I received a question via the BOBW Patreon this morning that made me think: why haven’t I outsourced organizing/decluttering our home?
(She agrees with this but is also not excited about editing . . .)
I also have been thinking about outsourcing in general, because over winter break we didn’t really outsource anything. Our nanny got a lovely and well-deserved 17 day break, and therefore Josh and I were the only ones doing household tasks including cooking, straightening up, and laundry. I guess we did have the lawn service come once, but that was it.
I was able to reflect on the fact that I do in fact MISS doing some of these things on any given regular day. Okay FINE — not the laundry (though hey – we do about 1/6 the laundry of the other blogging Sarah — other Sarah, you are a laundry CHAMPION GRAND MASTER). But I actually do like cooking a lot (I do it on Sundays, but not often during the week) and generally being in charge of our space. That said, I *do not* have the time to do much of this with my current work schedule <– that applies to both my clinical work and my creative work, which together comprise a full time job without question.
And right now, I don’t want to make that trade off to cook more and work less; I’d RATHER spend my time doing these other things and it makes more sense financially as well, both long- and short-term.
ALL THAT SAID. . . I don’t really want to outsource decluttering my home. Part of it is that I don’t want to pay for it — yes, we COULD if we save less or take fewer trips. Truthfully though, money is finite (at least in most households, including ours!) and this is just not something I want to spend out on right now. But part of my hesitation is not entirely financially motivated because when I do the mental experiment of “but what if it were free?” I’m still not chomping at the bit to have others do this. I don’t think this is the patriarchy talking. I also don’t think it’s a “should” sort of thing. I just really REALLY want to touch every single item in our home and decide a) if it warrants placement in our home; b) where it should go if a = yes. (I recognize that for other people’s stuff, I can’t actually do this. But this IS my now-not-very-secret desire. Ha.)
The problem is that I am struggling to find the time (and energy) to actually spend time organizing and decluttering on a regular basis. It was thrilling (yes, that is the right word!) do go through the kids’ clothes and have A’s room entirely sorted through and organized. But that was possible because I wasn’t working (or driving kids to late-afternoon and evening activities). MAYBE my new year energy will stick around for months, making 2024 different? Only time will tell.
I did create my own room-by-room checklist to perhaps help me pace myself BUT since we did A’s room I’m feeling very pulled to do the other kids’ rooms too (for symmetry? fairness? who knows).
Have you ever outsourced organizing?
What do you NOT DO regularly that you maybe miss?
40 Comments
I do NOT outsource organizing (other than to say, my husband) because I actually love decluttering and tidying. It is a big mental health boost for me. Also, I am the eyes and ears of the household and really do have a good sense for what things we need/use/want vs. what can be donated or let go of in other ways.
For about 2 years we had someone clean our home every two weeks. I actually found it to be a hassle. Prepping the house before she came, making sure I was in my office downstairs the whole time, and then feeling VERY grumpy when five minutes after she was gone and the kids got home from school the floors would be dirty again. I didn’t MISS cleaning (I like tidying, I do not really like cleaning), but I am much happier now that I’m doing it again. I have pretty low cleanliness standards (I’m surprised Sarah Jedd has anything to do with me now that she knows how I do laundry), so it the house less clean? Yes! But I’m less stressed and I’m saving money.
You do not know how desperately I wish I could just pop over and declutter with you. Gah! When is teleporting going to be a thing?
No, I’ve never outsourced organizing. Like Elisabeth, we also don’t outsource any cleaning or anything else either. As you mentioned, money is finite and we spend plenty on other things. We have 4 able-bodied people in our household and we do not live in anything resembling a mansion, so this feels like an area that technically we should be able to handle. I also don’t love the idea of having to have the house ready to be cleaned and all of that on a certain day, etc…. Seems like that might stress me out a little! Though I can also see the appeal to just walking in to a fully cleaned house from top to bottom that I had no part in doing. 😉
Outsourcing declutterring has zero appeal to me either just because how can someone else know which of OUR things should be kept or gotten rid of?? Unfortunately for me I guess, I, like Elisabeth, feel like I’m generally the eyes and ears of the household too. If I had someone do it, I feel I would need to still go through it all anyway to determine what is supposed to stay or go… so I might as well just do it myself!
