There are many reasons why you may be seeking out a professional organizer. Professional Organizers help clients with everything from time management to downsizing and relocation. But how do you know you have found the right person to work with?
Asking all the usual questions you ask anyone you do business with is a good start. What is your experience? How much will it cost? How long will the job take? What is your area of expertise? Do you belong to any professional organizations?
But in the case of a professional organizer, one of the best measures of how successful they will be is what questions they ask YOU.
Having someone in your home looking at and touching your things is a very personal experience. It’s crucial that their style and personality will fit with yours so you can build trust throughout the job.
These five questions show a level of understanding that you want in a professional organizer.
1. What is motivating you to seek help getting organized?
This question will surely make you think on a deeper level. It is designed to make you consider the underlying reason you want help.
Perhaps you want a clean garage to be able to fit your car in. It seems like a reasonable thing you would ask a professional organizer for help with.
But when you look more deeply at your motivation, you may realize that because you slipped on the ice last winter, it’s important to you to be able to get into your car without falling again. In this case, the underlying motivation is personal safety.
A professional organizer that asks this type of question is trying to understand the why, not just what the job entails. It speaks to someone who wants to understand you and lets them bring up other related areas you may not have thought of to increase your safety. A professional organizer who asks this question shows a desire to improve your life, not just your garage.
2. What is your biggest obstacle when it comes to letting go of things?
Part of the process of professional organizing is sorting things and identifying items that may be donated, recycled, or disposed of. An experienced, ethical organizer (check out the NAPO code of ethics HERE) will never pressure you to get rid of an item. Still, they will coach you and act as an accountability partner.
This question is designed to make you think about why you have 18 umbrellas, of which five are torn and broken. What has prevented you from disposing of the broken and useless ones? Do they have sentimental value to you? Do you think you may need a broken umbrella one of these days? Are you just paralyzed when it comes to deciding to throw something away?
A professional organizer asks this question to develop a plan in which you can be successful. Helping you figure out what stops you from getting rid of things gives the organizer a better chance to help you overcome the obstacle and meet your goal.
A professional organizer who asks this question wants you to be successful in reaching your goal and is empathetic towards your feelings.
3. What is working well in your space?
Why would a professional organizer ask this question? After all, you are hiring them to help with disorganization, not admire the area you are delighted with. There are a couple of excellent reasons they ask this.
First, seeing an area that you are happy with gives them a sense of what your expectations are for the project area. If they can see that you are pleased with a space full of lots of things that are neatly organized, they know that you are comfortable with a certain level of visible items as long as they are arranged appropriately. That is a big difference between someone looking for a minimalist look requiring more items to be culled.
The second reason is they want to understand what makes you happy. The nature of professional organizers is to want to help people. Although they will work hard and challenge you to keep making progress, they ultimately want you to be satisfied with the result of the project area. An excellent professional organizer wants you to feel relief and joyful satisfaction when the project is completed. They want to make your life more comfortable, not just more organized.
4. How organized was the house where you grew up?
It seems like a personal question, but there is a good reason a professional organizer would ask it.
A professional organizer is not a cleaning service. If you are just looking for someone to clean or remove junk from your home, you should probably call a professional cleaner.
A professional organizer wants to help you organize and provide you with systems to maintain your organized home. They also want to help educate and promote good habits for you to have a more organized life. Ultimately any good organizer will become a support system for your success.
They need to understand any poor habits you may have developed over the years to do all that. This question can help them differentiate between someone who knows what to do but maybe doesn’t have the time to do it versus a person who may not have any previous experience with organizational systems.
A good organizer will tailor systems based on your life experience. This will help you to succeed on a personal level and on this particular project.
5. If I could instantly fix three areas of concern which things would you choose?
The most obvious reason a Professional Organizer would ask this question is to know where to get started with the project. That is one reason they should be asking you this question.
But going back to the idea that a professional organizer is more than just a cleaning service, it also guides them in another way. It helps them understand your most significant pain points in your home and can help them navigate any coaching towards staying focused on the areas that will have the most significant impact on you and your home. Ultimately any good professional organizer will work first towards you being successful, happier, and experience less stress.
With a quality professional organizer, the customer will always come before the clutter.
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