A Week in My Life as an Organiser

Introduction

In this week’s blog post, I want to showcase my week as a Professional Organiser and share my routines, tasks, and obligations.

Professional Organisers, or POs for short, come in all shapes and sizes; what I outline here is purely my way of doing things.

Organisers don’t operate as robots or follow an instruction manual.

I have changed names and anonymised any stories or situations below to keep my clients’ information confidential.

Monday

Mondays are admin days. I try to keep Mondays free of client work to carry out admin tasks. Unless they are very successful, most organisers work alone or in pairs. We do not have a finance department that processes our invoices, a marketing specialist that writes snazzy Facebook posts or a customer service team to deal with enquiries.

I start working at 8 AM after meditating, journaling, and drinking several cups of tea. I finish around 4 PM. In the summer, I often go for a walk after a day at my desk.

I work on my finances, process invoices, pay bills, and update spreadsheets.

I schedule social media posts and write new content for my blog and socials.

I ring clients and email those who need more in-depth responses.

I scan and tidy random paperwork and complete odd jobs that go with running a business.

Tuesday

Tuesday is a day for seeing a regular client.

I am flexible with start and end times to suit clients, but I try not to start before 10 AM to avoid rush hour. If my clients are based in Hackney, I walk to their houses to get some exercise and clear my mind so that I can entirely focus on the client once I arrive at their home.

Although most of my clients are disabled or older, they are all different, and each requires a unique way of working. I will give just two examples of regular clients.

I work with a woman in her late 70s who has lived in the same house for nearly 50 years and simply needs a guiding hand in decluttering and a stronger person to lift heavy boxes. We work quite focused for an hour and a half before taking a quick 15-minute tea break. We carry on for the second half. She fills several black bin bags and provides extra work for the refuse collectors.

I have another regular female client who suffers from ill mental health and has hoarding problems. The way we work together is entirely different to the first example. We go through stuff slowly; we take many tea breaks; I provide tissues and the occasional hug. In our time together, we slowly clear a small surface or half a box of random papers.

Wednesday

Wednesday is my day for networking, charity shop runs, and photo organising clients.

On my housing estate, I attend a coffee morning, where I get to know the locals and discuss my work as an organiser.

I attend other events that might be going on or distribute flyers in local shops. I generally use some of the day to network with relevant people in the area.

I take anything that needs to be recycled or donated to the appropriate places, such as the charity shop or the tip.

I spend the rest of my day working on photo organising, another string to my bone. I have written about photo organising elsewhere. But unlike house decluttering, photo organising often involves me taking someone’s photos away and editing, scanning or sorting them without the client needing to be there. We have a session at the beginning where we discuss their requirements and what they would like me to do, and I then go off and do it.

Thursday

Thursday is another day I work with regular clients. I work with clients in 3- or 6-hour stints.

When we do a full-day session, I either find a quiet park or café to go to for lunch or have food with clients. Some want to show off their cooking skills, and others want to take me to a café as I am often one of their few social contacts. Especially when they are older, I can help them with mobility and provide some much-needed ‘getting out of the house time’.

Friday

Friday is my irregular and one-off client day. On Fridays, I work with clients who wish to declutter when they are available timewise or have the money to hire me.

As stated above, many of my clients are on benefits or suffer from chronic illnesses and disabilities and need to work with their energy levels and finances and cannot work with me weekly.

I also work with an organisation called Home Sweet Home, which helps people higher up on the corporate ladder relocate abroad. I often work with Home Sweet Home clients as a one-off. I go to their homes and take away any items they don’t wish to take with them. I then try to find suitable new homes for them. Charity shops will take it if it’s clothing, books, or bric-a-brac. I try to donate to a cause close to the client’s heart.

If it’s electrical items, it requires a bit more effort to find a home. Olio, Freecycle and the British Heart Foundation are all good places to rehome electronics.

While Organising can be physically and mentally exhausting at times, one of the joys of being a Professional Organiser is that no week is the same. Different clients, different situations, and different services I provide each week.