I think a lot of people assume one of the main things I do is recommend specific organizational products to my clients. While I certainly can make purchasing suggestions, I rarely need to because most of my clients have plenty of organizational products and furniture pieces in their homes already. They have tried to buy their way out of this problem many times before, and it is only now, as a last resort, that they’ve finally decided to buy an expert.
Don’t get me wrong, I love The Container Store as much as the next highly leveraged professional. And there are times when the right product is the perfect and only answer to your organizational problem. Shoes, papers, pot lids, sewing notions – some things just need a good storage solution or they will never feel organized and useful.
But too often people assume a product can save them from a deeper problem. Nothing you can buy at Storables will help you say goodbye to your grandmother’s scarves. There are no specialty racks or drawers that will change how frequently your spouse does laundry. Ikea doesn’t have a drawer unit for hobbies you never seem to get around to.
What’s worse is when these same products prove useless and end up stuffed into a hall closet or piled up in the garage, clients feel guilt and shame. They wasted all that money on something that didn’t work, and now they just have more stuff.
I don’t need to recommend products because everything we need is usually in the house already. The good products can be repurposed and used as the base for the newly cleaned space. The bad products are just another form of clutter to let go of – along with the guilt of buying them in the first place.