Emerging

This year, my Word of the Year is Emerge. In the past. my words (Survive, Thrive, Courage) have been used to get through every day things. I have struggled with Emerge so far, because it seems like such an end result. I began to think I have chosen the wrong word for my year. With Survive and Thrive, I'd wake up in the morning and think "You just have to survive this minute, hour, day". Same with thrive. With Courage, if I had to do something I was nervous about, I just had to reach inside myself and find some courage.

I realized I needed to change my way of thinking with Emerge. Yes, Emerge is an end result.... but in the process, I am Emerging.

That said, one of the areas I want to Emerge is with my organization. Over the years, I have worked hard to get my home organized. A couple of months ago I was having a conversation with a friend and I told her I'm fed up with trying to get this place organized. She suggested a professional organizer and took it upon herself to get a few quotes for me. One organizer responded in such a way that I decided to invite her to come do the free consult. She agreed with my assessment that my house is mostly organized with exception of these few areas, and agreed to help me finish what I have started. (Did I mention she gave me an A+ for effort? :) )

Many parts of my house are quite organized but I still had a few problem areas. One being a room upstairs, which I have featured on my blog before. This room became a mess again after I cleared out my office/guest room for my homestay student. Most everything that was in there went into the spare room.

The other problem area is part of my basement. I recently moved my Stampin' Up supplies down to the basement, but before I could do that, I took everything out of that room and moved it to the laundry room. What a mess!

And the final problem in this house in regard to organization is paper. Paper! I sort it again and again and again and it is never ending.

On Friday, the organizer came to my house and we began to work on the spare room. She estimated it would take us about 4 hours to go through it but it only took us 2 hours. Here are some before / after photos of that room. Keep in mind it's not really done as some of these things will be moved to the basement for proper storage once I get the basement set up.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

The next day I moved those plastic drawer bins downstairs.

Will update you with more later.

I'm linking this up to Laura's 29 day challenge at I'm an Organizing Junkie. Because I used the help of a professional, I don't know if it counts towards the challenge, but I hope this post will inspire you

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