A Research Paper By Marija Rooz, Life Coach, GERMANY
The Power of Coaching in Decluttering and Home Organisation
I came into the field of coaching along an unusual and unexpected path. Having spent fifteen years in Sales & Marketing in the automotive industry I never thought I would find myself becoming a Professional Organiser, let alone a Coach! I was born to organise, I thought because, after all, I have been decluttering my space, my friends’ spaces, and organised my bosses and colleagues all my life, how hard could it be?
Early on in my business, I was hired by a lovely lady to help organise her office desk, which I thought at the time would be the easiest job in the world, done in three hours. She lived in a beautiful apartment which was packed. Stuff everywhere. It was not an extreme hoarding case, but it was bursting at the seams. My client was completely overwhelmed and didn’t know where to begin, but she felt determined to start. I could sense the shame as she was showing me around, it was heartbreaking. I gently smiled and told her that it was absolutely ok and that we would tackle it together. Her brief was to start with her office desk as that was a big enough challenge, yet small enough to manage and all she could afford. I knew I could somehow help her, but I had an agenda. To get her to declutter as much as possible so that I could leave her with a beautifully organised desk, a little oasis in all the chaos that would still surround her, but at least something that she could use as an anchor.
We started unpacking everything from the desk. As I was staring at tons of paper, decades-old stationery, and kids’ artwork (all the things I personally would have thrown out in a heartbeat), I remember pausing and I started to really listen. She had talked about losing all of her childhood memorabilia, and about her teenage son, who hated how packed the apartment was. I listened and suddenly my agenda had disappeared. She was not ready to part with many of her belongings just yet, so I continued gently to try and make the most of the session. The only important thing was to leave the space in a better shape than I found it. We chatted, we got rid of some items, and I gave advice (after all this is what we organisers are paid to do). Finally, we made it and it was a huge difference. Job done, I thought.
At the end of the three-hour session, she thanked me for not making her throw out anything she was not prepared to let go of, for listening, understanding and accepting what was important to her and for not judging her. I went home and started reflecting on the session. I realised that we had only put a band-aid on her real problem, and at that point, I knew there was so much more to decluttering. It was so much deeper than just the stuff.
This client changed my view on my entire profession. I cannot remember exactly how I got there in my thinking, but exactly five weeks later I was enrolled in the International Coach Academy learning to become a coach.
I’d thought I had everything in my organiser toolbox, a label maker and all sorts of practical gadgets, but having now gone through the coaching programme, I realised how I brought one crucial tool to the session that day. One that would later prove to be my superpower – empathy. I also realised that when I entered her apartment, I left another tool at the door – judgement. These two combined created a space of trust almost instantly. Letting someone in your home and showing them your most private spaces is one of the highest forms of trust one can show towards a person they don’t know. I am extremely aware of this fact and it is always an absolute honour to be invited into one’s home.
Decluttering and organising are two very different parts of the job of a Professional Organiser and it is my firm belief that decluttering starts from within, which is where COACHING comes into play. Therefore, my research paper focuses on exploring how coaching can help professional organisers achieve life-changing transformations with their clients, by tackling the mind before tackling the physical environment.
I will use a case study as a way to compare the Professional Organiser approach to a Coaching approach.
Caveat: Clients with hoarding disorders are not coachable and require therapy instead. This paper is focused on coachable clients and hoarding will therefore not be covered.
Coaching Theories and Frameworks Explored in This Paper:
- Creating trust
- Releasing judgement
- Underlying beliefs
- Values
- Gratitude
- Blended coaching
- Creating awareness
- Creating structures
- Systems thinking
Definitions & Concepts
Declutter – verb – remove unnecessary items from an untidy or overcrowded place.
Organise – verb – arrange systematically; order
The Importance of Decluttering and Organising
We tend to infuse our belongings with emotion, making them a part of ourselves or an extension of ourselves. Mia Danielle
Why do we hang on to our belongings? Hope for change, guilt or obligation, fear of a future need, past memories, uncontrolled consumer impulses/habits, over-attachment, poverty in childhood, indecision, grief, etc.
