A Client Story: It Really Is Life-Changing Magic

I am so fortunate that when I started this small organizing business, I have had clients that turned into friends. Nicole was one of my first clients, and not only was she the oil that got my business going, but she is an example of how decluttering and reducing is truly, genuinely life-changing magic. She has dramatically changed her life, and it’s glorious to watch. She wrote this piece for me which shows what organizing has meant for her life. Thank you, Nicole, for trusting me and for embracing this so wholeheartedly and genuinely. You are a joy!

Both the process of organizing and the winter holidays center around giving.  I started my organizing journey last summer, and it was months of letting go, giving away, throwing away, and clearing out.  Then the holidays hit, and my focus changed to gift giving and creating a magical season for my family.

First things first, I contacted my siblings and other people who would normally buy gifts for myself or my son and asked them to consider something else this year.  I laughed as I told them, “I just spent months of my life and dollars of my earnings getting rid of stuff, I don’t want a bunch more!”  I asked instead that we make things for each other, give art, buy super practical things, or give each other experiences.  We did come home from our time with family over the holiday season with some “stuff” and some lovely and appreciated gifts.  

But the best gift was yet to be revealed!

Gift giving is a big love language in my family, and so over the years, I have often come home from a holiday or birthday with lots of very thoughtful, wanted, and useful items.  Many times, with things that certainly spark joy.  

But I rarely found ways to enjoy those things right away.  I cannot tell you how many gifts from my family have languished for months or years (!) because I had no place to put them, enjoy them, use them.  My clutter and disorganization would keep me from enjoying these things, honoring the giver, and sometimes gifts simply became more clutter.

This year my son received some maps from my parents, and I can tell you exactly what would have happened to them in my “before”:

I would have had BIG plans to put them up in his play space, but I wouldn’t do it right away because I wouldn’t have the flat space required to lay them out and let the flatten after being rolled up in the packages.  Plus, I would want to move the shelves that I had in the basement up to the play space and move all his toys from around the house onto those shelves.  Months would pass, and my mother would call to see if my son was enjoying looking at the animals on the maps, and I would probably lie and say, “Yes, he loves looking at them every day!”  Then I would ask my husband for help getting the shelves upstairs, he would put off helping me for weeks or months, and then I would push him.  We would have gotten the shelves up the stairs only to discover that the path to the play space was so cluttered that we couldn’t move any further.  I would vow to clean it up by next weekend.  Several weeks would pass.  Then I would ask him to move them again, but we wouldn’t be sure if the maps or the shelves would fit on the walls I imagined them on in my head, and we would be faced with moving the shelving into that room to see where it fits, but that would be too hard.  Plus, there is stuff in that room that needs to move, but I don’t know where, and no one can find any of the half dozen or so tape measures to find out if things would fit and we would stop. Eventually the shelves would make it back to the basement or some other “temporary” location.  My sister or husband would ask if I could just put the maps in my son’s bedroom, but that isn’t where I want them, so they would still be rolled up in the package next holiday season.  Eventually, he would outgrow one of the maps, but I would hang onto it in case I want to use it at my office.  And I would mentally calculate how old he would be when he didn’t enjoy the second one either and promise myself that I would do something before it’s too late. And I would feel guilty for years, and my son would miss out on his gift for years, perhaps even altogether. 

That’s how I lived, ashamed, for years, over $15 maps, or countless other things…

But now I live in my “after.”  My home isn’t photo-shoot ready, but people can stop by and I don’t want to die of embarrassment.  But I came home from the holidays, unloaded my car right away, and put away the treats in the pantry, the clothes went to the laundry and then to closets, the game went to the shelf with the other games, the books on the bookshelves, the toys with the other like toys. The sewing machine that my parents generously gave me went straight to my sewing cabinet, because I have one now and it has space for a new machine.

 It was fun and exciting, and I was calm, so calm and so proud of myself.

And the maps?  Well, I used a gift card I received after returning items I didn’t need—found while organizing, and bought frames on December 26th.  I was able to flatten them under some books for a few days, because there were no piles of stuff on my dining room table.  I hung one up in the play space and the other one is in our living room; and we are using it to plot out our planned road trip to California next month.

All the generous gifts we received were opened, admired, and instead of stored as potential shame, they are giving us joy, right now joy.  That’s never happened for me before, and I am so grateful that my thank you notes this year contain real truths about how we are enjoying the thoughtful gifts we received.

—Nicole W., January 2019

Nicole’s kid’s awesome playroom.