For you, could you just maybe identify like ONE thing to declutter each week? (Even if just like, a single drawer or bathroom cabinet!) Maybe do it each weekend? Keeping the bar really low, but still, after a year you’d have decluttered 52 things or spaces which is not too shabby! Maybe I should also take my own advice? 😜
yes I kind of like the weekly approach. Was trying a daily thing but I think the only day I am realistically going to declutter is Sat or more likely even sunday.
(As long as there is no soccer tournament. lol)
I love the “4 able-bodied people” approach! We’ve got 5 able-bodied people, but getting the 3 kids (2 of them are teens) to help out more (especially with cleaning!) is a chore in itself. And getting them to do a satisfactory (from parents’ viewpoint) job is an added pain in the butt. It’s an on-going challenge. Please share tips 🙂
We hired someone to come and clean 2.5 bathrooms and kitchen every other week. There is not much prep involved – we just move the toothbrushes and fruit storage boxes out of the way. If there is any mess that happens between the cleanings – that’s the responsibility of whoever makes the mess. The rest of the house gets cleaned semi-regularly, as-needed, by adults + kids (after some nagging) :).
Haha, well… I will not claim to be some expert! But we have had basically the same chore structure for our now 14 and 15 year olds for at least 5 years now. So they pretty much do them without a lot of complaint at this point. Their chores are to clean their rooms (dust, vacuum, straighten etc) every weekend. They each clean a bathroom every other weekend (alternating their bathroom and the guest bathroom). They alternate by month gathering all the garbage in the house on Wednesday nights and then taking out the trash and recycling to the curb. In the summer they alternate turns cutting the grass and they used to jointly clean out our van each week but we haven’t been as strict on that in the last couple years. My husband and I do the rest- kitchen, living room, sunroom, basement, our room, the cooking, other yard work, etc.
We check over the boys’ “job” when done and definitely sometimes have to send them back to redo things. When they were little we had stricter rules about like doing the chores before video games could be played etc but now that they’re older we’re more relaxed. Sometimes if they haven’t done them yet we’ll just say, “hey this needs to be done before you go to your friend’s at 5” or whatever. Starting around age 8 or 9 we started giving them $5/week allowance but not exactly directly tied to the chores. My 15 year old got a part time job at McDonald’s when he turned 14 and basically informed us that he didn’t need the allowance anymore 😅 so now only my newly turned 14 year old gets the allowance! But the 15 year old still has to help at home.
Over my dead body will my boys grow up and not now how to scrub a toilet!!! lol!! (Or be “that husband” who doesn’t help around the house or know how to do anything…).
Admittedly I don’t think I knew how to scrub a toilet until I had to do it (med school). We didn’t have cleaners; my mom or dad did it! I did have other jobs … babysitting, video store, camp counselor. But I didn’t really have lots of chores. I do agree about making sure boys esp know it’s not like “women’s work” or something!!
Exactly! And don’t feel bad for them… most weeks their “chores” only take them an hour or two at the very most. When you see how much time they spend playing video games and/or on their phones… trust me, they have plenty of time to help out a bit at home 😉
This is great! Saving it for myself for later! Thank you!
I’ve decided how much time I’m going to dedicate the decluttering. For me right now it’s 30 min/week, broken up however I want. Right now I’m focusing that on my disaster of an office, but will move to other areas when that’s good enough. This is my general approach to a lot of things – how much time am I willing to dedicate to this, and stopping when I reach that limit. Works for house, work tasks, etc.
We have a part-time nanny who fully devotes herself to household tasks before picking my kids up from school – I’ve toyed around with asking her to help with organizing/decluttering, but it’s never exactly the way I’d do it, so I end up doing it myself. What has been helpful though, is having her actually donate the items that I set aside. I have a bad habit of setting aside toys and then never donating them and the kids end up pulling them back out, so it’s really nice to have her actually get the stuff out of the house. I also had a lot of luck over the holidays with me doing a first sweep of the kids’ rooms and our basement, I threw away a lot of just trash and junk, and then I was very direct with our nanny and my kids in how I wanted things to be organized and which bins were for which toys. I find being ruthless about donating/throwing stuff away is where it’s hard to truly outsource (which makes sense, I don’t want our nanny randomly throwing stuff away!!) so this has been a great compromise to make some headway.
