During the last couple of days, I was helping Ms. A to get her office up and going. We started with removing all the boxes and junk from the small room, 9ft by 10ft.
Once the floor was clear, we vacuumed to make sure that nothing gets scratched as we play with the new layout. Her brand new L-Shaped desk will be the focal point of the room, facing the door. At the time, we were still waiting for the desk legs to arrive, so no desk in the picture.
On the same day, we took a trip to IKEA and picked out a bookcase to help organize all the books and binders. Ms. A also will have a filing cabinet underneath the desk for the papers and documents.
The next day was the day of assembly and going through the boxes. I will have to share my trusty tool set in another post, having those tools ready had sped up the job big time.
We worked until almost 10pm last night, as it was the last day we planned for the project.
Well, truth to be told, you never know how long a project would take: you may uncover a jammed 5 drawer filing cabinet full of documents buried underneath the moving boxes, or a 5 feet tall tool box that is spilling tools and needs to get organized. Either of those finds can set you back 4 to 5 hours.
You may decide the system you have will no longer work and here comes a trip to a furniture store: setback can be from 5 hours to a week, depending on delivery and assembly options.
We had planned to have Ms. A’s garage, baby room and office done in under 21 hours. The actual project time was 31 hours.
TIP#1: When moving, organize and purge before you pack. Keep the new place in mind.
TIP#2: Organizing a garage from scratch will probably take 2 full days, plan accordingly.
TIP#3: Plan for setbacks, do not start a large project the day before the in-laws are coming.
TIP#4: When hiring a Professional Organizer, keep in mind, accurate time estimate is not always possible as we don’t have the X-Ray vision.
