What’s the First Thing You Do when Meeting an Organizing Client?

Part 4 in a series with Louisville Organizing Expert Pinky Jackson as featured on the podcast “Things I Need to Learn in Life I didn't Learn in School” with WAVE news anchor Dawne Gee

Dawne Gee: “What kind of places do you go to? And when you go into someone's home, what's the first thing you do? What will you organize?”

Pinky Jackson: We mainly organize homes, although we do some small businesses. We also do some community spaces as part of our pro bono work, but mainly we're in private homes. And the first thing I do is a free assessment. I walk through the house if it's local, or we Zoom if it is outside of our local service area. I observe and I listen.

And that's the first thing I invite clients to do. Observe what's working well for you. What makes you happy and efficient and what makes you uptight and sad. Listen to yourself and everybody else that you share the home with or the space with. Listening is step one.

I also observe. I can usually tell within just a few seconds if the client is visual or if they're more of a hidden or a micro organizer. Observation is key, but I also need to hear what's stressing them out the most or the area that will make them the happiest when we transform it. That allows us to start with something they're very motivated to make decisions about. And that's important because a lot of people experience failure when organizing on their own because they start with towers and towers of paperwork, or they start with memorabilia. Those are not two areas that most people can get a lot of traction quickly. So we start with something easy.

For me, we would start in the kitchen because I don't cook much, so it's easy for me to say, "I have four burners, I need four pans", and I'm good with that, right? But you cook a lot. So we're going to want to really honor that and maybe start with something like a hobby you don’t do anymore, or a room you don't use this way anymore, whatever it may be. We start with something you want changed and which requires easier decision making. We build up your decluttering muscle as we go along. Once we get rid of things over and over, we realize “Oh, it's not as hard as I was afraid it would be.”

Pinky Jackson is an Organizing Specialist, DeCluttering Expert and Founder of the Gratefully Giving charitable initiative to recirculate surplus items to families in need. She and her team organize homes in person in the Louisville, KY region and beyond and also offer virtual organizing sessions. Potential clients can review her pricing and services and book a free assessment at pinkyjackson.com.

Photo: @JonTyson