Do you need some help to organise at home?
Property Styling Melbourne has now launched its professional organising services. Commencing from October 2016 you can now have hands on help to declutter, sort and tidy your home or workspace.
The Magical Power of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
The team at Property Styling Melbourne has based its approach to professional organising on the Marie Kondo method. Detailed in her best selling book, The Magical Power of Tidying Up, the Marie Kondo Method of tidying suggests that before organising and storing your belongings, you first need to do a major, once off tidy to identify and keep, only what sparks joy.
The team from Property Styling Melbourne works with you by category of belongings, rather than room by room. We help you sort:
- Clothes
- Books
- Papers
- Household Goods
- Sentimental Items
In each session we will tackle a category by gathering all of the similar items together in one location, reviewing each item and then deciding whether to keep, discard, donate or sell the rest. You will always be the person to make the call on what to keep or discard, you won’t be forced to get rid of anything.
Here are just a few of the strategies we use:
- Initial Interview
We’ll always begin by understanding where you are now and how you got there. Our plan is to help to you overcome the negative impact that clutter has been having on your life and to create space for you and your family at home. We make sure we are flexible and work to your priorities while encouraging you to use an approach that’s been evidenced to have worked time and time again. - Assess Storage
We will always work with the space and storage that you have. You won’t need to go out and buy lots of fancy or complex organising products or storage systems, although we can give you advice if you’d like it. The Marie Kondo organising method encourages you to use the resources you have available ensuring that everyone can tidy irrespective of their budget and available space. - Define what sparks joy.
The decision to keep or discard an item is an individual one. Our professional organisers work with clients on a confidential basis. We don’t pass judgement on what you decide to keep and we will never make you through something out. We will coach you and ask questions to help you make that decision for yourself and to keep you moving through the sorting process when you get stuck.
Here are some Frequently Asked Questions you may have about our Professional Organising:
How does Property Styling Melbourne’s organising service work?
Property Styling Melbourne has based its approach to professional organising services on the popular and effective KonMari method. Described in Marie Kondo’s book, The Magical Power of Tidying Up this approach to tidying involves a series of tidying sessions to thoroughly reassess the items in your home before we try to organise and store them.
Each session focuses on a type of household item like clothes, books, papers, general household items and finally sentimental items
We aim to keep only what really sparks joy for you and your family
What will change at the end of the tidying sessions?
Our aim is to help you discard unnecessary and unwanted items and then to organise what remains so that you and your family can:
- Feel calm and organised
- Find what you need when you need it
- Ensure your ‘things’ support the rest of what you need to achieve each day or support how you envisage your life at home to be
- Find it easier to make decisions about what to keep or bring into your home moving forward to prevent the build up of unwanted items
- Stay organised, with each item being allocated a nominated storage place it will be easier to stay organised
- Have the skills to transfer to other family members, encouraging them to see and adopt tidying as a life skill
What can I expect during my first organising session?
At your first organising session, we’ll spend the first 20-30 minutes doing a walk through of your home and discussing your ideal vision for your home and life.
The remainder of the session will be spent getting to work on the first category (it’s recommended that you start with clothes).
Together we’ll gather all of your clothes in one place which will allow you to see how much you own. Then we’ll do the “joy check” of your items – keeping only what sparks joy and gently discarding the rest.
After discarding, we’ll put the keep items away in their temporary home. Only after discarding through all of the categories – clothes, books, paper, miscellaneous, and sentimental items – will we make final decisions for the best way to organise all of your belongings.
How should I prepare for my first organising session?
Please don’t feel the need to clean up for our first session. It helps me to see your home in its natural state in order to understand how you normally live.
You also don’t need to have read the Marie Kondo books, although you may like to.
Before our first session, I recommend reflecting on your ideal life and how you want to experience your home. Create a vision board (with paper or on Pinterest), journal, or whatever else seems natural to you to articulate this vision. Be specific and imagine the details about what you’re doing, feeling, and seeing in your ideal space and life. We’ll discuss this vision at your first session.
How long is each organising session?
Each session is typically five hours long. Organising is rewarding, but also physically and emotionally taxing. Five hours is enough time to see significant progress, but not too long to lead to exhaustion. We can often reduce the sessions to three hours if you have limited time or other commitments like family to work around.
How much will we get done in each organising session?
