You'll Love Lucy After She Teaches You to Organize

January 23, 2024

119. You'll Love Lucy After She Teaches You to Organize

Professional organizer Lucy Milligan Wahl shares invaluable insights on conquering the chaos of home organization. Lucy's no-nonsense approach begins with tackling paper clutter, urging listeners to scrutinize documents with suspicion and create a system for easy retrieval. Transitioning to garages, she prompts a thoughtful evaluation of item relevance, distinguishing between necessities and relics. Lucy delves into the unique challenges of decluttering teen spaces, emphasizing a balance between guidance and respecting individuality. Addressing costs, she highlights the value of investing in professional help. Lucy's wisdom culminates in practical advice: start small, embrace the process, and steadily progress towards an organized and serene home.

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Transcript

George Siegal: 0:00

Look around your house and think for a minute. Do you have too much stuff? Does your house feel cluttered? Do your friends think you are a candidate for hoarders? Well, there's a way you can fix this. My guest today is Lucy Milligan Wahl. She's the founder of LMW edits, a boutique professional organizing company based in San Francisco. You don't have to throw up your arms and give up surrounded by all that mess. After you hear what Lucy has to say, you'll want to dive right in and create some space. I'm George Siegal and this is Home Owners Be Aware the podcast that teaches you everything you need to know about being a homeowner. Lucy, thank you so much for joining me today.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 0:42

Thank you for having me. I am happy to be here.

George Siegal: 0:44

All right now as I look over what you do and I find it fascinating because we could do this entire podcast just on the mess in my house and how. I would need you Explain to people exactly what your role is and how you help them with what you do.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 1:00

Absolutely so what I do is professional organizing and basically I take care of stuff, so I make sure that the stuff in your house is the right stuff, it's the stuff that you need, and you can find that stuff quickly and easily, so you can stop worrying about the stuff and just get on with the rest of your life.

George Siegal: 1:16

Yeah, I probably spend half my time finding things and it's such a waste of time. So let's go through some typical things and we'll kind of solve my problems. It'll be like a free consultation, but I think most people have this problem as well. My office has got papers stacked all over the place because I moved from one part of the house to the other, so I have things that aren't filed yet, things that are sitting on desks and I don't look like a hoarder, but it's really unorganized and hard to find things. How do I even begin to tackle something like that?

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 1:49

Yeah, a lot of people struggle with paper. We're at this funny time in society where everything is moving to digital and yet we still can't quite shake the need to have some paper documentation. Obviously, it's different depending on what work you do, what kind of like personal situation you have with like estates and property and whatever, but in general, I apply a very strong index of suspicion to any paper whatsoever. When I'm working with somebody on organizing documents, my first assumption is that we probably don't need most of it, because the only reason to keep a piece of paper is because you will need it again, which sounds really basic, right, like that's super basic.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 2:29

But think about what you keep in terms of what you file. Like, did you file it because you're like okay, I know I'm gonna need this again. It's gonna be this specific situation. Here's where I'm gonna look, or are you like? I know this seems kind of important, I guess I should file it. And so, with my clients, I'm drilling down to why do we need this, exactly what for? And then where do we store it? How do we file it so that you can find it again when that occasion comes?

George Siegal: 2:55

Yeah, now give me an example, like if a trade comes out, a plumber comes out or somebody installs shelves or somebody puts something in the yard, I just tend to have that receipt from them somewhere and okay, so why do I need that? Well, three years from now, or three years ago when I had that person here, now I need them again. So I'm just I'm at a loss of how I would even move forward to get started tackling this.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 3:19

Yeah, absolutely so. For someone like you it's sounding like the reason you need that information is it's contact info. So then I'd like just rip their business card off the off the invoice or whatever, and have a folder that just says home professionals I like. There it is, and then when you're looking for a project you're like all right, there's the plumber I use, there's the contractor I use perfect. I mean, obviously, if something was done to improve your home that you aren't going to take with you and you own your home you do want to keep the whole invoice because that's that's sort of like helpful, helpful for evaluation of your home. But if you rent or it's something you can take with you, or it's just a basic repair, you don't actually need to keep the whole invoice.

