The Views of an Unwanting Participant: What I Think About Home Organization.
Hello,
I’m Audra’s husband. I just wanted to write something that I think might be useful to people on the fence from the perspective of someone who had no interest in anything like this before it was imposed on me.
Organizing is not my passion. When Audra left her successful corporate job and started working for an organizer, I thought “Ok, do whatever you want.” Then she would come home and tell me about it and I was happy she was so much happier, but just thought it wasn’t my thing (here’s my description of Audra) Then she started wanting to do things around our house. I didn’t care. I wasn’t excited, but I wanted her to be happy so I agreed.
She made some small changes and I was happy with the results. It wasn’t life changing, but it was nicer. The change that sticks out to me are simple $10 drawer dividers. I do most of the cooking in our home and we had a catch-all drawer with all of my cooking tools. EVERY DAY I would get frustrated because there were quite a few things in there, most of them are pretty small and hard to find, and lots of them are pointy or sharp since they have to do with food preparation, so I would stab myself. It’s not like I became angry every day, but it was annoying and it was EVERY DAY and, often, multiple times per day. After she put in the dividers, I stopped stabbing myself and I stopped wasting time looking for things because they were categorized in a way that makes sense. It’s not life changing, but she eliminated an annoyance and gave me a little more of my most valuable possession, time.
Before she started doing this, one of the reasons I wasn't excited about it was because I have been disorganized my whole life and thought that NO MATTER WHAT she did, I’d still be disorganized. What I’ll say about that is that I’m still me, but the whole value of the systems is that they’re sustainable because I WANT them to be sustainable and they’re EASY to maintain. I realized that it’s not that I was disorganized by nature, it’s that I didn't know how to set myself up for success by making it easier on myself with products and systems that make it easy on me. If I unload the dishwasher and I'm putting things away, is it more difficult to put it in the correct section of the drawer than it is to just open the drawer and throw it in? Yes. Is the additional effort also so insignificant that the act of putting it in its’ correct place is actually pleasurable because I'm already rewarding myself for finding it in the future and not being annoyed? Yes. Once you realize how much easier things are with systems in place, keeping it up is negligibly more work and it’s not a chore to do it. I WANT to do it.
So, once she made a few changes and I found them easy to maintain, when she asked about doing more things to our home I was on board. Fast forward to now where our whole house has systems throughout, it’s just easier. When I wrote earlier that it wasn’t life changing, it’s not when you look at each thing as an individual. But when you look at eliminating 20 things a day that annoy you and replacing them with things that make you happy, it is. But it’s not one day, it’s every day. It’s the same idea as $20 not being life changing, but $20 20 times a day for a year is $150,000. Our results don’t last a year, they’re designed to last for years because they're essentially containers which we don’t assume you’re destroying on a regular basis. So, if you think about it as paying yourself $20 every time you eliminate an annoyance from your life, it’s worth well over a million dollars to you over its useful life.
I’m not saying that occasional maintenance is something you’ll never want, but you’ll be happy to have it done. Something that I've noticed with some of our clients is that they treat us like the annoyance removers. The last project we’ll have done will be their under stairs closet storage area and I’ll think, “We’re probably done with their home at this point.” Then they’ll call us and ask us to organize their grill. It’s not something I would have expected, but it makes sense because it annoys them and everything is always better when we’re done.
I’m not exaggerating, EVERYONE Audra has worked for over the last 5 years has been happy. I, truly, believe the only thing that keeps people from hiring Audra to organize their entire home is financial. It’s not cheap (and I’ve written articles on why that is by going into detail about Product and Labor). So, I get it. However, if you have the disposable income to try it once, do it! It’s worth risking a couple thousand dollars where your WORST case scenario is you think “This is nice, but not worth the money.” But your BEST case scenario is “Oh my god! I love this SO much and you need to do my whole house!” We work with people from a variety of circumstances and one of my favorite things is that we have clients that tell us they’re going to budget and save money for us to come in and organize the next space and ACTUALLY stick to the budget in order for it to happen because they love what we help them give themselves so much. We think we sell happiness, so come buy yourself some happiness. Thanks for reading and I hope this helps.