This is where I say “it depends” because it’s true. It depends on how much you own, how organised your space already is, if there are any outside distractions, how quickly you can make decisions, etc. I will move at your pace and help you set appropriate expectations for your unique situation.
What if the people I live with (my partner, children or flatmates) are not interested in tidying up?
You should discuss with your partner and where possible your children (depending on their age) your intention to tidy.
You will only be making decisions about your own belongings, so whether or not your house-mates are on board does not impact your progress. By focusing on yourself, other people will not feel as threatened and just may change their tune when they see your positive results.
Can I hire you to organise someone else in my life (partner, parent, child)?
One of the tenets of the KonMari Method is that “we can only transform our lives if we really want to.” As much as we wish we could change other people, our loved ones must choose to make the change on their own terms.
I’m on a tight budget – what are my options?
The greatest investment you will need to make is your time.
If you’re committed to making a change and living a more joy-filled life, you’ve taken the first step. Never assume that getting help for tidying up is out of reach. You could:
- Borrow The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, from your local library or ask around to see if a friend has a copy
- Create an Audible account, you get to download your first audiobook free and KonMari’s books are available
- Hire me for one off support on an hourly rate
- Purchase a complete package of tidying sessions
There are options for every budget.
Will you make me throw things away?
Whether to keep or discard is your own decision. As Marie Kondo says, “if it makes you happy then the right choice is to keep it confidently, regardless of what anyone else says.”
Over time, by working through the The Method’s established categories, you will develop your sensitivity to joy. By the end of the tidying process, you will be able to quickly discern what brings you joy and what does not – a skill that also helps ensure you can make confident decisions about what to bring into your home in the future.
What happens to the items I choose to discard?
You’ll practice gratitude when discarding things. Whether it’s a scrap of paper or a box of photos, you’ll thank the object for serving its purpose.
My goal is to keep as much out of landfill as possible, promoting reuse (through donation and resale) and recycling as much as local resources allow.
When going through a big purge, a local donation pick-up services can help ease the logistical burden. Before you begin the tidying process, think about where you want to donate unwanted items and carve out a space in your home (such as the garage) to temporarily store items that are on their way out.
I’d like to do some preparation before each session what can I do?
Here is some guidance on what you can do to get the most out of your tidying sessions.
Generally, you should discuss with anyone living with you what you plan to do and why. This can help them understand what you want to achieve and to be reassured that their property won’t be discarded, without permission.
You should also consider downloading the KonMari app to help guide your organising journey.
Clothes
- Have some spare garbage bags or boxes available to facilitate the disposal and distribution of unwanted items
- Consider if you have any boxes suitable for in drawer storage such as shoe boxes or boxes like these from Ikea or these.
- You may like to refresh your available stock of coat hangers; we recommend the slimline velvet covered coat hangers. Sometimes allocating particular colours for particular family members is also something worth considering
- Try to have almost all of your clothing available for storing by having washing etc. as up to date as possible.
- If you like, you can also gather together all of your clothing from each location around the home and have it piled in a central location like your bed (generally in the same room that you will store your clothes). This is literally all of your clothing including any clothes that are have been packed away because they are seasonal or don’t currently fit etc.
- If we are tackling children’s or other family member’s clothes please ensure just one person’s clothing is piled at a time
Books
- Centralise all of your books in a single location, take them out of each room and pile them up in a common area like
- You may like to presort these into categories like;
- Fiction
- Non-Fiction
- Children’s Books
- Recipe Books
- Manuals etc
- Discuss with your family or other stakeholders how you plan to manage and deal with shared Books
Papers
- Gather all of your personal papers into one location before we arrive.
- Consider how you will discard paper documents, particularly if they are sensitive
- You may like to top up your stock of folders and files. We recommend using clear files and folders as much as possible
- Discuss with your family or other stakeholders how you plan to manage and deal with shared papers.
Komono (Household Goods)
- Consider the categories of Komono
- As sorting Komono will usually take a number of sessions discuss with your Organiser which subcategories you will tackle first and have these available, gathered in a central location.
- Discuss with your family or other stakeholders how you plan to manage and deal with shared Komono.
Sentimental Items
- Sort your sentimental items into subcategories and gather these items together
- You may wish to refresh your available storage for this purpose such as photo boxes or albums and other storage boxes that spark joy for you.
If you know of anyone passionate about organising we are quickly expanding nationally and are offering franchises as well as just one Regional Management opportunity in each state.
