there for your enjoyment!)