Do you need to hire a professional organizer?

During my organizing seminars, audience members often share funny antics that have to do with their disorganization. I love how their laughter breaks up the tension and reminds us that we don’t always have to take ourselves so seriously.

If you fall into the “not-so-organized” category, I hope you too can chuckle as you relate to some of the tidbits I have heard over the years.

RELATED: Organize your home by focusing on one room at a time

You may need to hire a professional organizer if…

  • You feel a sense of accomplishment when it takes you less than an hour to find your car keys.
  • While watching the "Hoarders" show you say, "Well, at least my house isn't that bad."
  • The new shoes you recently ordered arrive just as you discover the same ones hidden under a pile of clothes in your bedroom.
  • You keep building additions to your home or move to a larger one so you have a place to store all your plastic totes marked "MISC."
  • You have kids in college, while storing your own college text books at the same time.
  • Your home is inundated with stuff and you're embarrassed for anyone to see it, so you comfort yourself by saying, "Someday soon I'm going to have a garage sale."
  • You were surprised when your adult child wasn't ecstatic when you opened the door to your off-site storage unit and said, "Someday this will all be yours."
  • You find eight remote controls while searching for the one that actually works your television.
  • You own movies on VHS tapes, but no longer have a VHS player.
  • After inviting friends over, you run wildly around your house stuffing grocery bags with clutter and hiding them in your car. (Some of you just got a good idea with this one.)
  • You lost the organizing book you borrowed from the library and had to sheepishly confess that to the librarian.
  • Your retirement plan consists of the sale of your collections of Beanie Babies, old National Geographic magazines and a Wheaties box you've kept in pristine condition.
  • You keep saving all of Grandma's needlepoint projects, even though your grown children have repeatedly told you they don't want them, because they might change their mind.
  • You have enough wrapping paper to last to the year 2050, yet you buy more after the holidays because the sale is too good to pass up.
  • You keep buying craft supplies despite the fact you haven't made anything in years.
  • Your garage is full of car parts for a car you no longer own.
  • You're not speaking to your grown children because none of them will promise to keep your Precious Moments collection after you die.
  • You're storing boxes of stuff you haven't opened from two moves ago and have no idea what's in them.
  • You won't part with anything that says Tupperware even though you no longer use it.
  • Your children are adults, living in their own clutter-free homes, while you're still storing all their childhood things.
  • You have partially used make-up spilling from your bathroom drawers that you purchased during the Kennedy administration.
  • You have gadgets in your kitchen drawers and no clue what they are used for.
  • You open your garage door and several passing cars screech to a stop mistakenly thinking you're having a garage sale.

And you thought you were the only one. Happy Day!

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GET ORGANIZED

Lori Firsdon will teach her seminar “Organizing Solutions for Parents” Saturday, Sept. 9, at the Miamisburg Library, 545 E Linden Ave, Miamisburg, OH 45342, 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. For more information contact the library at (937) 463-2665.

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