How to Become a Professional Organizer

Video Transcript

"My name is Hester Lox. I am a Professional Organizer based in the San Francisco Bay area. How I got my first paid job is the identical story to how I got my first job that said to me you can do this for a living. An old friend of mine, actually an old boyfriend called me and said okay I'm ready to see my kitchen table. I haven't seen it in 16 years and you're just the person to help me and I want to pay you. In retrospect I think why he did that was so I would take this work seriously, I wouldn't just come and hang out and play and also that he would take it seriously or else his table would fill up very quickly again. I got paid by the hour and within a week I met in a totally different setting a woman who I was talking to casually who told me that she was a Professional Organizer. I was shocked and I realized I could do that. It is play for me and Peter was so delighted, I could delight a lot of other people and teach people also how to keep the systems going. That takes more work. That takes time and practice and experience but that is how I came into my first job and most Professional Organizers I know have come through close friends or family who ask them for help because they knew that they were good at some facet of this. Also it is not your stuff. Every one of us has our own emotional baggage with our stuff. I go into someone else's environment it is just stuff to me so I can be objective and that was what my friend, Peter, sensed also and asked me, he said I don't want to do my own organizing. I want you to help because I'll never get through this, I'm attached to this. He made a good choice. Again my name is Hester Lox and I am a Professional Organizer based in the San Francisco Bay area."