FFBF: When I Grow Up I Want To Be...

1. Fess up - if you could do anything professionally what would it be?

If I could do anything I would want to be a professional personal organizer! Houses, offices, apartments, closets, desks, cabinets, purses; you name it, I could do it...

2. What draws you to this?

I like things to be orderly and when things are it makes life so much easier. Honestly, not everyone is capable of doing that in every aspect of their life all the time but, I have always been able to be impartial and practical when faced with these situations and come up with economical solutions if necessary. It just seems so natural and I'm sure I could be a help to lots of people who don't have these traits!

Photo Credit: www.sharonmross.com

3. When did you first start dreaming about this ideal?

It probably started when I was a personal assistant for a local doctor. She was smart and practical person who kept a beautiful home but, a train wreck of an office. I helped her put it all in order and worked with her every week to keep it that way for years! Did I mention this is when I was in high school? Yeah...

4. What's holding you back from going all in?

It seems unrealistic to me now. Who is going to pay me the hourly rate I would want to go through their mess/junk and potentially tell them they needed to buy more stuff to organize it. We are in just got out of a recession! I'm sure there are more important things for most people to spend their money on.

That being said being organized helps your save money in the end...

Photo credit: http://www.organizingsolutions.info/

5. Sometimes the first step is the hardest... what's one step you can take now on the way to realizing your dream?

I guess I could try to network with more people about my "talent" but, it might be more convincing if I didn't use quotes around the word like it's a fake thing or a foreign concept.

Closet Makeover: A Friend In Need

When it comes to closet organization/reorganization I consider myself an expert on the topic (modest I know.) So, when my coworker/friend Natalia asked me for help I was happy to oblige and spent most of the weekend with her making this new amazingly organized and totally functional closet happen. I also took some pictures to illusrate the process for you. This is how it started:

It doesn't look that bad, right? That's what I thought too that is, until we started with step one (analysis/selection) and I realized that worse than it looked. 

In Natalia's case I attribute the misleading first impression to one simple thing: shared hangers. She had multiple dress/skirts/shirt stored together on the same hanger and as we went through the closet she kept indicating that she had forgotten about alot of the really cute items we were coming across. After everything was said and done we ended up with a really nice pile of donations, as well as, consignable items. 

To Donate

To Consign

After all that business was taken care of the next (and last) thing to do was get it all back in the closet. As I mentioned before she was not utilizing her entire wardrobe due to the attempts at saving space by hanging different items on one hanger. She is more of a visual person than either of us realized. My suggestion: tiered hangers and some sort of visible shoe storage. We picked everything up at Target for probably less than she will get back on her consigned items and put them to work!

We sorted items by type (shirts, pants, skirts, etc.) and made special effort to make sure that anything she could wear to work would be easily seen and accessible. Almost everything was hung on hangers that could be hung on each other so everything was visible but, not necessarily sitting on the main dowel. This was what we ended up with:
 

That didn't include any of Natalia's warm weather items. She was content to put them in some form of storage but, I took a look at the unique shape of her closet and figured we could use that to our advantage! I came up with this extra mini dowel fastened to the shelf above which would hide behind her current wardrobe. This way it's perfect for storing summer items now but, when the weather warms up again she can put heavier winter items back there!

I wish I could take credit for the construction too but, that was all BF. He did an awesome job, you can't even see it unless you are looking for it. Overall, a one day whirlwind for a fresh wardrobe perspective! Totally worth it... If you need help with your closet and would like my help you can email me and I would be happy to lend my organizational skills for a nominal fee.