The
Seattle Times & Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
Professionals hired to organize your life become an industry.
Fueled by corporate layoffs, the explosion of home-based entrepreneurs and telecommuters, and movements to make do with less, the business climate has never been better for professional organizers.
“The 90’s have been a time of downsizing in both corporate
and personal life. The big wave is to have less, not more.” Said
Ellen Langan, a Seattle professional organizer and owner of Langan +
Associates.
“I know I have it here somewhere!” With the amount of faxes, phone messages and mail you get daily, it’s not surprising that you can actually lose things on your desk.
“There are eight essential items in an organized office,” Says Ellen Langan, a Costco member who is principal of Langan + Associates and president of the Seattle chapter of NAPO.
Ellen Langan’s house is immaculate. She has a new baby and laryngitis, yet her house is spotless. Her hair is in place. This is important, because it’s windy and raining outside and she’s the only one at this interview who looks kempt. You fee a need to smooth out the wrinkles in your clothing every few minutes when she’s around.
Well-Organized space is, for Langan, a way of life. She is the owner of Langan + Associates, a company devoted to helping companies and individuals organize their offices and homes.
This August don’t just clean your kids room. Help him organize the space so it stays neat-and suits his tastes.
Meet Gabriela and Nicole Unguez. Last winter their tiny bedroom was such a wreck-toys and books blanketing the floor, clothes spilling out of the closet-that their mother Rebecca laughingly entered the twins in a contest for “America’s Messiest Kid’s Room.” To her great shame, they won.
I just read about a doctor named Charles Emerick who is an ear, nose and throat specialist in Portland, Oregon. According to a syndicated newspaper column called News of the Weird, Dr. Emerick collects the stuff that he’s removed from his patients. He’s got a bag of decomposed bees (he removed them from a kid who’s run into a swarm of them), a whistle (before it was removed his patient whistled with every breath), and a eraser that a kid had put up his nose (it stayed there for 15 years). Well your collection may not rival Dr. Emerick’s, but it sounds as though your desk could use a little surgery. For some tips on how to get out from under the “Collectibles,” I turned to the best organizational consultant I know: Ellen Langan of the Seattle-based Langan + Associates.
