You can learn to tidy

Sometimes a few handy tips and tricks are enough to start that cleanup effort or keep your house tidy. If you really can’t see the wood for the trees, you can call in a professional organizer. Their job is to bring order to your chaos.

Add structure
Jop Hammer is a professional organizer. She advises and provides concrete help with furnishing and tidying up living and working spaces and supports you in organizing your time efficiently and using your energy optimally.

“There can be many reasons why you need some help”, Jop knows. “The elderly often ask me to help when they have to move from a bigger to a smaller house. While people with busy jobs and a busy social life don’t have the time to clean their house.”

“I’m not a maid and don’t take a key to clean up when you’re not there yourself. It doesn’t work that way. I’ll help and roll up my sleeves, but you really have to do the cleaning yourself. I help you to structure.”

Start in the bedroom
This structure is very important when tidying up as well as keeping things tidy. Jop therefore advises to start in one place and work through the house slowly.

“Don’t tackle everything at the same time, that won’t work. If someone asks me to clean up a house, I start in the bedroom, for example. First we look for a place together where we can put things down and sort them.”

“There will be separate bins for things that can go away, go to recycling, need to be stored or that you are not sure about yet. We then empty the room completely, clean it and redecorate it. This is how we work all rooms off.”
Starting to clean up is the hardest step, because everything is worth keeping. However?

Tips to get started

• Start small and manageable and don’t do too much at once.
• Give things a permanent place: car keys in a container on the closet, coats on the coat rack, newspapers in a pile and shoes in the closet. When you teach yourself that, that clean-up routine will creep in on its own.
• Start in one room. Pack a trash bag for what can go and a bin for what to give away. Walk through the room and sort your stuff by ‘way’ or ‘reuse’ only. That already hurts a lot.
• Open envelopes and pile up paperwork, mail, bills, newspapers and magazines. Label the stacks: important, pay, can go, completed or clear. Finish stack by stack. Get used to doing your paperwork for half an hour each week.
• Lots of advertising brochures? Put a ‘yes/no’ sticker on your letterbox.

Wardrobe tips

• Do not store clothes indefinitely. It will probably come into fashion again, but then the details are slightly different.
• Have you not worn something for two years? Then the chances are very small that you will ever do that again. Take it to the thrift store.
• Organize your closet. Use bins and baskets for socks and underwear.
• Clothes really broken or discolored? Get rid of it.
• Store summer clothes in winter and vice versa.
• Dispose of washed clothes immediately.
• Do not throw worn clothes on the floor or over a chair, but directly in the laundry basket or washing machine.

Professional organizers are also there for people with a Personal Budget (PGB), who need structure in their daily lives and need help with cleaning up their house or administration.