"When your environment is calm, you feel calm": what it's like to be a professional organiser

But it is often easier said than done as we accumulate more and more belongings while moving through different stages of our lives.

Guiding people through calming the chaos and returning order to their homes are professional organisers.

Lauren Stuart runs Restored Home Organising and aims to help families create organised and restored spaces so that they can focus on relaxing and spending quality time together.

As a child, the 30-year-old always loved rearranging her bedroom and helping her mom with home decor projects.

Over the years, her love of organising continued to grow and she enjoyed tidying spaces for friends and family.

“When I was a child, I always had a planner or a diary and I was always scheduling things. When we went on a family holiday, I would schedule all of the activities for us to do. I still do that today, our itinerary is always packed.

“I’m the person at the airport who has the folder with all of the documents,” says Lauren, who originally hails from Johannesburg and now lives in Telford with her husband, Andrew.

After graduating from university with a degree in microbiology and genetics, Lauren began her career working in a laboratory.

She later realised that the job wasn’t the right one for her – although she did enjoy tidying her lab space.

“It was very monotonous and not very exciting and I didn’t get much interaction with people. I didn’t feel it was very rewarding,” explains Lauren.

After some soul-searching, she decided to combine her love of organising with her desire to help others by becoming a professional organiser.

Lauren attended a training course run by the Association of Professional Declutterers and Organisers (APDO), a membership body which sets industry standards and provides professional development.

Her training covered everything from setting up a business to the different ways of helping people to sort through their belongings and guiding them through difficult decisions such as dealing with sentimental items.

The first step of her process is a free 30-minute online consultation where she can get an idea of a prospective client’s space and what they are hoping to achieve.

“This is informal and gives us a chance to get to know one another a bit. It also shows them that I am not going to be judgemental and that I’m not gong to make them feel bad. They can see I’m compassionate about them,” explains Lauren.

The consultation is followed by a space assessment where she gathers further information about how her client wants their space to look and feel like when it is functional and organised.

Lauren will then discuss the budget, timescale and the next steps of the process before putting together an organising plan of action.

“When people have a lot of clutter in their homes, they can be very overwhelmed and a lot of the time people don’t know where to start. I come in and make a plan to work from,” explains Lauren. Decluttering and organising sessions start with removing all of the items from a space and deciding whether they belong in the area or not.

Any broken or expired items are thrown out and items that don’t belong in the room are moved to a more suitable location. Items that are no longer wanted can be donated.

The remaining items are then sorted and organised into containers with labels according to the client’s wishes.

Labels ensure that every family member knows where each item belongs.

The most challenging items to sort through are those that hold a lot of memories or meaning for the owner because they can provoke different emotions, says Lauren.

“When dealing with sentimental items, I like to come up with creative ways to display items or use them so they’re not just sitting in a box,” she explains.

Lauren offers a free virtual follow-up session to evaluate how the organisation systems are working and if any adjustments need to be made. People can also book maintenance sessions to freshen up their spaces.

Lauren currently covers Telford and Shifnal for in-person sessions and also offers virtual organising sessions, guiding people through the process.

There are many benefits of creating a peaceful and tidy home including improving mental health and reducing stress.

“It benefits physical and mental wellbeing,” says Lauren. “We know clutter collects dust so when you tone down the clutter, there is less dust and it creates a healthier living environment.

“When your environment is calm, you feel calm. You can relax because you don’t have to think about what you should be sorting out because everything is in its place,” she adds.

See restoredhomeorganising.co.uk, call 07534925940 or email lauren.restored@gmail.com