A place for everything
Woman helps people conquer fears, say goodbye to their stuff
L.E. BASKOW / TRIBUNE PHOTO
Ellen Damaschino (right), a certified professional organizer, works with client Francine Staczek to reorganize and eliminate the clutter in her daughter’s room as videographer Judd Girard films for Damaschino’s segment on “Better,” a nationally syndicated television program.
One thing’s for sure — people fear getting rid of paper. “They’re scared of it,” Ellen Damaschino says. “‘The IRS may come after me,’ they say. Like they’re making the IRS into the Grim Reaper. ‘I don’t know if I’m going to need this. I’ll just stick it over here.’”
A certified professional organizer like Damaschino can diagnose such behavior as “deferred decision making.”
Information junkies, on the other hand, fear that getting rid of the paper is letting go of the information, which is really still in their heads. Ask yourself: Am I the keeper of this information? Can I find it somewhere else?
Damaschino’s business is Neat, which provides order and organization to small and home businesses as well as residential clients, primarily in the management of time and paper.
“I find that most organization problems stem from time management issues,” she says.
Born with a logical mind, Damaschino’s passion for problem solving largely went untapped in the years she toiled as a pastry chef and restaurant server. When a friend asked for help organizing a home office, she discovered she had a talent for this kind thing.
Six years ago she started her business, joined the National Association of Professional Organizers, took courses and became accredited.
“We’re trying to make it a legitimate profession, so you just can’t go on Craigslist and call yourself a professional organizer,” she says. “Our profession is to help people focus on the possessions that have meaning. That’s what people ultimately hire me to do — get through the crud in their house to what’s meaningful to them. ”
The process begins with clients articulating their hopes and dreams for their spaces. Then, Damaschino — a third eye with no emotional attachment to the stuff — offers organizing ideas and gives permission to get rid of things.
“Remember you said you wanted this space for your craft room?” she says to a client. “Until we get rid of the 20 years of Gourmet magazine that you’ve been collecting, it cannot be a craft room.”
Being organized isn’t about having a perfect space, she says. “It’s about finding what you need in five minutes or less. It’s being able to live the life that you want, not being stressed by the things that you have.”
Initially, most people think stuff has meaning, and by the time they realize it doesn’t, they’re overwhelmed by it. “They don’t want to deal with it because it reminds them of all the bad decisions they made,” Damaschino says, “the failures of their lives.”
Throw away the pizza coupon
The organizing profession has grown rapidly in the last few years, but still hasn’t kept pace with the accumulation in people’s attics, closets, garages and basements. We buy too much, consume too much, keep too much.
The answer, Damaschino says, is to deal with less stuff. Have a place for everything and consciously consider what you’re bringing into your home and work environment.
Do you hesitate to throw away the pizza coupon you just got in the mail? If you’re not planning to order in a pizza this week, throw it away.
“I cannot tell you how many Bed Bath & Beyond coupons I find in people’s houses,” Damaschino says. “Have a system for dealing with the mail. Bring it in and sort it immediately. Some people can’t, they don’t like to process it. Fine. Put it in a basket, and once a week you go through it. But you either recycle it, shred it or keep it because you’re going to do something with it.”
Bills, correspondence you plan to answer and reminders to make dental appointments will account for about a quarter of your mail, she says. The rest can be thrown away.
Many people are awash in clutter, either because the thing they cannot get rid of has memory attached to it or because “I might need it someday.”
“When you’re living for the future or the past … you are not living in the present,” Demaschino says.
There are many reasons people collect, she says. From the time of cave dwellers through farm life on the prairie, people collected and hoarded to get through the winter. Amassing objects equals wealth; I have things, therefore I have value.
Damaschino is funny, like “30 Rock’s” Tina Fey is funny. She’s also a television personality in her own right, having appeared locally on KPTV for over four years and now on a nationally syndicated television show called “Better,” where she is the go-to person on organizing. Humor brings levity to four-hour sessions of going through people’s possessions and helping them discard.
“Are you kidding me?” is for when a client is holding onto size 6 jeans for the day she will fit into them again, she says.
“I’m like ‘are you kidding me?’” Damaschino says. “‘They’re stonewashed from the ‘80s! You’re going to wear 20-year-old clothing when you get to a size 6?
“The only size you should have in your closet is the size that you are wearing.”
Clients come in catagories
Damaschino charges $75 per hour and while that may sound expensive, she provides a kind of therapy.
“I’ve seen it all,” she tells clients. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not here to judge. I’m here to help you.”
Clients begin to fall into categories, she says, like the mom with the three kids in the big house, supposedly living the perfect life who is totally depressed. The disorganization in her case is a symptom of something else.
“So many times we get down to the divorce, the death of a child, the murder of somebody in their family,” Damaschino says. “They’re not dealing with that issue. They’re just satisfying themselves by collecting.
“I worked with a woman who, first time I met with her, she started to cry. She had kept a basement full of bins of all of her old teaching stuff from when she was a teacher. She’s home with the kids, her husband has a high-paying job, she’s no longer a teacher. And she couldn’t get rid of that stuff.
“I said, ‘You can’t get rid of this, because if you do, you don’t exist. You have no meaning anymore. This was your life. This was where you found value.’”
Many clients are what professional organizers call CD, or chronically disorganized. For whatever reason they cannot wrap their brain around staying organized and are often on a maintenance program.
The rest of her clients are the situationally or transitionally disorganized with systems that have not kept up with getting married, quitting work, downsizing or other situational changes.
“They say things like ‘I used to be so organized and then I had my third child and the world fell apart,’” Damaschino says. “They just got overwhelmed.”
Damaschino has resources for getting rid of things, from taking good used women’s cloths to Dress For Success to donating art materials to local schools. Donating to a charity makes people feel better about getting rid of things, she says.
Much of what she does is just bringing to light what people would do automatically if they were not hampered by fears.
“People have drawers full of travel information or home and garden ideas,” Damaschino says. “I’ll say, ‘And right now, if you won $10,000 to go on a trip anywhere, what would you do?’ and they answer, ‘I’d go online.’ Right. What’s your natural instinct? Would you go to your drawer full of 20-year-old outdated travel information?”
randallbarton@portlandtribune.com