George Siegal: 3:59

Okay now another thing I see when we walk our dogs around the neighborhood is some people when they open their garage, it looks like it's just a thing of beauty organized, not trash everywhere. And then you see garages where they look like they're an episode of hoarders, where there is stuff everywhere. What do you do about that?

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 4:24

With garages they become a dumping ground, right, like that's just like I don't know where to put it, I'm just going to shove it in the garage basements, attics, also similar. And so when I'm working on a garage with somebody, it's about what in here do we actually need? I mean, it's back to that right. And a lot of times in garages you will find items left over from a previous activity, a previous home, someone who used to live in the home and doesn't anymore, and they just kind of make their way into the garage by default. And so just asking the simple questions of like do you still ski, for example?

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 5:01

And in this case, this case happens to me a lot because I live in San Francisco, we have access to mountains. There are a lot of people who ski. I myself am a skier and I can tell when they don't actually ski anymore because I know how old those skis are. So there's a little bit of insider info I have about certain activities. It can be the same with camping gear, like is this camping gear and good enough repair that you could use it tomorrow?

George Siegal: 5:24

Yeah, so if you still have wooden skis in your garage, that's probably right.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 5:28

Well, hang those suckers up. It's great decor.

George Siegal: 5:30

Yeah, now another one. Okay, in a laundry room it seems like screws, bolts, hardware, stuff all gets thrown in drawers and all of a sudden you've got these drawers full of stuff and I'm always afraid to throw something out because then I'm afraid something's going to break. And I'm going to have that flashback and going oh, I saw where that bolt was. What would you do with all that stuff?

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 5:51

So this is a place where self knowledge is really helpful. So I have some clients who are quite handy. They do a lot of their projects themselves and they know they know hardware well enough that if we do like little drawers of different kinds of sizes of screws and nails and stuff, that's going to be helpful to them. For someone like me who's not especially handy, having a bunch of different sizes of screws is actually not going to help me because I don't actually know what I'm looking for. So it's important to know, like, where your capabilities lie and where it's just not going to happen.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 6:28

So, for example, say you put together a shelving unit and it comes with all the stuff to put it together and there's like an Allen wrench and some screws and they always give you some extra and the temptation is to keep that extra. And my question is is the shelving unit really going to ever need those things? And if it does, are you going to fix it or are you probably just going to buy a new one? And that's an uncomfortable question to ask, because just buying a new one sounds kind of wasteful to some people and it can sound like that's not the correct decision. But it's important to be realistic and know like, if I'm in a jam and this thing falls apart, what am I actually going to do and what am I actually going to need on hand?

George Siegal: 7:11

Okay, now it's interesting. Now I also have a lot of broadcast equipment and I know this. But it happens to my wife, it happens to my kids. We all end up with these older plugs, things that used to connect stuff. So if I open my closet, there's probably 20 plugs in there and cables and wires and all this stuff and my fear again is throwing that out. And then I go gosh, I need to do something with my computer and I'm missing cable number seven that has this and this and this. What do you do in that case?

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 7:37

So I run into this a lot. Everybody's got all kinds of plugs and wires and stuff, even if they're not doing broadcasting. And what I do is I separate it all out and we go through it individually and I ask the question of what is this for? And you, being a broadcasting professional, you probably know what everything is for. And once we separate out the individual pieces, it becomes a lot clearer which ones you actually need, which ones you don't. What we do with our brains is we chunk. So it's like when you memorize a phone number, you chunk the sections of the phone number. When you see a pile of wires, you chunk that as one pile and you sort of tell yourself I either keep the whole pile or I get rid of the whole pile. And my job is to pick it apart and figure out what pieces you need and what pieces you don't.

