Organizationally Yours

This small office, which does double duty storing out of season clothing, had become a bit of a catch-all room for storage. But because it only contained one small shelf, items were stored on the floor. This same method was used in another room in this house (see guest room L). Using the floor as a storage space is always problematic as eventually it becomes difficult to move around the room, which of course makes it hard to get to you stuff, which leads to buying duplicates, which leads to more storage issues and on and on in a vicious cycle. However once we got to this room (and its neighbor), my client was really great about eliminating the duplicates and going so far as to pare down her clothing to fit in this small closet! Even the interior of the desk is organized -I should have taken an after picture with the drop leaf down. At least I did get an after picture of the closet interior. Unfortunately, because it was hard to enter the room, I didn’t get a ‘before’ picture of the closet interior or across the room from the far wall. So at that is why there are two orphan ‘after’ pictures at the end of the series.

This is the same home as Living Room G. I forgot to take the before pictures (what else is new) of this dining room until my client, assistant and I were about 90 minutes into the project. So I threw a stack of the now empty boxes back into the room to give a sense of its original state; you can see them stacked in front of the table. In the after pictures y you will notice some large chests and a blonde shelf that don’t appear to belong in the dining room. They are the remnants of one of the estates mentioned in the last post. My client’s husband is working his way through these items, but as much of it is paper –genealogies, old letters, documents and photos- it will take a LONG time (paperwork is brutal!). Nonetheless these boxes are at least tucked back out of the way. They can be moved out of the room when my client needs to expand the table for entertaining -something she can now envision doing given her brave and resolute attention to this project!

This Client and I are on an exciting journey to re-organize the whole house. We had booked the days needed and completed one project (Living Room L in an earlier post), when our fortunes and calendars suddenly seemed star- crossed. Between us we had to reschedule the next session three times! But my indefatigable client persevered and we finally got to the next room –the dining room (which in fact can be seen through the doorway in the earlier post.)
We tackled this room by relocating some items to the rooms they belonged in (clothes to the bedroom, office supplies to the office, etc), but mostly my client gave up a lot of items and rethought some projects that were weighing them down, bravely deciding that they weren’t worth doing after all. My client also came up with a plan for telling a loving family –no more gifts until the clutter is gone! It took us two days of uninterrupted work to clear this room so that it is available to entertain friends and family, one day less than I predicted and scheduled for. And all because my truly committed and courageous client just would not give up no matter what challenges (illness, house repairs, reschedules, unfulfilled dreams) beset them!