Seconding this: you do the de-cluttering, someone else does the getting-rid-of. I have a household helper twice a week and I have definitely had her run things to Goodwill or other donation centers, take bags to those clothing drop bins, etc. to get things out of the house once I have gone through them. I also found that if I do the de-cluttering, she can be let loose on a cabinet to do the organizing of what remains.
It’s not entirely outsourcing but it does help to streamline at least part of it!
@SHU – different people have different thresholds for ‘stuff.’ It sounds like yours is high! If having stuff around doesn’t actually cause you anxiety then there’s no rule that says you HAVE to declutter. Since you’ve talked about doing this for a while but keep having trouble doing it, maybe you don’t actually want/need to? Despite that it was thrilling when you did it?
I actually would like to outsource organizing and decluttering but I just don’t think it would work well for me. I still have to make a decision on whether on item stays or goes. My experience with other people organizing for me (e.g. the kitchen when we move) is that I cannot get the hang of someone else’s scheme.
Hi there. Don’t outsource organizing BUT our teen daughter was employed to help a family we are friends with help their 9 yo organize her room that was overflowing with toys/candy wrappers/clothes etc. Thought it was a super smart idea to employ the teen to help the younger kiddo. Will say:
-there will always be more to organize/clean up
-don’t think the benefit of having an organized/tidy house is pushed to men (last time I looked no container store adds in my husband’s cycling magazines…though many could use it with the amount of equipment cycling can require)
-maybe do 1 room/month (can do on the weekend/when you feel like it) but have a rotation of who helps?
-if you ever want to realize we all are struggling with organization, peak into any family minivan:)…most are rarely scary.
Good luck! Looking forward to seeing what you decide to do.
I have suggested A help G but honestly I think it’s too big a task for her! Maybe if we broke it down . .
“don’t think the benefit of having an organized/tidy house is pushed to men (last time I looked no container store adds in my husband’s cycling magazines…though many could use it with the amount of equipment cycling can require)” – true that I’ve rarely seen this on any male’s “goals list” . . . although I think Josh in theory is on board with doing the house WITH me including his ‘areas’
We outsource cleaning – 2 cleaners come for 1 hour per week (1000 square feet, so it’s fairly quick) but decluttering makes sense to do myself. We’re fairly minimalist, and don’t have complex organising needs so it just takes time. I’ve made a list of how I want each room to feel on my annual goals list, which includes a few decor things (artwork for the sitting room) and organisational things, and am working towards a feeling in the room. I need to do a proper kid sort, T took a look at the downstairs games/puzzles/bookshelf and made a pile of donations and I’d like him to do the same with his room. Right now, it feels more an issue of things being in weird spaces rather than needing got rid of though.
We do have a small attic which we aren’t using at all, so my goal for the year is to figure out how to use this space. More rarely used luggage, Christmas decorations, etc.
We don’t outsource anything else beyond wraparound care, I tend to do 80% of our cooking, my husband does dishes, we split laundry.
Ugh I am TERRIBLE at this. I got a giant contractor bag of donations from Minnie’s room and closet and another one from Dorothy’s room and closet and YOU CANNOT EVEN TELL. My new plan is inspired by another blogger, Maya. I am going to find several items of clutter a day/week/whenever I happen upon them and stash them in our basement storage. If a week or 2 passes and no one notices them, I’m going to donate them. We have a thrift store right across the street from Dorthy’s dance studio with a drive thru drop off, so this is SUPER EASY. (In theory). I am bad at The Big Purge, so maybe a bunch of little purges on the regular will be something I can handle???
Ooh for convenient drive thru drop off!! That sounds like it could really work!!
I have worked with a professional organizer. It was supper helpful but we did it together. Her biggest value adds were taking stuff to greendrop and having tons of ideas about HOW to organize things. She could look at the containers we had and figure out how to use them and decide when it made sense to get something new and then text me a link. All that said, my new professional organizer is my 13 yo daughter. All this week I have paid her to organize and declutter areas of our house. She does a great job and is quite a bit cheaper than the professional. She cannot drive to greendrop though…
I miss cooking. I would happily cook every day if there was time. I fantasize about the meals I will cook when my kids are grown and we can never have pasta for dinner again.