George Siegal: 8:22

I need to get on that too, boy. It sounds like I got a lot to do. Now. A lot of people have older parents and the parents are living their lives, but they're not necessarily thinking of the day that they're not around and all that stuff is just left behind, and then you've left your children with just way too many things to make tough decisions. The first thing I would say is how can parents make it easier for their children, or should they not even bother? And it's just the kids fault when that tragic or sad day happens.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 8:50

You know, there's a wonderful book that you may have heard of that I think it will help people think about this and it's from the perspective of someone going through this herself. It's called the Gentle Art of Swedish Deaf Cleaning and it is written by an elderly woman who has done this process herself and she sort of lays out not only how you do it but why you do it. And I think it's so helpful because, you know, coming from me telling a senior person that they need to clean out their stuff so they don't burn their children that can be a little presumptuous sounding, because I myself have never been in their shoes. I don't know what that's like, and I try to greet moments like this, where things can be very emotional, with a lot of empathy and a lot of understanding. And so I think if you know someone who's thinking about should I downsize, should I not? Should I get rid of stuff, should I not? This book can be helpful because it really puts it in context in a way that's like from someone who's been through this experience.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 9:44

I generally think if someone is older and they're thinking about this and they're thinking about what they're going to do with all of their stuff, you're already on the right track. You're already thinking into the future about what's what life is going to be like for your children, and I think that's a huge gift. And I do believe that the more you can do now to save your kids from having to go through all the stuff, the better it is, because what we have is sort of the sandwich generation right, the people who have both children young children to manage and senior parents to manage, and you know these people are trying to raise their kids. They don't necessarily have bandwidth in their lives to take on the project of dealing with a deceased parents, lifetime of belongings and many people do, and that's that's great. But from my perspective, it would be an incredible gift to not force your kids to do that.

George Siegal: 10:37

Yeah, we can also turn that completely around. So because I experienced this when my when my father passed away is you go into their closet and you just don't even know where to start. I saw it with my dad when his mother passed away, where he was just sitting in her house surrounded by all this stuff, just paralyzed, not knowing what to do and how to even approach something like that.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 10:56

Yeah, it's really difficult because when you think about things, truly it's just stuff. The memories are in our brains and our hearts. They're not in the things, and so once the person to whom these things are attached is gone, the things tend to lose a lot of meaning, especially if you didn't have the context previously. So, again, for someone who's thinking about what they're leaving behind, to at least sit down and have some conversations of like this is important. This is not, don't worry about it, at least give people the lay of the land.

George Siegal: 11:27

Yeah, I think one of the things that makes that more difficult is then when you hear stories about somebody that just cleans out everything, and then there's some garage sale where some valuable painting ends up being discovered that you had no idea about, and there's also that fear of giving away some kind of family heirloom or something of value that then you'll never get back.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 11:46

Yeah, and I think that's where the value of working with professionals comes in. I don't specialize in estate clear outs myself. There are many organizers who do, and they can really help a family go through stuff and identify what might have some value and what is just kind of not worth their time to deal with. And so I think worrying about something of value not being capitalized on can be very paralyzing. And when it comes to getting rid of things that might have value, even if it's not in a downsizing or an estate situation, I encourage my clients to think about. You know, the trade-offs. There's always a trade-off when it comes to stuff. If you're going to keep a bunch of stuff in case it has value, that has a cost. It has the cost of you storing the stuff, you cleaning the stuff, you taking care of the stuff. There's no costless alternative. So a lot of what I talk about with my clients is okay, you can keep that, but let's talk about what consequence that has for your goals, for the project.

George Siegal: 12:45

Yeah, I think it's things to like. It could be jewelry, it could be baseball cards, it could be Some kind of statue or figurine that you just don't know about. There's that fear of my gosh. This. This could be worth a fortune, and here I just gave it away.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 13:02

Yeah, there's a really quick and easy way to at least get a little bit of a handle on whether something has value, especially if you know what it is. Go on eBay, search for that item and click on sold Not what people are listening for people what it actually sold for, and that will give you at least a quick and dirty like okay, this has some value. Like I'm sold for twenty five bucks, alright, whatever.

