4 Signs You Need to Hire a Professional Organizer

Dry January is perhaps the most popular trend to start the new year, but might I suggest Organized January? If you’re still packing up your holiday decor, or simply want to declutter your home, this is the resolution for you—plus, it doesn’t require signing up for an expensive gym membership you’ll eventually cancel or taking a break from your favorite glass of wine.

Cleaning out a closet or your pantry is one thing, but specific circumstances will require a professional team. Amanda Titchenal, founder of full-service organizing firm Well Organized, is sharing when it’s time to bring in an expert—or six.

2K Studio/Getty Images

1. It’s Too Overwhelming

More often than not, Titchenal finds that her clients are completely overwhelmed by the prospect of organizing their homes. 

“It usually reaches a point where you thought you could do one room, then one room turned to two, and it snowballs into a bigger project than you can handle on your own,” she says. “Our clients have so much stuff they literally can’t fit one more pair of anything in their closet or one more item of food in their pantry, have every color of dishware you could ever imagine, and they just want to keep it all.”

2. You Don’t Have Enough Time

Another major challenge for her clients is carving out the time needed to complete this project. Not only is her team experienced in organizing, but they offer more hands to get the job done. Most recently, she and her team helped a client who was downsizing and needed some items purged, packed up for their new home, and stowed away in a storage unit. In total, it required six of her team members and eight hours to tackle a 6,000-square-foot home. On average, she says these projects take about two to three days, or about 60 hours of combined work (divided among her staff).

“If you think about hiring a professional organizer, the amount of hours you get out of a team versus an individual is ten-fold,” she says. “If you’re at work all day, you have maybe two hours of free time per day, but if a team comes in with six people for four hours, that’s 24 man-hours in four hours, so it’s getting a lot of bang for your buck.”

brizmaker/Getty Images

3. You Recently Experienced a Major Life Event

Titchenal also typically meets with people who have gone through something that drastically changed their life—marriage, divorce, death, illness, purchasing or selling a home, or kids leaving the nest for college are just a few examples. 

“It’s put your life on pause, and created this overwhelming project that’s in front of you and difficult to wrap your mind around it,” she says. 

A move brings unexpected challenges, too, since it’s a much more daunting task than most people anticipate.  

“When people are moving, you think, ‘Oh, I’m going to pack up my whole house,’” she says. “When you start opening cabinets and closets, you realize there’s so much stuff you need to purge, or you want to start organizing as you’re packing, and it just becomes way too much for one person.”

4. You Need More Functionality in Your Space

Titchenal says clients may lose sight of the big picture, which is why they call in reinforcements. 

“You can organize here and there, but really getting the function of the whole house is just hard to conceptualize,” she says. “We make sure everything in your house has a home and a function, and that you always know where everything is.”