WITS END ORGANIZING

Melanie is nothing short of FABULOUS. She has helped my husband and me to attack the clutter in our lives, room by room, with excellent results. She acts as much as mediator as she does as personal organizer. The approximate cost is for 4-5 hours of work.

When my husband and I try to clean out a room on our own, we argue and fight about what we should keep or throw away, and how best to manage each of these tasks. When Melanie is with us, she gently helps us to figure out what we each really need and want, and somehow, leads us to excellent solutions that make us both happy. Of course she also helps us make our house less cluttered, and therefore, a more pleasant place to live! 

She always sends a reminder several weeks in advance of the appointment to make sure you're ready for her; schedules pick-ups by charities to take away clothing, household goods, etc.; and helps with posting items online using Craig's List, Freecycle, Facebook, etc...

Add to all that Melanie's eternally bubbly personality and boundless energy, and you've got a winner. If you want to get organized, Wits End Organizing is the place to call. You'll be so glad you did. I promise!

The experience was fantastic! Melanie Raelin has done a lot of work with us! She makes it really easy to do something that could be kind of hard. It’s been a good experience overall.

When Melanie called to set up our first appointment, I thought we would need only an hour of her time- after all, how difficult could it be to organize a space once we put our minds to it? 

Well, within the first hour we clarified our vision of our home and workspaces without the clutter.  We have been working with Melanie for over a year and we like her and her work so much we have many more sessions planned!  We feel great about reclaiming lost space and finding forgotten valuables.

Best of all we are learning what to do to prevent the clutter from occuring again. 

Thank you Melanie.

Melanie did a great job during a stressful time.  She was energetic, but sensitive to the emotional elements of the situation.  She quickly organized items into categories, provided contacts for donation centers and offered to arrange pickups, and recommended movers and ebay sellers for other items.

I've also used Wit's End to organize a well-loved, but haphazard, book collection.  Melanie helped me sort the wheat from the chaff and set up an organization system so that I can immediately locate a book. 

Awesome! She was professional, quick, and friendly.

Melanie from Wits End Organizing spent an entire day organizing and dispositioning items in my overstuffed basement.  She arrived on time and was a pleasure to work with.  She kept the work on track and always knew what to do with items I decided I could live without.  We made donations to Big Brother/Big Sister and others, and she also worked to sell some of my items on ebay.  Once we had narrowed down what I wanted to keep, she worked to put it all away in an organized fashion so that I could easily find it later.  I'm very glad to have had her help.

Working with Wits End Organizing was a great experience.  I have worked with her on home organization projects and to help prepare for a big move.  Pricing is very reasonable and we got a lot done in a basic three hour session.  She really helped in making those "keep or sell" type decisions, pushing right up to, but never beyond, my comfort level.  All of the work we did was team work, taking my ideas and needs into account, which made it easier to keep the organization up long-term.  She was also great at giving options for the items I did decide to get rid of, from helping plan a yard sale to arranging for convenient charity pick-ups.

I recently moved from NH to a condo in Cambridge. The condo was willed to me with all its contents, plus I was moving in with all my stuff from a larger space so I'm having to downsize, plus I'm a packrat and have trouble getting rid of things. This is a recipe for disaster and I really needed help. Melanie was very organized and efficient, came with supplies for labeling, and good ideas about how to take advantage of the space I have. She also challenged me on what to keep and what to get rid of. Though I find this uncomfortable, it's really what I needed. She gave me specific homework assignments of things I can do by myself. I was planning to have a follow-up appointment, but with the current economic situation, I feel that I have to do as much as I possibly can on my own. If I get stuck I would definitely consider having her come back.

Melanie is ultra professional, enthusiastic, and talented. She was able to scope out my task, organize a plan of attack, select the tasks she could do, and help me do the parts I needed to do. She helped me organize all the forms, search through my files for necessary documents, fill in the forms, and write letters to accompany the forms. We indeed completed the mailings, and a job that had been weighing on my mind for several weeks was done. In addition, I am not much more motivated to complete other tasks on my "priorities list" thanks to Melanie's influence.

For 3 remarkably productive hours we purged my office of paper and books. For much of that time, I sat in one spot, going through whatever Melanie put in front of me. It was a very efficient way for me to work. That alone was worth the money! But there was more. We packed up books, I no longer want to create much needed open space and she provided names of organizations who would use them. We expanded my filing system and reworked the drawers for a much smarter use of space. She is creative when it comes to labeling and her handwriting is so nice it should be a font! I know where everything is and I am confident that I can maintain this system. Sometimes you get to a place where you need someone like Melanie to come in and give a different perspective, to help turn chaos into order.

I contacted Melanie by phone and she returned my call with 24 hours. We set up an appointment in the coming weeks. Melanie sent me an email with some things to think about before our appointment. Melanie showed up right on time, and after a little chatting about what my priorities were, Melanie wanted to get right to work, which was great. Melanie has an amazing amount of energy and completely took charge of the situation in a non-threatening way. She had great ideas about how to organize everything from bills to printer paper, and with her label-maker in hand, she literally transformed my office in the three hours. Melanie had great suggestions for re-purposing things I already had, like plastic containers, tubs, etc., and made a few suggestions for things I might want to buy. All in all, the three hours was very well spent, and I was completely satisfied with our accomplishments. The next day, Melanie followed up as promised with suggestions for places to donate things.

Melanie got back to us immediately and was very accommodating of our schedule. The day of the appointment, she arrived with a bag of supplies, assessed our situation very quickly, and then took charge (in a very non-threatening manner). She knew exactly what needed to be done and what to put where, and between the three of us, we got a huge amount done. It was clear that we wouldn't be able to finish everything in a single three-hour appointment, so we asked her to come back for another appointment. At that point, she once again did a quick and very accurate assessment, and gave us a list of what we'd need to get our remaining stuff organized (rubbermaid containers, bags, etc). Frankly, we were *amazed* at how much work we did get done in the three hours Melanie was here--we got rid of a huge amount of junk, our condo is no longer filled with boxes, and our place feels livable again! We'll definitely have Melanie back for another appointment.

I called her over Thanksgiving weekend, hoping she would be available during the following week when I had some time off from work. She returned the call the next day, and we confirmed. The first session was 3 hours, and went very well. We got a lot done, but in doing that, I wanted to push on, and fortunately she was free the next day for a couple of hours, so we did another session. Sorting, organizing, and discarding is difficult work - but she brought energy and a good spirit that made doing what would have been impossible on my own possible.

Melanie is a pleasure to be around. She is very communicative and non-judgmental, which is important when going through piles of accumulated junk. I did not feel exposed, or like she was invading my space, even though we went through mountains of things like bank statements. She was very respectful about putting paper in piles and discussing what to do with the piles. Melanie was confident that it would all get done and that helped me relax and trust the process. She also wanted to make sure that anything I wanted to accomplish got done and helped me figure out a way to make sure I would shred the "To Shred" pile. The sense of pride and relief at having the room organized cannot be underestimated. She was worth every penny!