George Siegal: 13:24

Okay, now here's another problem. Again, this one's mine, but I'm sure a lot of people can relate to it. I have a seventeen year old and a thirteen year old, and a few weeks ago they decided to swap rooms. Oh yeah, just seeing what each kid took out of their room and move to the other room exposed how they had way too many things, and it's tough to get your kids to get rid of things. How do parents tackle that?

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 13:50

So I actually work with teenagers quite a bit and I really enjoy it because I teach will tell you what's up, they will be really straight up with you, they'll be super honest and we have some really great conversations. And I love working with teens to, because it's a chance to set them up for success before they sort of calcify their ideas of what, like adult life should be. But it's it's working through the process with a goal in mind, which is the same way approach any. Any a project for an adult is like alright, what kind of space do you want to live in, what kind of life do you want? And then going through the stuff in the space and does this stuff support that or does it take away from that?

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 14:30

And I think sometimes we get in a mind frame where it's just like hey, kid, you got to clean your room. Like just go clean your room, just deal with it. But taking a step back and sort of walking them through the whole process can be a lot more. You have a lot better results in the end and you're in your serve. You're respecting their autonomy, right like you're empowering them to make decisions about their space instead of like go clean your room.

George Siegal: 14:55

Well, you know this, it's tough and I think, especially with teenage girls. My daughter on her bathroom counter, and that's one of the reasons they switch, because this room had a bigger bathroom. There's products all on the counter, all in the shower, all under the sink. I mean I would think you need two or three things. I wouldn't think you would need two hundred things. So getting kids to pair that stuff down is like it's pulling, like pulling teeth.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 15:18

Yeah, we actually do a lot of projects like that. My my organizing assistant that works with me is a big makeup and skincare person herself, and so I often have her do that job With with teen girls, because they can have a good conversation about what the products are, what use they have, and I think it's it's it's helping them figure out what's part of the daily routine, what's part of the party, like special day routine, and then what do I actually not need? Because I tried it, I don't like it, the color doesn't work for me. These are the conversations that we have, and I think people try and skip over that part. They try to just be like, hey, get rid of it all. But we have to have the conversation to understand what we want to get rid of and why. Now, it's part of working with clients once you've helped them get rid of a lot of stuff.

George Siegal: 16:01

They are on kind of a maintenance program, so when new stuff comes in they know how to avoid getting to where they were when they had to get rid of all of it.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 16:09

So I will say I appointed pride is that I have very few recurring clients. My my structure of the way I work is to set someone up with a system that they can maintain so that even if they fall off the wagon a little bit, the structure is still there and they can come back to it on their own time. I get return clients when people are repurposing a space. For example, say, we organize a home office and now they're having a baby and that needs to be a baby's room will do that. But I try to avoid a maintenance program because I don't want people to become dependent on me. I don't think that's particularly healthy. I want, I want to know that I have taught them the skills that they need and they can come back to that whenever they want to.

George Siegal: 16:48

You have an example that you can share of maybe the worst situation you ever walked into. Where you're going. Oh my god, this, this is just going to be difficult.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 16:57

So I will say I I don't take on any, any job that could be classified as above level one. Hoarding. There is a there is a clutter and disorganization scale that goes from one to five. I don't do anything above a level one. Level one is sort of like clutter in multiple rooms, which Most people have, honestly, so we're all a little bit harder inside. That's not the kind of work I do. I know that about myself. I refer to other organizers that said, I think what is what is very difficult and I really Try to screen for this in advance if someone is not willing to change how they do things, it is not possible to help them get organized, because just doing more of what you did before Is not going to get you different results. So if someone is saying I want you to come in and wave a magic, want to make it all good, but I'm not going to change a single thing about the way I operate, I can't help them.

