I'm feeling super stoked about finishing up a project that I had put off for YEARS (seriously, I procrastinated for more than 10 years) - sorting, scanning, and digitizing my printed photographs. It was a daunting project with multiple steps, plus many hours of research and lots of focus and motivation. After scanning 1,223 photos, I learned a thing or two along the way...

Remember the days of 35mm film and cameras that were only a camera, not a phone, computer, and camera all rolled into one? Back then, when you took a picture, you hoped it was in focus, everyone in the shot was looking at the camera, and nobody's eyes were closed but had to wait until the roll of film was processed to find out. And once the film was developed, instead of immediately tossing the blurry pictures or the shots you didn't like, you stuck the whole stack back into the paper envelope and threw them in a box, container, or drawer, to be discovered years later. Such is the case for many of us, including some of my clients.

My clients, who are big snackers, had a pantry full of canned goods, boxed pasta, dry baking goods, and so forth, but the pantry was bursting at the seams from a plethora of full, half-full, and nearly-empty (and even a couple of completely empty) boxes of individually-wrapped snack items.

Last month I was called for jury duty, which meant I was stuck in a gigantic room with 500 other Fulton County residents. What an opportunity for people-watching!

Soon after arriving, I noticed a woman near me digging through her purse. Minutes passed and she was still digging. I could tell she was starting to panic.

I’ve been helping a busy professional gain control of the stuff in her 3 bedroom/2 bathroom home because she was completely overwhelmed as to where to begin. By the time she contacted me, she’d tried and failed numerous times to get her home organized.

Pregnant with twins, my clients needed to figure out how to reconfigure their 1,400-square-foot bungalow to accommodate their growing family. A planned renovation was on the horizon, but it wouldn’t be happening for another year or so, so in the meantime, they needed to work with what they had, which meant adding a nursery to their guest bedroom/office space.

After repeated attempts to gain control of her home office, a client contacted me for help. She told me she didn’t know how to deal with her paperwork, and she was constantly searching for lost important documents in the dozens of piles strewn about her office. My client wasn’t interested in scanning the paper she had, she just wanted to get her paperwork to a manageable state.

Future projections indicate that consumers in the U.S. will spend $9.4 billion dollars on home organization products in 2017. As a professional organizer, I’m completely on board with the notion of containing the items in one’s home in order to be able to find the things you need when you need them. However, when clients contact me for help with organizing, oftentimes they’ve purchased a number of organizing products, but their homes are still disorganized. When I work with clients, I often “shop” their house to find underutilized containers and baskets we can use when organizing their space.

One of my favorite parts of being a professional organizer is brainstorming with my clients to come up with innovative ways to create order, redevelop an organizing system, or discover a different way of using an item. Instead of running out to the store to buy a new product, which can get costly very quickly, I think about ways to repurpose a piece of furniture or how to use a container in a creative way.

Scenario: You get a text from a dear friend who happens to be in the neighborhood, and could she stop by for a few minutes to say hello.

Once a day, choose one area of your home to quickly scan. In this sweep, you can swiftly make decisions about what to set back in its place, what you might not use and just haven't gotten rid of yet, what is past its prime, and so on.

The junk drawer – most of us have one. Chances are, this is where stray items land and promptly disappear amongst all of the other stray items. A junk drawer Bermuda triangle of sorts.