Dreading that move? Let home organizers help

When Erin Sousa and her family moved last May, they had help — not just from a moving company but from a home organizer as well.

“I just let them take the reins, and when they needed to, they would ask: What do you think of this, or do you want to keep this? Do you actually use this? How often do you use this? And they kind of drove the process that way,” Sousa said.

Home organizers have been helping people move for well over a decade. Homeowners and renters use their services not just to help unpack and organize at the end of the move but to pack and organize for the move as well. The only reason that Sousa didn’t hire the company to help organize and pack before the move, she says, is that she didn’t think of it.

She used Neat Method Vancouver. Neat is one of several local companies, including Vancouver in the Box, Cut the Clutter, and Harmony Home Organizing, that provide the service.

“When I first started, it was more about doing one space at a time in an already established home,” said Sarah Gerber. Gerber founded the Vancouver franchise of the American company Neat Method, established in 2010, five years ago.?

“But now that people know this service exists, we’re working with clients through the whole process of preparing for and after a move, to help them get rid of things they don’t want to take to their new house and to alleviate the stress of packing and all of the logistics of an actual move-in day. And then we take care of them on the other end, when they’re in that new space.”

Home organizers are often called upon to help with more than A-to-B moves.

“Maybe a new baby is coming, and the parents are looking to set up a nursery and they need help making space,” Gerber said. “During the pandemic we saw a lot of people working from home, and so they were trying to set up home offices and reclaim some of their home space. Also, we are called sometimes when there’s been a death in the family, or a parent is moving into the home, or there’s been a divorce or kids moving off to college or if a child is diagnosed with special needs and they need a new system set up. All of those life transitions really affect families and affects their home.”

“The biggest trend we see this year is about clients trying to be creative and save money on their living space,” said Limor Friedman, founder of Vancouver in the Box.

“There are some people who have retired and are renting a room in their home — that requires adjusting the amount of belongings and forces them to downsize. Others who are downsizing rent a room with a roommate because they can’t afford a full private apartment by themselves. Or people will sell a large home and rent a smaller place in Vancouver for six months and leave for Mexico for another six. Placing their belongings in storage is cheaper than the cost of living in Vancouver.”

Sousa, marketing and brand director of Sousa Creative Co., was familiar with organizing services through social media. None of her friends had tried one though and she was hesitant at first. She would recommend it now.

“I didn’t know what would work best for a family, like, if it would be a functional situation. Also, it feels weird people being in your things, or so I thought. But once they started and everything was so personable, it just made it a lot easier.”

She, her husband and their four-year-old daughter moved from a two-bedroom downtown condo into a three-bedroom duplex in Hastings-Sunrise. It was their first move in a decade.

“Now we have three floors whereas before we were just on one,” she said. “So, there was a lot of organizing. We also have a new garage. There was that too.”

In two sessions on separate days, two people on the first and three the next, Neat unpacked and organized everything except Sousa’s husband’s stuff. “He wanted to do that himself.”

She says that the service made the move that much easier.

“Otherwise, we would probably still be unpacking. We also had a trip booked right after we moved. It was so nice to just be able to get this all unpacked and ready to go in a couple of days, so that we could go on our trip without any stress.”