George Siegal: 17:51

I imagine minimalists are bad for your business.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 17:55

Minimalists are great, because it's hard to become a minimalist. People need a lot of help and I've actually had multiple clients who have said I want to become a minimalist and then, in the process of working towards it, realize they're not ready, it's not for them. I had a client who stated goal was to become a minimalist and it was a very tightly packed, clean, nice but tightly packed space and so and we kept working through it and this client was just not willing to get rid of anything, like I said, not willing to change. And so finally I had a brain wave. I was like let's just see if this is what you really want.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 18:29

So I picked a corner of the space, we pulled everything out of it and I said we're going to add back things one at a time until you decide that's the minimalist look you're going for. So we did that, added back a lot more stuff than I would personally define as minimalism, but that's fine, it's all the clients choice. And then I said, ok, now turn around and see how much stuff is left that you didn't add back. That was there before. It was quite a bit. And the client was really stunned and also realized that they were not ready. They could not do it. This was not going to be possible for the rest of the space, and so it was a failure. But I treated it as a success, because I was able to help the client understand how, or how not, they were able to come to the goal.

George Siegal: 19:13

That's interesting. I think anybody that's ever gone house hunting knows, when you walk into a house, that they really want to sell it and it's staged to show so it looks like there's a lot of room. And then you walk into some houses that look very lived in, where there's stuff everywhere and it's hard to see it the same way. So it even hurts your value. If you're selling your house, you really want it thinned out, don't you?

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 19:38

Yes, you want it as little as possible and it sounds people have a hard time with this because it sounds like the realtor is telling you to get rid of your personality and get rid of what means something to you. But in fact, selling a house is a financial transaction. It's not about you, it's not about your family, it's not about the memories and the wonderful times you had in this space. It's about the financial transaction and getting the most value out of it that you can. So if you're able to take your own identity out of the process and just say what do I have to do to maximize value in this transaction, that reframe can really help.

George Siegal: 20:14

Okay, let's come back to my problem once more time. One more time, just so I can come away something with something here. So my office you see this interesting set behind me, which, which is it is organized. There's, there's a method to the madness, but my desk has all these papers. Do I just start one at a time and just start whittling away at it? So I'm, I'm just thinning that out.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 20:34

The bad news is it does take time and it has to be gone through step by step. I I am often in the position of telling people that there are no shortcuts. The fact is, there's a whole pattern that got you here and you have to understand that pattern to be able to move forward. And I often find myself saying you're, you're, cluttered. Your stuff tells you a story. It tells you a story about the choices you make, the things that are important to you, how you live life on a daily basis, and when you can understand that story, then you're in a position to possibly change the pieces of it that aren't working for you. But if you don't know what's going on and if you just either dump everything or leave everything, you're not really understanding what has led you to this place and for people that are tackling a whole house.

George Siegal: 21:18

Where's a good place to start? Is there a place where you kind of start here and then work your way through? Do you just pick what you think is the worst? Start with that.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 21:25

I I have two ways that I start. For a client who is really Motivated and they want some results fast, I pick the spot that they use the most so that it will make them biggest immediate impact on their daily life. If I'm working with someone who is more fearful of the process, not sure it's gonna work for them, I start with something small, really small like, maybe even just like a corner of a room, just so that they can feel like, oh, I understand how this works, this is gonna work for me. Now I'm ready to tackle something a little bit larger. So it sort of depends on what energy you're coming into the project with.

George Siegal: 22:02

Okay, now what should it typically and I know it's probably different in every part of the country to have somebody, a professional, come in and help you tackle this? Is there a range of what people can understand that it might cost them?

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 22:12

There is a range and it of course it depends on what market you're in. It also depends on how experienced the organizer You're working with is. You can find somebody on task rabbit for 25 bucks an hour. You are going to get a 25 bucks an hour Experience.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 22:26

I'm sure that task right person is wonderful and they're gonna do their best for you, but they don't have the years of experience and working with multiple types of clients as I. As I say to people, I have a lot of data. I've been doing this for 10 years, so I have a lot of clients. I have a lot of experiences that I can give people a better idea of what happens when they make certain decisions. Someone who just started out, who doesn't do this full-time. They just have less data, less experience. But yeah, in sort of in major Simon San Francisco major market, you're probably looking at around a hundred to two hundred dollars an hour. If you're in a smaller market, you're looking at maybe fifty, seventy five an hour. It really depends on on where you are and how much experience you want your organizer to have.