Yes to the cooking. My kids aren’t even that picky so I could make a lot. And I actually COULD technically cook time wise (I guess?) but there’s a kid at an activity almost every night so . . .
We have a cleaner every other week, but don’t really outsource any tasks beyond that. I’m fanatical about laundry/stain removal, so that is a nonstarter for me. I generally enjoy grocery shopping/meal planning/dinner prep, but next year when our youngest starts half-day preschool, I will probably outsource some degree of it to our nanny. A friend of a friend used to have a decluttering business, so we did get a pantry revamp a few years ago. I would love to hire someone to completely organize our playroom, but haven’t followed through on that one yet!
Interestingly, this post made me realize that some of the organizing I do is tied to being the one who is in the space doing the other tidying/cleaning. For example, I do 90% of the laundry in our house, so I often declutter clothes/weed out hand me downs while I’m putting away the laundry. (Hm…maybe this is why I procrastinate on putting away laundry!)
My strategy is that I try to pick one small decluttering/organizing area/project maybe every 2-4 weeks, and I write it in my planner for that week; e.g., last week, I had “go through J’s drawers” on my list. Also truly random, but I organize my bathroom/vanity/skincare quarterly on a Saturday or Sunday morning (just randomly, highly variable based on my kids’ sports schedules) – I will put on a face mask and a podcast and lock myself in there for a good hour. It doesn’t feel like work because I’m also doing something I really enjoy (face mask/podcast) and it’s also alone time (sometimes/always hard to come by with 3 kids)!
love the bathroom organizing thing bc you made such a nice ritual out of it! It does sound appealing!
Love the bathroom organization tip!
We don’t really outsource anything in our house. I wish we would hire a cleaner but my husband doesn’t want to – not because we can’t afford it but because he doesn’t want to pay someone to clean up our messes. So he does all of our cleaning.
I would not outsource organization. As others have said, it’s such a personal task and it’s one I don’t mind doing. Years ago I used to listen to a podcast about minimalism as they hosted a challenge where during the month of Feb, you got rid of a # of things pertaining to the date. So on 2/1, you got rid of 1 thing, 2/2 you get rid of 2, 2/3 you get rid of 3. And so on and so forth. At the end you would have gotten rid of 435 things (I don’t think it was a leap year, though). I think 300+ of the things I got rid of were books. Maybe you could attempt this sort of challenge since it’s such a structured project? And with kid stuff, you can probably come up with that many things fairly easily?
We tend to purge as we go but especially around holidays/birthdays when the kids get a bunch of gifts. We tell them they need to make room for their new gifts and they don’t fight us on it. We are due for a drop off at goodwill though as we have quite a bit to donate after Christmas.
This is me exactly. Decluttering has been on my goals list for years and never gets done. I follow the Minimal Mom (she’s relatable! Not scary!) and she talks all the time about how much decluttering improved her family life with 4 kids. I know it would help my family too, but its hard to prioritze it over actually spending time with my family! Like someone else suggested, for 2024 I created a list of 50 “spaces” in our home, most as small as a single drawer, and that is my goal this year. If I get thru that, 2025 will be the basement, ha!
We have cleaners come once a month. They are not as thorough as some of the other companies I interviewed, but that’s fine with me, it makes them a little cheaper. This means I mostly do spot cleaning around the house when things look dirty because I know once a month the nooks and crannies will be taken care of. I also appreciate that once a month I’m forced to clear all the paperwork from flat surfaces and toys/clothes from my kids floors. It’s a great motivator!
I’ve often considered outsourcing groceries but A)I can’t stand the amount of plastic bags that are used and B)I’m a pretty strict recipe follower and don’t do well with substitutions when I’m missing an ingredient. So for now I make a bi-weekly trip to Aldi (smaller, cheaper and less options/decisions).
