None of It Makes the After Picture

You've seen the after picture. The pantry with the matching bins, the labels all facing the same way, every category in its own zone.

I love a good after picture. We take a lot of them. :)

But I've been doing this for seven years now, and while the after picture is truly great, it is those in-the-middle pictures and moments we share during our day. The after picture just doesn’t show the full story. It skips the middle.

They skip the hours where everything is on the floor, and the room looks worse than when we walked in.

So here's what a professional organizer actually does in between. The parts nobody photographs.

Sorting Into Every Category We Can Think Of

Before a single thing goes into a bin, it all comes out. Then we sort.

On a recent job, that meant every hair accessory in the house laid out on the carpet and grouped by type, then by occasion, then by color. Flower crowns together. The rhinestone ones together. The BIRTHDAY headband somewhere findable the night before instead of the morning of.

It sounds like a lot, but it is the reason a kid can find what she wants without tipping a drawer onto the floor.

Peeling the Store Label Off Every Bin

Every bin arrives with a barcode and a store sticker on it. Every one of them comes off before it goes in your house.

Then it gets a label that says what's actually in it. SUGAR. SPICES. Whatever your family calls that shelf, not whatever the manufacturer printed. They come off in a pile and end up stuck to whoever's nearest the floor, which is how that photo happened. Nobody staged that.

And the label isn't really for you. It's for your husband, your teenager, your mother-in-law putting the groceries away at Christmas.

The label is the instruction, and it's the main reason a space is still working six months later.

Leaving the Note Instead of Making the Call

We find things. Spices well past their date. A stack of lids with no containers left to match. Every kitchen has both, mine included.

We don't throw them out. We leave a note, and you decide later when you've got a minute. It takes thirty seconds longer, and it matters more than almost anything else we do. Your home, your call. We guide, we ask, we make suggestions.

But the decisions aren't ours to make about somebody else's house.

Taking the Donations With Us When We Go

At the end of it, the donation bags go in our cars and leave with us. You don't drop them off. They don't sit in the garage until February. The same goes for any bins we brought that turned out to be wrong for the space. Those come back with us too. You don't end up owning six containers you never asked for.

None of this makes the after picture.

The after picture is lovely, and it's a sliver of what we do! The rest is sorting on a floor, peeling stickers, writing notes, and carrying bags out to a car. Take a look for yourself!

So if you're in Bismarck, Mandan, Fargo, West Fargo, or Moorhead, and you've been looking at those photos thinking you'd like your house to feel like that, the feeling doesn't come from the bins. It comes from the part nobody photographs.

Whenever you're ready, we'd love to help.

Cheers,
Lexi