The Secrets of Professional Organisers with Kirsty Farrugia
"Life’s messy, humans are messy. And that’s my job, to actually sit in the mess with them. To be OK with their mess, to be OK with them, and to help them see that it is possible to move forward."-- Kirsty Farrugia
I have a confession to make. I've always had a bit of a complex about professional organisers, assuming that their super-human organisational skills would put me and my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants personality to shame. They'd highlight my failure to stick to routines and systems, revealing the fact that I was making it all up as I went along.Over the past few years I've found my own way of making things work - simplifying, establishing rhythms, reprioritising and recalibrating what 'enough' looked like - but I still held on to this notion that professional organisers were going to make me feel inadequate and not quite organised enough.That is, at least, until I met my guest today. Kirsty Farrugia is the founder of Feels Like Home professional organising, co-host of the podcast The Art of Decluttering, and she's gracious and warm and kind - the perfect companion to accompany people on the vulnerable work of enlisting a professional organiser. In other words, she is perfect for her job!This conversation really does put to bed a few misconceptions I had about professional organisers, as Kirsty really radiates both grace and vulnerability when talking about her job, and the full spectrum of relationships between stuff and people that she deals with in her daily work.We talk about the misconception of decluttering being the solution to every problem, when really it’s often just the first step in a long process of creating change in your life. Kirsty also talks about how she gets started with her clients, and the questions she invites them to ask as they sit in the mess and start to deal with it. Just like I often talk about the importance of knowing your ‘why’, when it comes to decluttering, having a vision for your home and your life in it makes the process much easier.Wonderfully, and much to my barely-disguised relief, Kirsty reveals that she is in fact not a naturally organised person and that it was only after she married an “uber-organised” man that she started to change her ways. This means that she can really connect and empathise with her clients, as she too has felt overwhelmed in her own home and has done the hard work to make changes. She talks about the idea of grace, and of the benefits of letting go and giving yourself permission to live the life you want to live, not a life dictated by the things around you. It’s a big, honest, vulnerable chat that definitely peels back a couple of onion layers around decluttering and professional organising, and I owe a big thanks to Kirsty for sharing so openly.Excitingly, we also announce the first Slow Experiment of 2018 and I'd love to encourage you to join in. You can find out more about why we're spending 60 minutes a day in nature by heading over here, and be sure to listen to next week's episode when we kick things off.Enjoy!
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Things to Check Out After Today’s Episode:
- Feels Like Home
- The Art of Decluttering podcast
- Connect with Kirsty: Facebook | Twitter | IG
- Join in for the next Slow Experiment - Get Outside and in to Nature. Download your free Nature Scavenger Hunt checklist here.