Interview with a Professional Organiser: Jenny Dudfield

Jenny Dudfield of Spark Serenity

What is your favourite thing or area to organise?

I love to organise kitchens!  Kitchens are the hub of the home and as such the room that generally gets used the most by the whole family, which means that they tend to accumulate a lot of different categories of things.  Add in the multitude of gadgets that we use nowadays, all of which take up so much room in the already limited space, and you can see where storage issues start to appear.  It is so hard to envisage where items should go when the cupboards are already full to the brim.  There is nothing I love more than decluttering and reorganising kitchens and making them work better for the families who use them, regaining their love of cooking, making the space easier to clean and giving them more quality time to spend doing the stuff that they love (and not fighting with their cupboards!)

You're a professional organiser – does that mean you live in a perfectly organised, neat-as-a-pin home?

No!  No matter how much I would love to live in a constantly pristine show home, I also live in the real world!  Houses get messy and untidy, we’re only human after all.  The difference is that when your home is perfectly organised, all of your items have a place to go and it is so much easier to put things away.  It is much easier to keep on top of things and keep your home tidy and the task is much less daunting when there are places to put things.  Your home is not a storage unit, it should be a sanctuary, a place for you to relax away from the stress of the outside world.  You will feel so much happier and lighter when you love everything you own, and it is all perfectly organised and you want to keep it tidy.

What prompted you to set up your business?

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to start my own business.  I really wanted to make a difference in the world and help people in any way that I could.  After a lot of brainstorming, researching and discussing with friends, I discovered that there was a career path in decluttering and organising that was made for me, using my natural skills to their full potential.  I became certified in the KonMari method of decluttering and professional organising, joined APDO and haven’t looked back since!  I am incredibly passionate about making a real difference in my clients’ everyday lives by decluttering and organising their worlds, increasing their happiness and reducing their stress.  I knew it worked for me and wanted to help as many people as I could achieve the same happiness.

What has been the biggest challenge you have faced in your business?

I think the biggest challenge that I have faced since starting my business is people’s understanding of what it is that I do!  I spend a lot of time explaining to people what professional organising and decluttering is, but when people do understand… they absolutely do understand!  It is getting more and more popular in the UK now, especially as hoarding has now been classified as a mental health disorder by the WHO, which is great news as awareness of the benefits of what we do is becoming more and more well known.

What benefits do your clients experience from becoming more organised?

There are so many benefits which my clients experience when they organise their worlds, far too many to mention!  Mostly they feel an overwhelming sense of positivity, like they can now achieve anything.  Their mental health improves, and they feel less stressed, anxious and depressed.  Once you have decluttered you feel like you have more time to pursue activities that really spark joy for you.  My clients have the space, both physically and mentally, to do things that make them happy: take up a new hobby, rediscover their love for a long-forgotten passion or spend some more quality time with the people they love, while reducing the stressors in their lives.

When you are going to a client, what essentials are in your organising bag/toolkit?

To start with, I use my favourite bag to keep my essentials in.  I take bin bags, gloves, Post-It notes, labels, a pen, a snack (or lunch depending on the time of the session), water (it is thirsty work!) and wet wipes.  I try to keep my essentials to a minimum, as I find that my clients already have most things that we need and we re-purpose a lot of things to work in their newly organised home.

What's the most memorable collection you've seen? (What did you/the client do with them)

I think my absolute favourite thing that I have discovered in one of my client’s possession was a collection of old chocolate wrappers from the 1980s.  The client didn’t even know they were there!  They had been smoothed, flattened and stored along with a whole bunch of “Smash Hitsâ€