George Siegal: 23:05

Okay, now that sounds like you could get expensive. So what? How much time is typically needed? So you know, if I want to thin stuff out of my house, am I looking to I have to spend thousands of dollars, or is it? After three or four hours, we're gonna have made a pretty good dent in everything.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 23:19

Right. So my general estimate to declutter a room is between four and eight hours and I that is a lot. I and again I'm I'm sort of giving the maximum full service estimate because I work with very busy Professionals and their families. They're willing to throw money at this problem. They don't have the time to sit down and do it all themselves. They need me to come and accelerate the process. There are organizers who don't charge as much, who have a little bit of a different perspective on the time it takes to declutter, but I am very thorough so I'm getting through absolutely everything.

George Siegal: 23:53

If I could just win the darn lottery, I'd fly you in.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 23:56

You're right.

George Siegal: 23:57

That's something that I'm certainly gonna think about. So let's give people a takeaway here. I have a mess in my house and I want to get going. I want to do something positive. Tell me the first thing I should do.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 24:10

So the first thing is to pick a small defined area, pull everything out of it and decide what you're gonna keep. So I'm talking about like one drawer, one shelf, just one little thing, because if you try to tackle too much at once, it becomes super overwhelming and then you kind of quit halfway through. And quitting halfway through is sometimes even worse than starting, because you have a bigger mess than you started out with. So if, especially if you're gonna tackle this on your own, I would take a little piece by little piece. The I'm gonna organize my whole house in one weekend Doesn't have a good, a good success rate.

George Siegal: 24:45

Yeah, and I think if people could just get up to speed with this then if they ever decide to relocate or they want to do things, they're not, you know, even even when you move. Somebody once told me if you have a box that you haven't opened in a certain amount of time, just get rid of it once you've gotten there, because you're you're probably never gonna use it. What do you think about that?

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 25:03

Yes, I absolutely agree and I would say a corollary, which is the experience of throwing something out and the experience of putting it in a box in the garage are functionally the same Day today. You're not looking at it, it's not part of your life, it's not there. So if the, if, the, if the impulse says I'm gonna box this up and leave it for later, I would examine that impulse.

George Siegal: 25:27

Well, you've motivated me. I'm gonna start making a dent in this office today, because I. Drive me crazy and I always feel like I just didn't complete something, and then I get really OCD about what you know. It's just then and everything just completely unravels.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 25:41

Yeah, and I always tell people to like don't, don't worry about it being perfect, don't worry about getting it all done at once. Every little step you make is a step in the right direction. And With with stuff like organizing, we often let perfect be the enemy of the good and it doesn't really help.

George Siegal: 25:58

Yeah, so so with the office, a lot of electronic, a lot of files, maybe just scan stuff and and just have it all electronic and don't just don't even file the paper.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 26:07

Absolutely. And and then, before you scan, do I even need to scan this? Because back to trade-offs scanning is not costless, it takes your time and scan is actually kind of slow, unless you're outsourcing it completely, in which case then there's a monetary cost there as well. So, even with digitizing, keeping in mind, like, what do I, what information do I actually need and I can't find anywhere else, and what information do I not really need at all and I don't need to scan?

George Siegal: 26:33

All right, well, hey, lucy, so much great information. Your plane ticket will be in the mail. But thank you, this has been great. I really appreciate your time. And all your contact information will be in the show notes so people can follow you on social media and get in touch with you.

Lucy Milligan Wahl: 26:50

Fantastic. Thanks so much for a great conversation.

George Siegal: 26:53

I'd love to hear your stories good or bad, of experiences You've had as a homeowner. There's a contact form in the show notes. Let me hear your story and you may end up being a guest on an upcoming episode. Thanks again for listening today. See you next time.