Ulster County Press
Business Q & A
By TOM MAUCHER
May 2006

Revamp™ Professional Organizing Services
Sarah Stitham, Certified Professional Organizer

Describe your clientele. Upscale, whole families, singles?
All of the above. My clients are smart, busy people who are typically overwhelmed and need help to get and stay organized. Life changes ... divorce, marriage, relocation, renovation and downsizing motivate people to call me for help. Or someone may have had a therapeutic breakthrough and is ready to let go of years of accumulated stuff. Or, they are the relatives of a deceased family member, in grief who has the daunting task of organizing that person’s estate.

What are the most common complaints? We all have kitchen junk drawers, but is it too much stuff, or not enough space for all that stuff?
It’s both. This is why I love my work and know it is a valuable service. The most common complaint is that people realize their clutter and disorganization is costing them in some way. Valuable space that they pay for in their homes is not being used to their benefit. Their time is spent looking for things that are not conveniently placed where they can find then. And, we all need a junk drawer but if all your drawers are junk drawers, you’d better call me.

Which are the worst overall areas of the house, closets or kitchens?
Kitchens get hit pretty hard because they are commonly the most used room in the house. It’s where people typically spend the most time. Kitchens are often where stuff gets dropped, so they suffer from what I call the "Great American Countertop:" piles of mail, sales flyers, credit card offers, and a deluge of catalogs that often spreads from the kitchen counters to the dining room table. I’ve had many clients tell me that they don’t like to cook which wasn’t really true at all. They couldn’t cook because there was absolutely no space on their counters to set a cutting board down.

What is the real cause of clutter?
The real bottom line cause of clutter is delayed decisions. That’s it. I teach my clients to decide, on a daily basis, what they are going to do with everything that comes into their lives and to ask themselves if it is bringing them closer to their goals or away from their goals.

What about the stuff we absolutely cannot part with?
You mean like our tax records? Just kid- ding. We all have memorabilia. What you don’t want is for your entire house to be a museum of memories. If Grandma’s yellow teapot is one of your prized possessions, give it a safe place of honor to live, on a shelf where you can see and use it. If it’s stuffed in a box, buried in the attic and you haven’t seen or used it in years, it’s clutter. And your favorite patch jeans that you lived in for years - sewn by the love of your life, whose name you can’t remember, well, you could photograph them and anything else like it and create a scrapbook.

How long does the service last? Do you stay and help, or just drop off a list of things to do? How does the business work?
The first REVAMP service is a free phone consultation where we discuss what’s happening. The concern could be situational, like organizing a deceased family member’s estate, or it could be a lifelong issue of being chronically disorganized. I will then set up an appointment to visit the location and assess what their goals are. I call this service "The 4 Hour Miracle" because it helps clients gain peace of mind and clarity by redefining how they want to use every space in their home. I start by asking them the most important question: "What do you want?"

No names, but let’s hear some dirt so our readers know they aren’t the worst-case clients.
I’ve seen it all! I’ve worked with hoarders, compulsive shoppers and people who are chronically disorganized. I had to use my physical body weight to get into the front door of one client’s seven room home. Another client’s living room was so filled with “special antiques” we couldn’t move through it and she couldn’t see that as the problem. She thought it [the problem] was too many junk drawers!