Is Your Maid Stopping You From Having an Organized Home
The question in the title might be a loaded one, but think about it -Is Your Maid Stopping You From Having an Organized Home.Let's break down the question into these sub questions:
- Is it constantly disorganized?
- When you buy storage boxes and other organizing products to use in the home, do you find hidden away in the store room at a later date?
- If you organize a room, does it go back to being disorganized within a very short space of time?
- Can you never find your stuff, but your maid is always capable of finding it and receiving praise for the find?
- Does she argue that the room is fine, when you point out it should be more organized?
If you answered yes to all or any of these questions, then I can confirm that your maid is stopping your being organized. She has control over your home.Yes, YOUR home!You pay the mortgage or rent for the home, you pay the bills, the home is under your family's name.It is your home!You pay your maid every month to work for you, as an employee. So why is she acting like the boss in your home?I often see maids with this control over my client's home. Some maids are open to change and will work with me to create a new organized space in the home (I often see maids out and about later on and they always have kind words to say about the new systems!). However, many are resistant to change. They have been given the authority to do as they please in each room for a long period. By having an external party come into the house to organize it, they believe:a) that I will emphasis that they were disorganized (the fact that I have been called in emphasises this point without the need for me to highlight it - and I never do highlight this point),b) that they were not good at their job (they may not be good at organizing, but they may be good at other aspects of looking after the home),c) they will lose their job if I organize the home (95% of the time that is not the case).Who wants to clean a cluttered home? Or spend unnecessary time looking for each and everything, every day? Do they want to listen to an unhappy boss complaining about the mess and clutter?By the way a lot of maids react to my arrival, it would seem they would prefer these three scenarios.I recently reorganized a kitchen for a client. A major source of concern was the spice drawer. The client bought duplicates of spices but because of the number of packets and jars in the drawer, she wouldn't cook with them. The overflowing drawer made her feel stressed and resulted in her feeling unmotivated to cook.The client and I wanted to start with a clean slate, so we started with the one spice jar rule. I cleared the drawers and filled her jars with the spices in packets. We kept one jar of each type of spice and any extra spices (even if they had not expired) were thrown away. Yes it was a waste, but they were going to waste in the drawer anyway and would have expired.The maid thought otherwise....She started rummaging through the rubbish bag taking out the spices, ignoring my (stern) requests to leave them alone and put the bags of spices back in the drawer. She was thinking about the waste, we were thinking about the stress of the cluttered spices. Only after repeated requests by myself and the client, did she stop what she was doing and we were able to put the unwanted spices back in the rubbish bag and close it (I have a feeling she may have gone back into the bag after I left the house).This kind of behaviour is not out of the ordinary. Lack of knowledge on organizing and stubbornness can make a cluttered cocktail.My aim as a professional organizer is to declutter and organize the home into proper workable systems which can be used by everyone in the house whether it be the client, the maid or the kids. I discuss with the maids their processes at the moment and work out how we can incorporate the processes (if possible) into the new organized systems. The maids often don't realise I am organizing the space to increase their productivity and to make their jobs easier to do.One way to appease the maids before my arrival, is to assure them that I am being engaged to help the client and their household live in a happier, decluttered, peaceful, organized home. Also by working with the maids during the session, I can reassure them of my positive intentions.Organizing is a mentally and physically tiring activity, but with the right mindframe,If you feel your cluttered home is being held hostage by your maids right now, and need help to get it organized, contact us at any time using the contact form. 
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