Chaos to Order
At Home with the Hastys - Chaos to Order
The Backstory
New to Hasty Book List? Read about the fire that prompted this home renovation, here.
Chaos to Order
After scheduling our custom closet installation (read all about that process here) I received an email offer of “Buy 2 hours | Get 2 hours Free” with Chaos to Order, a chicago-based organization company founded over 30 years ago. This was an auto-generated email seemingly offered to everyone who purchased closets through Closet Works, I did not receive any special offers in exchange for writing this post. But given how chaotic life had been leading up to our move, I jumped at the opportunity to have a professional organizer help me get situated in our new home.
Chaos to Order offers a variety of services, including “Move Management and Unpacking” where they will help you during the time leading up to the move, including organizing your belongings, eliminating clutter, and packing. They can also help with the moving logistics, getting everything organized and directing the movers on where to go. Finally, they’ll help with the unpacking and putting things away.
At Home with the Hastys - Chaos to Order | Organizing our kitchen
We were already well into the moving process, so we opted for their more basic “Home Organizing.” We chose to purchase the minimum 2 hours + 2 hours free, for a total of 4 hours. The two rooms we were most concerned about were the kitchen and the back storage closet. After speaking to their Office Manager, we decided to focus their efforts on the kitchen, which can often take the full 4 hours.
To maximize our organizer’s time, we unpacked all of our kitchen items ourselves and spread them out on the kitchen island and across several tables so she could see everything she was working with. We pointed out all of the storage space she had to work with, opening all of the cabinets, pointing out special cabinet features such as drawer organizers and pull-out shelves. We showed her the pantry and talked through some of our ideas. Then, we left her to do her work. She occasionally asked questions about pieces we use most often, how we use our kitchen for certain activities, and whether we really needed two of something. She made recommendations on things to get rid of and suggestions on things to buy to help optimize our space.
At Home with the Hastys - Chaos to Order | Organizing our kitchen
After 2.5 hours, she was done with the kitchen. She took us on a tour of where everything was located so we would know where to find things, explained why she organized certain things the way she did, and encouraged us to tweak things as we continued to use the space over time and learned more about the way we use the space.
We were not expecting her to finish the kitchen with time to spare, so we had her move on to the master bathroom, which was not at all prepared for her arrival. I’d just shoved things into cabinets and drawers to get them out of the way for the time being. We gave her little to no direction because we hadn’t given that space much thought, yet. She spent her remaining 1.5 hours putting our bathroom items into categories such as hair, makeup, medicine, teeth, etc. Putting the items we use most frequently in the top drawers, and the items we would need to access the least in the very top cabinet. She even used some of our discarded kitchen items like a piece of Tupperware that lost its lid as an way to organize some things in the bathroom.
At the end of her 4 hours, our home was far more organized than when she arrived. Due to the lack of storage space, we have to optimize every last inch of our condo. She was able to find a space for everything and we still have empty cabinets for room to grow. I would definitely recommend Chaos to Order if you don’t have the time to get yourself organized as quickly as you’d like, if you need some guidance on how to get started, or if you overwhelmed with the amount of work that needs to be done.
