Getting Your Space Organised with Georgie Rees

This is an interview that I did with home organisation consultant Georgie Rees from Clutterfly. Georgie is a member of the Australasian Association of Professional Organisers (AAPO) and shares her top tips for getting started in your space (even when you don't really feel like it!).

Here is the link to the original article: https://www.happilyorganised.com/getting-your-space-organised-with-georgie-rees/

Laurel Grey: Hi! I’m Laurel Grey from Happily Organised and I’m here today interviewing Georgie Rees from Clutterfly. She is a home organization expert or physical space organization expert. So many of my clients come to me and they go, “Can you just organise my office and get all these paper cleared?” and I (makes a face) – to be very honest, that’s probably my least favorite thing to do. That’s why I brought Georgie here with me today, to talk a little bit more about herself and how she works with clients.

Georgie Rees: Well, my name is Georgie Rees from Clutterfly. I guess I help clients restore the harmony in their home or in their home office. It’s all about cutting through that chaos, that daily sort of clutter of stuff that’s in the home or in the office and really helping my clients to relieve a bit of that stress and the constant headache of stuff and things that they need to do and help them reclaim some time they should be spending on more important things or actually spending on themselves.

LG: Can I just ask – out of curiosity , a question? How much time do you think your clients are spending every week on dealing with stuff, whether it’s in their office or in their home?

GR: Oh, look, it’s probably a lot more time than we even think because actually if you really sat down and thought about it, every time you have a moment spare, you’re probably thinking about “Oh that part of the paper that I just saw … all that the stuff there, that’s the stuff I should do… “ and every time you look at anything or think about it, you’re realizing you haven’t done it and you’re procrastinating about it and you should do it and then you’re looking at the next part … so, I actually think it’s probably constant. Uhm, when you’re not actually doing something else, you’re feeling guilty about it without realizing it.

LG: Wow. Do you think that people are tougher on themselves than they should be?

GR: Uhmmm… Yes…

LG: I’m asking for myself … (laughing)

GR: (laughing) …

LG: It’s my own personal knowledge.

GR: They are. But I think they’re tougher in a different way. So, as I said, it’s that procrastination and that constant guilt … it becomes a re-occurring kind of thing that they’re challenging themselves with but if they actually sort of, I guess, defined the time that they were thinking about these problems or dealing with these problems or these clutter or these paperwork, then they would actually find that they are spending less time thinking about it and it’s less of a problem.

LG: It sounds like really just facing facts like “Okay, I’ve got this stuff. What am I going to do about it?” and taking action.

GR: Yeah, exactly. And what I do, say to my clients, if you kind of deal with it a little bit at a time, like okay you may not be able to sit down and pay your bills at once, but if you actually get to opening the mail and putting it in a pile of bills you know you need to pay then you’re already halfway there. You know, you’re not sitting there and looking at piles of mail that you know you should open but once you open it, you’re like “Oh my goodness, I’ve got to do something with it… “and you know “I don’t have time now so I’m just going to put it off…” But you’re actually halfway there; if you open up the mail and put it in the pile to start with and you’re giving yourself one time a week to pay bills then you only have to think about it one time a week.

LG: Yup, exactly. So, I’m curious about either for yourself as a business owner because you run your own small business or for your clients who are maybe professionals, moms – you work with a lot of moms, right?

GR: Yeah. I do… I do. I go into a lot of homes, big families.

LG: Absolutely. So what’s the biggest organising challenge that either you faced or you find that you’re clients faced?

GR: Well, in terms of my biggest organisation challenge which I guess is a funny question to ask a professional organiser…

LG: People think that we are all really organised…

GR: (laughing) My clients always say to me... “Are you like a builder?” or they have a half-finished home and a half tidy home and that kind of thing… And actually, what I found is that my challenge is I tend to be a little bit too organised which means that I’m actually putting myself under due pressure to do more than I actually am capable of and that gets me overwhelmed and I feel like I’m losing control of things like that. So, you know, I go into my client’s homes and whether they’re mums or small business owners or executives, you know, they’re overwhelmed as well but they’re probably more from the disorganised point of view and it really is about finding that happy medium where you’ve got boundaries like I’m saying before, you set yourself boundaries so you’re actually, only thinking about the annoying stuff a little bit at a time and if you do that sort of by process or as when you need to then it’s not hanging over your head and causing you that stress or that constant pressure and headache.