Clutter can have an impact on our cognition, behaviour, emotions, and relationships and it can cause: an inability to focus, stress, anxiety, lack of productivity, shame, sleep issues, health and safety (fire hazard, respiratory issues from dust), overeating and more.
Some effects of disorganisation and clutter in the home are:
- Time wasted having to move items around to accomplish a task
- Time wasted looking for things we cannot find
- Distraction – when we see clutter, our brains go into multitasking mode – which is the opposite of focus. A Princeton University study shows that visual reminders of disorganisation compete for our brain resources, preventing focus and limiting information processing power
- Procrastination – making us feel unaccomplished, guilty and overwhelmed
- Shame – resulting in lack of socialising at home
Case Study – Different Ways to Approach Decluttering
Sarah is a mom to two primary school boys. She works full-time and has a long commute. Her husband works full time too, and her parents and in-laws live hundreds of kilometres away. They have a dog and a cat. Sarah wakes up every morning at 5:30 to ensure the boys are ready and at school on time, the pets are fed and walked and she is presentable and energised to tackle the day and show up for her colleagues, customers and her bosses who are in a completely different time zone (meaning she needs to be available after her normal hours too).
Sarah’s house reflects her busy life. Laundry and toys are everywhere, the kitchen counters cannot be seen, because they are buried under piles of paperwork, takeout menus, bills, batteries, snacks, etc. Her office has not been used in years as it had somehow along the way transformed itself into a storage room.
Sarah is overwhelmed. When she finally arrives home, even after a long successful day at work, she is immediately reminded that she is failing at home. She trips over the shoes left in the entryway, orders a take-out and sits on the sofa because she has no energy to deal with the mess. Sarah is defeated and her underlying beliefs are that she would never be able to conquer the clutter, she is a messy person, her husband is messy and she may as well well give up (and have a glass of wine).
Research proved that decluttering our home goes way beyond visual aesthetics and even productivity. It is essential for our physical and mental health. Clutter causes stress… and it’s a vicious circle. When surrounded by clutter, cortisol – the stress hormone is released and the brain sets off the alarm signals which then affect our entire body in various ways (heartbeat, blood sugar levels…). The body’s stress response system is usually self-limiting. Once a perceived threat has passed, hormone levels return to normal. A chronically cluttered environment can lead to a constant low-grade fight or flight response, making us more prone to stress.
A Professional Organiser Approach
After months of frustration, arguments, shouting at the kids, and not inviting any guests over, Sarah and her husband finally get to the conclusion that they need help. They need a professional to come in and help them get rid of some of the toys, find a good solution to the shoe problem in the entryway and help them access their printer in the office.
A smiling and energetic professional organiser walks in with all her tools, bin bags and a label maker of course. She asks thoughtful questions about what the family would like to achieve and taps into her experience and skills to identify potential solutions. She starts in a certain area, gets everything off the shelves and onto the floor and then comes to the painful questions. “When was the last time you used this laminating machine?” “Do you really need 3 staplers, you have my permission to get rid of two of them.” This method can definitely work very well with clients that are completely ready and just need someone to hold their hand and provide ideas and moral support.
Sarah struggles to get rid of her belongings because as a child her family didn’t have the resources to buy much, so there’s guilt every time she considers throwing something out. She also lost her father a few years ago and is struggling to let go of his belongings. In the presence of a professional organiser, making decisions can feel easier at times and in most cases, clients do manage to declutter considerably and at the end of that session, it can indeed look and feel life-changing.
But what happens when the organiser and the discarded stuff are gone? Very often, the client somehow goes back to their usual ways within just weeks. The clutter starts to creep back in, the items are no longer in the baskets with the “correct” labels on them, and the drawers cannot close. Sometimes the newly established systems do work well and keep the clutter away, but that is not always the case.
