Clutter & Whine
an excerpt

Chapter 1: Razz to the Rescue

Call it a weird super-power. Call it a gift. Call it a bizarre desire for symmetry and clean lines. Call it a manifestation of my mild-mannered father’s not-so-secret though undiagnosed Obsessive Compulsive traits. Whatever it is, I have always had a type of x-ray, or rather display vision, the ability to look through a cluttered room to see what a room could be – what would be possible if someone added a little side-table here or an umbrella stand there or a trio of books placed on the mantle just so.
Some people fall into their careers accidentally. Not me. I’d gone to a private Liberal Art’s college, graduated Phi Beta Kappa, very deliberately chosen to go to Graduate School to become a high school English teacher, and I taught for 10 years. And then, overnight, accidentally, I somehow slipped into a career as a Professional Organizer.
My first client was a freebie. Six months after the for sale sign went up, my best friend Betsy's house was still on the market. She and her husband were preparing for yet another open house, their third. The house was adorable on the outside, a cute little yellow colonial with lots of windows and a sloped roof. There were fragrant, wide mouthed tulips along the walk. The interior, however, was something else altogether.
At one point, her realtor chastised her by giving her some kind of lecture telling her house would never sell, let alone get top dollar, if she didn’t do something about the clutter.
Betsy furrowed her brow and nodded her head in agreement.
“Yes, yes, I must do something about the clutter. No problem. Thank you so much for coming, I’ll get right on that.”
The moment the realtor left, Betsy was in tears.
“I have no idea what this woman wants me to do!”
I scanned the kitchen and quickly noted refrigerator magnets and unopened piles of mail, baskets brimming with fading catalogues and lots and lots of tschotches. Closets were jam-packed with unfolded clothes. There was too much artwork, most of which was hanging crookedly and every horizontal surface had something on it.
“She means that you need to get rid of as many traces of your living here as possible so that people can imagine their things in this space instead of being distracted by yours.”
Betsy looked at me, her eyes open wide with fear.
“I don’t know how to do that,” she said.
And suddenly I was born into a wonderful and unplanned career where, in one single moment, I morphed from High School English teacher into Professional Organizer. It was the conception of a wonderful unplanned career where, from a single act, I broke out of my teaching chrysalis and spread my wings as a Professional Organizer.