And all my clients say, the number one thing that they find is they’re drowning in paperwork. It’s just, it’s a way of life --- like paper comes in the home and if you don’t do something about it, it’s there. It doesn’t go away. It’s the same as the office. It sits on your desk. I walk into offices and I can’t sort of see the desk with all the paperwork and they don’t even know what the paperwork is or why they got it.

LG: Oh my gosh… (laughing) So, I guess it’s interesting to me when you talk about the office part as well, because you do a lot of home offices…

GR: (nodding) Yup.

LG: I guess I’m curious … Well, I lost my train of thought….

GR: (laughing)

LG: I’ve got to stop thinking about him… Uhm, I wanted to ask more about …. I’m just curious about… when people are coming to you do they already sort of have a digital system at all or are they looking to like get everything moved?

(Pause)

LG: So, I’m going to ask that again…

GR: Yup…

LG: Okay. So, I’m curious about the home office or even with the regular office if you are going in there, do people want to get that … do they have this idea that there’s a perfect digital workspace where they can just get rid of all these paper and that’s their goal and that’s why they want to work with you?

GR: (Nodding) Sometimes, they, I guess, they say to me, again it’s like “Do you have any paper in your home? or “What do you do with the paper?” It’s like, look, I embrace the paper, you know, I actually do like paper... I’m still trying to get hold of the whole digital thing and being paperless. But as I said, you know, as long as you manage it, and you know sort of what the boundaries are, then you can have paper. But a lot of clients try to go down that “I’m going have no paper” and it’s like going cold turkey (laughing) I’m going to say paperless to bills… blah blah blah… but it’s inevitable, you’re always gonna get paper come into the house, whether it’s a note from school or whether it’s the invoices of the receipts or just the credit card statement that comes through that kind of thing. So I think it’s really good to look at the digital side of things as much as possible and have that filing system but you’re always gonna have a bit of paper to deal with…

LG: Yeah, unfortunately. Even for me I still have paper… I can’t help it.

GR: Exactly. (nodding)

LG: (Laughing) So, I always want a take away at the end of this video. Something that people can go back and actually do to get started….

GR: yeah… okay…

LG: So do you have one crucial tip that you would say like you have to go back and do this, it’s going to free up your mind?

GR: Yeah, well, I guess what I say is start at the beginning and that would be tackling one paper pile at a time and I would say start with the oldest paper pile because quite frankly that’s going to be the easiest because you’ve probably don’t need any of the stuff there, probably you can’t remember where it came from or what it’s for or it’s probably out of date… so, give yourself the easiest thing to deal with first and you know only take 15 minutes like, you know everyone’s got 10 or 15 minutes in their day to go around that… I’m just going to focus on this for that 10 or 15 minutes and then I don’t have to think about it for the rest of the day.

So, go home and just find that one pile of paper and I guarantee it’s going to probably take you 5 minutes because they’re probably going straight into the bin but just try to embrace that feeling of going, “Oh my goodness, I actually think a weight have been lifted from my shoulder because that pile of paper that I keep looking at every time I sit at my desk is gone and now there’s a clean space and oh my goodness… imagine what do I do with that clear space?” (laughing)

LG: (laughing) Oh that sounds awesome… I know that I can go back and do that… don’t tell anyone.

GR: (laughing)

LG: Thank you so much for taking the time to come and share all these tips…

GR: It’s a pleasure…

LG: If you want to work with Georgie… How can people work with you?