I think it’s hard (and perhaps impossible) to outsource decluttering because the heart of decluttering is a personal value judgment about what is or is not worth keeping around. Maybe you can hire someone to sit alongside you and do it with you (or to take the lead on decluttering obvious trash like broken items or junk mail but that will still leave a lot of things that need individual judgment calls), but I don’t see how you can’t be deeply involved. It’s easier to outsource organizing once things have been decluttered, but even that I don’t think can be complete. I am a naturally and freakishly organized person. I just “see” how things can be organized in an optimal and easy to maintain way. For people who aren’t like that, bringing someone in to help them sort those things out can be helpful, but it’s easy to create something that may not be maintainable by someone who isn’t naturally inclined towards organization. I’d only want to work with someone who understoood that organizing requires you to recognize what you’re actually willing to maintain and understood multiple ways or organizing the same thing so that they can tailor a system that’s appropriate for the person and their proclivities. As a very organized person who has very strong feelings on how things should be done, I could probably outsource the implementation of my clear ideas of how I want things to be set up. Given that implementation is often the sticking point, that could actually be super helpful to outsource. If I were in your shoes, I’d be asking my nanny to help with some of the implementation if it was a strength of theirs.
But also, decluttering and organizing are ongoing processes that never ends. I swear cleaning out my basement winds up on my annual goals list every 2-3 years. This year, given the home renovations we have planned, I’ve added thoroughly decluttering one room per month this year. I have a dedicated space in the basement for items we’ve decided need to be donated or recycled. Things can linger there forever but it doesn’t bother me as much because that’s where they’re supposed to be. But I really need to load those things in my car whenever I fill up a bag so I can drop them off when I’m passing by a thrift store.
I also like to declutter myself, although my husband is good at organizing after we’ve decluttered. I have a system where I divide my home into 12 zones (including my work office) and I assign each zone a month of the year. Each weekend, I spend one-two hours decluttering, deep cleaning, organizing, and decorating the monthly zone (including fixing or buying / replacing things we need). My zones are sort of seasonal (for example I do the garage in May). I would love to do a big spring and fall clean each year but I don’t have the time / energy to do it all in one go. But the zone cleaning thing ensures each area of the home is getting focused attention at least once a year.
I love this idea. Thanks for sharing!
I’ve never outsourced organizing and decluttering because I want things where I want them lol. The harder part for me is after de-cluttering to make sure we don’t bring more stuff in because we just get right back where we started. We do have a cleaner who comes in once a month to do the kitchen and bathroom, as well as dust and mop the dining and living rooms, which I consider well worth it. And I like the once a month time of making sure everything is picked up.
hi Shu! Once upon a time, I dreamed of being a professional organizer. So I contacted a local professional organizer and offered my services for free, just to see if I’d like it. What a wake-up call. I learned from this very seasoned, successful organizer that your main job is to prioritize the organizing time, but the client has to do the work. You simply can’t declutter if you don’t know what they care about. Once it’s been culled down, sure, you can organize what’s left, but the nitty-gritty is mainly sitting with someone and making the time for them to make the decision to keep or throw things away. If they are paying you, they should feel more compelled to do the work. So I think your hesitation with outsourcing is well-placed.
Also, even though I love decluttering, with kids, the wrong approach can backfire. I have a daughter who hoards ridiculous stuff. If I throw anything away, she’s resentful, and then hides more things. So instead, we dedicate a time to look through her over-stuffed bedside table, and I don’t judge- I just ask what she’s keeping, donating, or throwing away, and I offer her a fun reward for getting through the exercise. My constraint is only that it has to fit back in the space we’ve dedicated for her things. That could be something you could outsource with your nanny, but it should be with G sitting right beside her, or it’s not really going to have any long-term benefits. All hope is not lost, though! I declutter with all my kids, and my oldest now naturally does it on her own. She has seen how good it feels to have a decluttered closet and space to enjoy the things she really likes. Don’t lose heart!
(sorry if this reposts- my post didn’t show the first time to me)
hi Shu! Once upon a time, I dreamed of being a professional organizer. So I contacted a local professional organizer and offered my services for free, just to see if I’d like it. What a wake-up call. I learned from this very seasoned, successful organizer that your main job is to prioritize the organizing time, but the client has to do the work. You simply can’t declutter if you don’t know what they care about. Once it’s been culled down, sure, you can organize what’s left, but the nitty-gritty is mainly sitting with someone and making the time for them to make the decision to keep or throw things away. If they are paying you, they should feel more compelled to do the work. So I think your hesitation with outsourcing is well-placed.
