Stephanie started a whole-house organizing journey with me shortly after I had moved to a new apartment. I call myself a recovering pack rat and had done a lot of purging in my previous apartment, but knew there was more to be done. I was completely unprepared to see how, despite all the stuff I had purged, my belongings still overwhelmed the new space. Six weeks after the move, I was only half-unpacked, living with boxes everywhere. Stephanie and I discussed my goals and what I had done so far. When we started organizing, she gently but firmly steered me toward removing items from the space instead of focusing on minutiae that seemed important to me at the time. She was absolutely right to do so, because I had no idea HOW MUCH really lurked in all those boxes. I was also completely unrealistic in my assessment of how much time these big-picture tasks would take. We spent several sessions simply finding out what was in boxes, moving items to their proper room (which I ve learned is the first step in Zoning ), and emptying as many as we could. Stephanie has both energy and stamina; she dragged boxes and bins down the four flights of stairs again and again, long after I would have given up. Stephanie asked the right questions, always with the attitude of I want to make your space work for you. I never felt any judgement from her. Because she accepted my rationale for so many items, I learned to trust her when she suggested that it might be time to let certain things go, and often by the time of our next session, I was ready to do so. I am quite sentimental and she found creative storage/display solutions for many of my treasured items. In fact, Stephanie is a genius at creative solutions for awkward items or spaces. My new apartment was formerly an attic, so it has minimal storage and a steeply pitched roof throughout. These features presented considerable challenges to creating a livable space, but Stephanie arranged the rooms in unexpected ways, which added visual appeal and maximized space. She also sourced products (always with a mind to budget) and installed baskets, floating shelves, and hooks which utilize and beautify many of the weird little spaces. The idea of a whole-house project can seem both intensely appealing and terror-inducing, for so many reasons. If you need this sort of help, Stephanie can truly make it happen, and she will be your cheerleader and guide. Through our work together I ve achieved a relationship to my stuff that I didn t believe was possible.