Having an organiser can be a bit like hiring someone to write a CV and a cover letter without knowing what job you are applying for and why. This is when a more blended approach to working with a coach can be beneficial and organisers would benefit from having coaching skills to make a truly long-term impact.
A Coaching Approach
What would it look like if Sarah hired a coach before calling a professional organiser or even grabbing a bin bag herself? I am glad you ask because that is exactly what Sarah did.
Values
By exploring her values, Sarah was empowered to embrace this season of her life. Sarah’s top values are her family, her career and her local community. Through the discovery of what those meant to her, she was able to take action on designing her priorities, and her leisure time and began to see how the clutter was getting in the way. She visualised weekends that didn’t involve endless tidying that took away from the family. She was then able to pinpoint the exact areas in her home that she could slowly start to transform.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. – Henry David Thoreau
Gratitude
Gratitude is a magic tool that a coach can use with clients when it comes to decluttering. Marie Kondo, the queen of the industry, herself uses gratitude as the key ingredient for letting things go.
However, it is difficult to be grateful for everything you have when those very things cause you so overwhelmed. Through coaching, Sarah could learn to express her gratitude for the important aspects of her life which made it easier to identify the less significant ones and subsequently start parting with the clutter.
Our society puts emphasis on material possessions as a source of happiness but if we learn to appreciate what we have the need for more diminishes. – Kerry A Thomas
Gratitude also empowered Sarah to see decluttering as an opportunity to give back. When going through our belongings we will most certainly find items that we no longer need but someone else might. Sarah was able to identify an organisation that was close to her heart and in her mind, she could now link the donations to helping a cause rather than items she was about to lose. This was one of the breakthrough shifts during the coaching sessions.
When you love what you have you have everything you need.- Author unknown
Awareness
After several sessions, Sarah was able to visualise the life she wanted to create and how the belongings she owned fit into that life. Many of the items didn’t represent the life she was trying to create and she was eventually ready to part with items that supported old hobbies, clothes that she couldn’t fit or didn’t match her style. The breakthrough awareness came when she realised how clutter in her office des caused a lack of focus when getting tasks done. When she could finally see what in her environment was working for her, rather than against her she could stop adding and start subtracting.
The more things your own the more they own you – Chuck Palahniuk
Systems Thinking & Creating Structures
Systems thinking methodology helped Sarah get to the bottom of the patterns and beliefs that caused the chaos in the first place. Sarah went through eight coaching sessions before she shifted her mindset and gained clarity, to start decluttering her space in a way that would have a long-lasting impact. She still hired an organiser to help with the sheer volume of items and come up with practical storage solutions and systems for her entire family.
Coaching and Home Organisation
Coaching and Home Organisation go hand in hand because in most cases a well-balanced combination of both will yield the best results. The key ingredients required for creating trust with the client are empathy, releasing judgement and acknowledgement.
Most recent available statistics on clutter in the US show that:
- 54% of Americans said that they felt overwhelmed with clutter filling up their homes.
- The average amount of items in most American homes is approximately 300,000.
- In 2021, the market size of the home organising industry has reached approximately $11.4 billion, and it is expected to grow over the next few years at a rate of 4%.
The clutter problem is here to stay and organisers would benefit immensely from coaching education to be able to address the real problem rather than the symptoms. Needless to say, it would help tackle overconsumption that significantly impacts our climate as well, but I will leave that for another research paper.
Before you give someone the fish or even teach someone to fish (organising), help them explore how fishing aligns with their values, where their strengths lie, get them to see that they are a natural-born fisherman etc. (coaching). When these two practices are merged, a life-changing transformation can happen. And this is exactly what I choose to do every single day.
References
What Does Clutter Do to Your Brain and Body?
The Unbearable Heaviness of Clutter
Massive Psychological Effects of Clutter, According to Science
How Gratitude Helps With Decluttering
How Marie Kondo Uses Gratitude to Flip the Script on Decluttering
How Decluttering Makes You More Grateful
51 Home Organizing Statistics: How Cluttered Is the Average House?
Why People Hold Onto Stuff - Confessions of a Professional Organizer.