Also, even though I love decluttering, with kids, the wrong approach can backfire. I have a daughter who hoards ridiculous stuff. If I throw anything away, she’s resentful, and then hides more things. So instead, we dedicate a time to look through her over-stuffed bedside table, and I don’t judge- I just ask what she’s keeping, donating, or throwing away, and I offer her a fun reward for getting through the exercise. My constraint is only that it has to fit back in the space we’ve dedicated for her things. That could be something you could outsource with your nanny, but it should be with G sitting right beside her, or it’s not really going to have any long-term benefits. All hope is not lost, though! I declutter with all my kids, and my oldest now naturally does it on her own. She has seen how good it feels to have a decluttered closet and space to enjoy the things she really likes. Don’t lose heart!
I’ve worked with professional organizers. They don’t just go through and decide what to throw away! Rather, they go through the process with you, as a trusted partner. Help you decide what to keep, work with you to determine your organizational systems, help you maintain the organizational system you already have, and they do the lingering follow up of THINGS for you. They will take the trash to the dump, donations to good will, hygienic supplies to the shelter, baby clothes to your sister. They take the six shirts that need dry cleaned to the cleaners, then pick them up and hang them in your closet on the rack you’ve identified as being for shirts.
It’s not a forever gig – definitely project based – but in a situation like yours, where you are coming off a lot of transition, I could see it being useful as you lean into your emergent job/big kid/new house life. You could even touch/assess every thing, though many Professional Organizers have a process of their own and you may find relief giving them control there (or not!)
I don’t know if a professional organizer is the right call for you, just wanted to make sure you understand that outsourcing here would be more of a partnership and not just letting someone in to throw out everything you care about and put the rest where you can’t find it 🙂
The only thing we currently outsource is cleaning that occurs every other week. We started this recently and I cannot now imagine life without it already.
I love the idea of hiring a professional organizer to help organizer the entire house once. But the cost is the limiting factor. I just cant justify paying that price for now. That may change in the future. I wish there were organizing services which I could hire an hour so so every weekend where they tackle one area, that way it wouldn’t feel like a huge upfront cost but I don’t know of any such services!
My parents had 40 years of outgrown, worn out, out of style clothing that they had kept out of guilt, hope they would once again be a size (insert any size between 8 and 20 here) again, hoarding tendencies. They hired their friend’s 15 yo daughter to declutter it for them and it helped tremendously. I don’t get the feeling that your situation is so dire, so probably not necessary for you, but I wanted to provide an example of a situation where it worked well. They would never have gotten rid of that stuff on their own, and no way in hell would they have let me help them do it.
I don’t outsource much currently and it is painful. Things on my story list to outsource as soon as possible include: after school childcare (current situation isn’t working out and school program didn’t have openings, so won’t be this school year) and driving. My husband recently learned he is no longer able to drive so I’m trying to figure out how to lighten my load here. (I need to put the work into finding a solution here so any delay is my own fault)
I’m so sorry about your husband 🙁 That sounds incredibly challenging. Thinking of you!! And you mention fault but when dealing with hard things no blame is needed!!!!
True. I’m trying focus on reframing my mindset and figure out ways other household tasks can be shifted to him
I kind of love organizing and decluttering, although last year I made a long-distance move and by the time it was done, I was both a master of decluttering and also never wanted to do it again. Now in my new house I am VERY aware of new things being brought into the house. It was almost a “burn the house down, start again” mentality. So what I’m saying is no, I wouldn’t outsource organizing. I don’t know what household job I would outsource if I could. My husband vacuums, if he didn’t I guess I might outsource that (years of relying on Roombas, that was my MO before my husband retired).
I LOVE decluttering and organising so I’d never outsource it but people do hire me to give them guidance and tips. I would say, Sarah, that you should make the “plan” and then, depending on the size of the task, tackle 1 – 3 every weekend. I work very full-time and that’s when I do my own decluttering. Someone asked on my IG once why I am always organising if I’m an OrganisingQueen and I said, “because 3 other people live here with me and we have a cleaner” so things get moved around, messed up a lot. I do like Elisabeth’s comment that I am also the eyes and ears so i know what needs to leave, be replaced, etc.
Thank you Marcia and love hearing from you!!