EXPERIENCE
At a career crossroads, Martha Hayes decided to do just that – training to become a professional organiser. But she finds the modern route to organisation is more about emotion than perfection
I am standing in my kitchen and can barely move for all the pans, baking trays, chopping boards, blenders, plates, bowls and mugs (so many mugs!) piling up around me.
There are things I rarely use, like ramekins (why do I have so many ramekins?), things I didn’t know I owned (a Himalayan salt block) and things that don’t even belong in a kitchen (screwdrivers). And that’s before I move on to food items, such as half-open packets of flour (why do they always leak?) and out-of-date spices. You get the picture; it’s total chaos.
I’ve spent the morning emptying everything (and I mean everything, from the kettle on the worktop to the dishwasher tablets under the sink) on to the floor and grouping it into categories.
Then, I’ll declutter and decide what to keep, before putting it back in an organised fashion. It’s arduous, relentless and exhausting. It’s also the most fun I’ve had in ages.
I know how ridiculous this might sound. Being ‘into’ organising isn’t sexy; it screams ‘control freak’. It’s Monica from Friends. It’s Sleeping With The Enemy. And yet I’ve always found it not only enjoyable but therapeutic. When I look back at the moments in my life that have shaped me – from the death of my father when I was 12 to losing my mother when I was 35 – I realise organising is something I’ve turned to in an effort to bring order to disorder; calm to confusion.
So when, during a period of career disillusionment and juggling freelance journalism with a toddler, I come across a 12-week course called ‘How To Become A Professional Organiser’ run by Dilly Carter, the professional organiser from the hit BBC series Sort Your Life Out (and founder of the company Declutter Dollies), a lightbulb goes off in my head. Could turning something I love into a side hustle – maybe even a whole new career – be the answer? All I know is, signing up for Carter’s hour-long weekly Zoom classes (alongside 21 others, ranging from beginners to small-business owners) is a no-brainer.
A decade ago, Japanese organising expert Marie Kondo burst on to the scene with bestselling book The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying (which went on to inspire the 2019 Netflix series Tidying Up With Marie Kondo), but professional organising is still a relatively unknown industry. I personally blame the phrase ‘tidying up’ for the lack of understanding of what organisation actually involves.
Today, the main players are Marie Kondo, Dilly Carter, and Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin, who have made waves Stateside with the o