GR: Well, I’ve got a Facebook page so it’s facebook.com/Clutterfly or you can go to my website Clutterfly.com.au and have a look around and get all the information there… but really, the best thing is to pick up the phone and have a chat with me. I’m more than happy to chat with anyone and even if it’s just to give them that little kind of kick-start to go and do it themselves. That’s my goal in the end; I want people to sort of be working on it themselves. But quite often, it’s nice to have someone there to motivate you…

LG: In person…

GR: Yes, go and do it. You know, sort of hold your hand and guide you a little bit. So yeah, please do…

LG: … a bug

GR: … give me a call.

LG: Sorry, there was a huge bug … like it’s gone underneath my shirt…

GR: It kept coming back (checking out Laurel’s shirt)

LG: Okay, can we start again from how they can work with you?

GR: Yes.

LG: Sorry about that…

GR: No… no… that’s okay. Do you want me to go on about all that like, I mean…. Contact…

LG: Yeah, I do. Because I think it’s important for people to know… can you actually include how you actually work because people don’t know….

GR: Yes…

LG: You give them a consultation or is it an initial consultation paid then …… or is it you go in there and …?

GR: Pretty much have a chat and go into their home and do the session.

LG: Okay. And then…

GR: It’s just because people don’t know these things. Is there a minimum amount of time you like to work in the space for? Like you block in 3 hours…

GR: uhm… I’d say a session is usually between 4 and 6 hours.

LG: Okay.

GR: Yeah so a room or an area is a session at a time. That fairly works.

LG: If you can explain that, that would be perfect… because even for me because I really didn’t understand.

GR: Alright…

LG: Even though I’ve done a lot of organising help.

So, thank you so much for sharing all of these wonderful tips and all these insights.

GR: Pleasure

LG: And I am just wondering, if people watching want to work with you… Can you share a little bit more about how they can do that?

GR: Sure, well I’ve got a Facebook page facebook.com/Clutterfly and a website Clutterfly.com.au. You probably want to go in there and look around. But I think probably having a phone conversation to start with is always the best way because I can understand a bit more about where you are coming from and how you’re feeling and give you a bit of an idea of you know how we’d start to sort of help you feel a bit better about things. And you know I guess them I’d sort of say it’s always a bit hard to judge how long something’s gonna take but I roughly say you know each session is about 4 to 6 hours which is a good amount of time to get actually done and feel like you’ve achieved something at the end…

LG: and it goes by like this (snapping her finger)… literally. Yeah…

GR: It goes really quickly because once you start pulling things apart, you know, get involved in it and the time disappears, and what I would say is that probably 1 session minimum per area or per room when the paperwork gets involved it can take a bit longer depending on how much paperwork you’ve got from how far back. But that’s generally how we would do it instead of aim to have one session per sort of area or room for 4 to 6 hours. So, you know, I welcome your call, even if it’s just to have a chat or whether “I don’t know if I need you” or “I don’t know really what you do” but you know, even if I sort of give you the encouragement to get you going and that’s you know that’s sort of (shrugging) a great thing.

LG: Absolutely. And just knowing there’s somebody you can call who can understand what’s going on…

GR: Absolutely. I mean, my clients always say, you know, “I’m really embarrassed with you coming into my home…. like you probably haven’t seen this before”. Or, “I feel like I’m the only person…” and I’m like…

LG: “Oh honey…”

GR: Honestly … (Laughing)

LG: “I’ve seen it all…”

GR: You know, I guarantee that I would have seen worse than what you think and , you know, so many people feel exactly the same way as you and thinking until you sort of start to explore that, you probably, don’t realize, okay, there is a way through it and quite often it’s just the starting point. The moment you actually, you know, book a consultation, or pick up the phone, you’re going to feel better about yourself and embrace that and ….

LG: Things will start moving…

GR: Exactly. Yeah… embrace the motivation to get going…

LG: Thank you so much again for sharing…

GR: Pleasure…

LG: Please go on and subscribe to this channel for more interviews and videos and thanks a lot for watching. Bye!