Session Two

On our second day working together, I asked my client how she was feeling about the work we had done, and what she'd like to work on next. She was inspired! So was I. We decided on a goal to straighten out her upstairs office, which had no floor space left. There were boxes and boxes of papers, machines, photos, cords, office supplies, and just stuff in general piled on top of each other in complete disarray all over the floor -- some of it in boxes, and some of it spilled out onto the floor. The desk tops were covered with stacks of papers and misc items. There were also boxes of papers and things in the hallway leading to the office room.

There was nowhere to start but right at the doorway. We prepared ourselves with a garbage bag for anything to be disposed of and empty records storage boxes for all of the papers and other items. I call this step in the organizing process PHASE ONE, where the goal is just to get "like items" into some kind of order so we know what we have and get control back over the floor space! Exactly what we accomplished in the basement during the last session.

We sorted all papers into boxes, EXCEPT for papers that needed action right away or that had to do with taxes -- those papers were put in separate boxes. My client has an extensive collection of books, and also equipment related to her field of expertise, so we brought up some shelving from downstairs (which had to be emptied off first and then cleaned) and put it in the upstairs office to hold her equipment. All of the books were stacked in a pile until we could get to the bookcase.

There was a closet crammed full of stuff, and we sorted through that in a general manner and brought a Phase One order to its interior. We will come back to that another day and fine tune it. Today the focus was on clearing the floor in that room. It took 6 hours, but we did it.