Organize My Chaos

I quite literally have no idea what we would have done without Suzanne. My husband and I have lived in 3 cities since we got married 8 years ago and neither of us had eliminated our various possessions and papers since elementary school - they just moved from storage unit to storage unit in city after city. Now that we have a baby on the way, we desperately need the extra space and decided it was time to get rid of all that old stuff we had been toting around for years (my husband estimated ~300 cubic feet of stuff!!). Since this was sure to be a daunting task, we wanted to bring in a professional, and boy did we luck out with Organize My Chaos!

Suzanne was a phenomenal facilitator in this process, which is exactly what we needed, and actually made the whole project manageable. Looking back, here are the things that I think made the biggest difference for us without each of which I'm certain we would not have gotten to the light at the end of this tunnel:

1. She unboxed all of our things so we could actually see them and go through them, and tossed anything we told her to (e.g., any perishable items she came across, receipts older than 5 years) - so she is actually able to do a first round of this painful task if you want!

2. She collapsed all of the boxes we wanted to toss out (I hate doing this) and kept a steady stream of garbage leaving the apartment so we avoided swimming in stuff. Actually, she should charge for that alone - getting rid of the piles and piles and piles of stuff you go through!!

3. She took on the annoying task of consolidating donatable and sellable items and took them to goodwill, consignment, etc. We surely would have just thrown out a bunch of stuff we ended up donating just to avoid the headache!

4. She would magically appear with some sort of perfect storage or organization solution so we could be as efficient as possible -- if we needed a tub, filing solution, you name it, we got it without having to lift a finger.

5. She would shuttle anything around that we needed - if there was a shelf of papers that needed to be organized, she would bring it over to the area where we were working. If there were items that were ready to go into our basement storage unit, she would take them down for us.

6. She helped make sure we met certain deadlines - areas were cleared when we had maids coming and when we expected guests the weekend of our baby shower and she made sure that the guest room where we planned to put them was ready in time.

Basically, Suzanne has an incredible amount of infectious energy that is truly required for this draining line of work and took as much headache out of the process as humanly possible. She really takes on the burden of *everything* that does not absolutely require your own individual effort. I cannot say that I have ever hired anyone else who has gone this far out of their way to make sure I have as little work to do as possible.

On top of everything, she's punctual and extremely responsive - if we decided we just couldn't bear purging stuff for a night, Suzanne would always get back to us right away accommodating our needs. She also was a great coach in calming down my anxiety and panic feeling unprepared to have a baby in the middle of our Chaos. And in retrospect, even though it did amount to a small investment with several hours of work on her part, she was incredibly modest and conscientious in her pricing. If anything, I wish I could have paid her *more*! She never hung around idly if there wasn't anything for her to do, and the truth is, she doesn't charge for nearly the amount of time I imagine she really puts in to make her clients successful. And on top of that, she donates a portion of her revenues to charity -- how can you beat that??

In short, Suzanne is a godsend. My husband and I both sit around our condo now basking in what we achieved with her help. If, like us, you are facing an organization task that you have desperately avoided as long as possible, I promise you that Suzanne can make it as painless as possible. If she can't get you through it, I don't know what can!