Having agreed to host the owner of a River Forest-based home organizing business for a chat about clutter management, I am expecting Amber Cussen of Amber’s Organizing to ring my doorbell at any moment. I’m sure she’s entered the date and time of our appointment into the appropriate field in her digital planner, and I can only assume her morning departure has not been delayed by a desperate scramble for matching socks or a working pen, so I know she’ll arrive promptly at 10 a.m. Already, I am bristling.
“There’s probably not a whole lot of real need for your service here,” I plan to say as she steps in with her clipboard and bright ideas. “This consultation is just for fun”a little light-hearted investigative journalism. I’ve managed to run this household just fine without professional help thus far. As you can see, it’s a pretty tight ship.”
OK, maybe not a ship, I think as I dash around madly in the five minutes I have left, cramming unopened mail into a drawer of expired coupons and clearing countertops with reckless abandon. It’s more like a rowboat, really. Only I can’t find the oars or the lifejackets. And when I try to free a snarled fishing line from the overstuffed tackle box, a Babe Winkelman spinner jumps out and hooks me in the lip. And I swear that first aid kit was around here somewhere …
A car pulls up in front of my house as I slide one Polly Pockets shoe, four maybe-dead AA batteries and 12 Bertoli’s pizza menus into the kitchen junk drawer. I decide it’s probably best to let the woman do her thing. There might be something in this for me after all.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way
Professional and sunny”and completely non-threatening”Cussen’s home-side manner puts me at ease right away, and I start coming clean. “This is the inbox,” I say, directing her attention to the surface of a five-foot-long buffet in my dining room. “It’s also the outbox and the in-between box”a major piling place. You get this kind of thing a lot?”
“Everyone has a hard time with paper,” she says. The average American household gets 15 pieces of mail with each delivery. Add to that an almost constant influx of materials from daily doings, and things can get pretty out of hand pretty fast. Cussen tells clients they can stay on top of the paper pile if they can commit five minutes a day to performing a quick sort. “To do, to file, to read, to pay and to decide/discuss,” she says. Have a spot or a receptacle for each of those five categories in a designated area of the home, and you’ll be off to a good start.
A good chunk of Cussen’s business”which has doubled its revenue since she left her investment management job last January to focus on it full time”involves the maintenance of paper, she says. As part of her service”whether it’s a home office rescue, an income tax preparation, or a back-to-school/back-to-organization kind of thing”Cussen will sit down with her clients and sift through it all piece by piece, until everything has a proper place.
Sounds good, I think. But who’s going to come over here and make sure I stay on top of it? In three days, I could be back to my old out-of-sight, out-of-mind, stuff-stashing ways.
Cussen, smiling at the inquiry because she gets it a lot, says her job entails a lot more than just straightening up and moving on. “I wear a lot of hats,” she says. “I’m a teacher, a trainer and in many ways, a therapist.” If people sincerely want to make positive changes in their lives, if they want to save time and money and be more productive, Cussen can help them set attainable goals and devise a system for success.
“Organization can be learned,” Cussen claims. It’s a skill, not a genetic predisposition. Most people just need a little motivation and encouragement.
Out with the old, in with the new
“I know your type,” I say to Cussen before leading her to one of my major household clutter hubs. “When you were little, your puzzles were never missing any pieces and your Barbies were always stored neatly in a wardrobe case wearing seasonally appropriate coordinating outfits, right?”
Yes, she admits, they were.
“Well mine were nudists and slept in oven mitts. Since most of their miniscule outfits had disappeared under the couch, clothes storage was never an issue. I turned their wardrobe into a hot tub for Ken. That should help you understand this,” I say, throwing open the doors of my back porch catch-all closet, where shoes, coats, hats, toys, craft materials, sporting equipment and small electronic devices cohabitate in chaos.
“Being organized means being able to find the things you need and have the things you love,” Cussen says. So purging and optimizing space are usually top priorities in a closet situation. Part of the job, she believes, is getting her clients to part ways with unnecessary stuff. Cussen says she’ll cart unwanted items right out of the house and off to a donation drop if someone wants her to.
“Most of us have so much more than we actually need,” she says. And most of us feel better after paring down. “But it’s tricky sometimes,” she admits. “People are vulnerable. They are apologizing. … They might be hanging onto a box of things that belonged to their dad, who just died. … You have to be sensitive.”
Cussen says sometimes she’ll recommend containers or gadgetry of one kind or another during a storage room overhaul, and she’s willing to either point clients in the right direction, shopping-wise, or do it all for them. “But I can also work with what people have,” she says. “It all depends on budget and need.”
Many hands make light work
After offering some genuinely helpful suggestions for reconfiguring the physical space of my closet catch-all to include easier access, shelving cubbies and a hanging rod, Cussen goes on to say that it’s also important for adults to involve kids in a home organization makeover.
She gets a lot of calls from parents wanting to get control of a family room, garage or basement”rooms where toys and unwieldy plastic things have risen up and taken over. A big part of managing clutter of this nature, Cussen says, is getting children in on the act.
They can put their backpacks on a designated hook when they come home from school, they can put their toys on the right shelves when guided by word or picture cues, and they can decide which things to give away, she claims. “It takes a little time up front, but parents should consider it a worthwhile investment.”
I want to ask her if she’s ever coached a surly 5-year-old through a major Matchbox car cleanup; the kind of mess that spans rooms and sprawls up staircases. And if she has, at what point does she think it’s OK for a mom to flip her wig because the child has opted to cooperate in slow motion, reluctantly tossing one car into the plastic bin per minute while whining? And if dinner guests were on their way over, at what point would it be OK for her to shove that kid out of the way and start scooping those suckers up herself?
But I decide to hold my tongue. I’m falling off the wagon before I’ve even gotten on.
Satisfaction in a job well done
As an active member of the Chicago chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers, “I’m always researching and reading books, looking for new ideas and solutions,” she says. “I have a lot of resources, and I use them.”
With 80 percent of her clientele residing in River Forest, Oak Park or Forest Park, Cussen has managed to establish a name for herself in the local home organizing game by networking and staying abreast of trends. She also conducts workshops on specific or general topics, offers a moving and garage sale service and hosts organization parties for teens and young girls.
One of the first to launch a business of this nature in the area, the former Northwestsider says she’s recently gained some competition, but free consultations, a personalized approach and an hourly rate at the low end of the industry spectrum have helped her maintain an edge.
Wondering how anyone could spend their days doing the tasks most people dread and dodge, I want to know if the job ever gets tedious. There has to be a point, while knee-deep in mind-numbing medical receipts, that she just wants to say, “You know what, this stuff’s not going anywhere … Let’s go snag some ice cream.”
But while admitting she enjoys her kitchen and closet overhauls slightly more than her file cabinet forays, Cussen says she derives great satisfaction from any hard day’s work. “Helping people enjoy their homes and creating productive living spaces is very rewarding,” she finds. “People feel better about themselves in the end, they’re energized, I love that.
