The Challenge: Our client’s husband has eight cats that he dearly loves. Because he has health problems and rarely leaves the house, she does not want to “downsize” his companions. The laundry room does double duty as the cat room where they are fed and the litter boxes are kept.

Our client, Janet, is a busy, small business owner and her home is neat and orderly except for the laundry/cat room. She wanted to hire a weekly cleaning service but was too embarrassed by the mess in that room. She just didn’t feel good about asking someone else to clean up after all of those cats because she herself had such difficulty with the chore. The Sparkle Treatment was urgently needed to clean the walls where the cats had applied their own interior design touches.

Although the laundry room was a good size, Janet was moving all the dirty clothes into the family room on laundry day to sort and then back again to wash because the room was overwhelmed with too many storage containers. All the floor space was taken over by shelves and cabinets making it difficult to keep the floors and walls clean, and to squeeze through with baskets of clean clothes. In addition to more room, Janet wanted to have a place to hang her air-dry clothing that was safe from the cats. A rolling clothes rack was placed in the middle of the family room to dry fine washables and moved back when the clothes were dry — a solution Janet found unsightly and inconvenient.

The Solution: A common organizing mistake is to keep adding storage containers to manage clutter. Janet kept buying more storage cabinets and shelves thinking she was managing her storage problem when she really had a clutter problem. We went through all of the clutter that had accumulated and donated the old curtains and sheets, moved paint cans that had collected to the storage shed in the back of the home and threw out all the linens that were in poor condition. This eliminated the need for so many storage containers.

We installed a wire shelf with a hanging bar to keep the air-dried clothing safely out of reach of cat claws. With all of the unnecessary cabinets removed, we expanded the laundry sorting area so dirty clothes from the laundry shoot could be quickly placed in baskets whenever Janet fed the cats. This eliminated the ordeal that was laundry day sorting. With all the “stuff” cleared, the cats were happy with the additional floor space that gave them extra elbow at breakfast. No more cat fights over who gets the first dish!

Unfortunately, the wallpaper had to be stripped and replaced with quality high gloss enamel that was easier to clean. Our clutter intervention specialist arranged for a painting contractor to apply it in one day. The Sparkle Treatment not only made the laundry room smell better, but the entire house was freshened. With this mess cleaned up, Janet felt good about hiring a regular cleaning service to maintain it. Janet is clutter free and has more time to attend to her business.

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Call 404-803-4547 today for a free clutter intervention phone consultation. We can help you plan and budget for your Clutter Free project.