Organizer Jen Rowe on how decluttering your space can make you wealthier

For this week’s MVP, we’re chatting with Jen Rowe.

Look around your workspace right now: If it’s filled to the brim with loose paper, tangled cords, scribbled notes or yesterday’s coffee cup, know that many, many studies show clutter increases cortisol, spikes your blood pressure and speeds your heart rate. It makes you more irritable and less productive.

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Yeah, yeah, we know you know, but if you’ve been procrastinating a stuff-purge for too long or don’t know how you’d possibly even start, it might be time to bring in (or think like) a professional like Jen Rowe, co-founder of Toronto-based organizational company Lumea Living. But your life needn’t look like Pinterest-perfect organization porn (it’s a thing; look it up!) and even small changes can have a snowball effect on everything else—including your bank account.

How did you become a professional organizer?

I was in the first cohort of women to launch a Canadian franchise for NEAT, the largest home organizing company out of the U.S. I was a NEAT-method franchisee for six-and-a-half years, until they exited Canada at the end of December to focus on the U.S. market and their product line. My NEAT counterpart in Vancouver and I saw an opportunity to continue doing the same type of work under a female-founded, Canadian-founded brand. We’re still very close with the NEAT values, but we’ve tweaked a few things to just make it feel a little bit more Canadian and a little more like us. We’ve been operating as Lumea Living for about six months.

Who could benefit from a service like yours?

Anyone, really. Most of us struggle with organization somewhere in our lives and even if you don’t, having someone come in with fresh eyes, particularly if you’re finding that your days and weeks are really hectic, can help you find ways to streamline things. Most of our clients are not people in crisis; they’re totally capable, high-functioning people who know their home is a significant financial investment, and they want it to deliver.

Lots of people know their home could function better—and they would function better in the home—if they had better organizational systems. Maybe they see beautiful systems on Instagram and Pinterest, but they just don’t know which ones would be right for them or where to begin.

Are those pics—a.k.a. organization porn—aspirational? Or intimidating?

Certainly aspirational images might work for some people, but they might not work for others. There’s some interesting psychology behind having a space that is not only functional but beautiful—there’s an incentive to want to keep it looking that way to maintain those systems. But know that life happens and nobody’s space is going to look perfect every day. And one person’s version of perfect isn’t perfect for somebody else—a single person, a couple, and a family with children all use their spaces very differently.

How does spatial efficiency translate into your finances?

In a few ways, actually. The obvious way is in a kitchen pantry, for example. You won’t overbuy if you know everything you have and where it is. You’ll free up valuable space that can then be used for sale items or buying in bulk.

Also, in a closet, once you get rid of everything that doesn’t fit or is not your style anymore, you’ll have a really good sense of what you have. You won’t just buy something new because you can’t be bothered to dig through your closet to see what you’ve got.

That’s actual, real money saved, but there’s also time saved. Our clients regularly tell us that the systems we put in make their life so much easier. Suddenly you’ve got an extra hour every day to spend with your kids or focus on your health or career. Organization has a wide ripple effect in other areas of your life.

What could someone do right now to get started?

On the financial side of things, don’t go out and buy all the organization stuff you saw on Instagram and think it’s going to make your space amazing. That’s just more stuff, and editing is a big part of this process.

You can start editing right now by getting rid of something you don’t need. To decide whether or not you need something, I like to ask, “Is it your favourite? Is it your best? Is it necessary?” If you can’t fit it into either of those three categories, it’s probably not something you need to keep.

Once you’ve cleared out all that, then you want to think about where you’re putting your things. If your office has paper all over the place, you might think you need a filing cabinet, but could you digitize and save space that way? Solutions tend to present themselves. Many people start with one or two spaces, then when they see the benefit there, they move on to more and more.

ead more from this issue of The Get:

1. Should Canadians accept cookies online?
2. Before it gets awkward... Who pays for the date in Canada?
3. Are Canadians over-celebrating and overspending events?
4. Why is butter so expensive right now?