A disorganized home doesn’t happen overnight, but it may feel that way. As the mess begins to pile up, so will your stress levels. One solution that you may want to consider is hiring a professional organizer. A good pro can get your home back in order within a few days and provide you with some helpful tips to keep your house free of clutter in the future. Here are 5 things you should know before hiring one.
Professional organizers can help you with a lot of things around the home. If you’ve been thinking about enlisting some help, but you’re not sure where to start it might be a good idea to consider one of these professional declutterers.
So just what does a professional organizer do exactly? They can help with a range of tasks including small jobs such as organizing your closets all the way up to a whole home reorganization. Some are even certified by the National Association of Productivity & Organizing Professionals.
How much help you really need should factor in when you’re deciding which professional organizer to hire. Some are a bit more hands off — simply providing you with some instructions to follow and a short visit to inspect the work when you’re done. Others are much more hands on, coming into your home and rolling up their sleeves. The hands on type may ask you to work with them or they may prefer to work alone with you just giving the go ahead before anything is thrown out.
The costs involved with hiring a professional declutterer can vary depending on how much work you need them to do and if you’re willing to do some of the work yourself. If you’re doing the work and just enlisting their help for some home organization tips you can expect to pay a small fee — probably under $100.
When you’re hiring a professional organizer to come into your home the prices go up. For one room or just the closets, you should budget between $200 and $300. If you’re hiring a professional declutterer to help you organize your entire house it could cost you $1000 or more. Some charge a substantial consultation fee just to come and look at the room or rooms you want help with.
There isn’t a simple answer to the question of whether or not it’s worth it to hire one of these professionals. Most of them are very good at their job, but it really depends on you. If you’re generally a clean and organized person and you’re just having trouble with your closets, you might be better off just buying some shelves or closet organizers and doing the organization yourself.
On the other hand, if you’re a borderline hoarder a professional organizer is well worth the money. Digging through mountains of junk stuffed away in your attic or basement can be overwhelming. When you hire a pro to help out it can be a big stress relief. If you are someone with a lot of stuff to sort through it may be a good idea to rent a dumpster as well as an organizer.
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Almost anyone can benefit from hiring a professional organizer unless you’re an absolute neat freak. As we’ve already touched on, the level of help you might need can vary a lot. Here are some key questions to ask yourself when deciding if you need professional help with your clutter:
Another great question to ask yourself before taking the step of hiring a professional is do you really need an organizer or could your home just use a good cleaning. A dirty home doesn’t necessarily have to be disorganized as well.
You may just need to get out your cleaning products, mop those floors, scrub those baseboards and wipe down the cupboards. You wouldn’t need the help of an organizer for these tasks. They’re helpful when you need to declutter rather than clean.
If you have your heart set on hiring a professional organizer, it’s best to figure out where you need help first. When you have a good idea of what you want them to help you with it will be easier for them to provide you with an accurate quote. There’s no point in getting help organizing your entire home when all you really need is help clearing out the attic. You’ll get the most out of the experience if you set the goals of the job.
If you want to try and organize your home like the pros on your own you’ll need to tackle the task on a room by room basis. Your first goal should be making sure the floor in the room you are targeting is free from clutter — it’s hard to tackle closets and cupboards if you can barely work around all of the junk.
It’s also a good idea to create lists of the items in a room. Then you can assign them to a keep, don't keep and a maybe list. Chances are, most items on that maybe list will end up on the don’t keep side of the ledger as well. Now that you're armed with your list it will be much easier to sort through and clean up the clutter in your home.
There’s one more thing to keep in mind when hiring a professional organizer — you need to keep organized once they’re finished. Unless you want to hire a pro every few months, you’ll want to stop the clutter from creeping back into your home. While you have that professional organizer in your home, make sure to seek out their advice on how to stay organized in the future.
Staying organized means keeping clutter out of your home. If you have old furniture that no longer has a place in your home, consider getting rid of it. You can donate your items or host a garage sale and sell them. Keeping your space decluttered will ensure your home is as organized as can be.
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