Susan Horn Wins Help From Professional Home Organizers
By Ellen Paquin

Betty Huotari (left), Susan Horn, and Debbie Stanley, in the clean kitchen, pose for a magazine photograph.

Having a cluttered kitchen isn't always bad. Susan Horn had one and she won a national contest sponsored by Woman's Day magazine and Glad Force Flex trash bags. Several weeks ago, a camera crew from the magazine, a spokesperson from the Glad company, and two professional home organizers converged on her small home on Bayshore Road in St. Ignace with a common goal: to organize her kitchen.

As the grand prize winner in the Woman's Day Kitchen Clutter Clean Up Contest, Mrs. Horn won the services of two professional home organizers Wednesday, June 14, and Thursday, June 15. A magazine camera crew came along to shoot photographs of the project, which will be featured in Woman's Day this fall.

Mrs. Horn, a Girl Scout leader in St. Ignace and an employee of Mackinac Island Carriage Tours, was one of hundreds of contestants who submitted photographs and an essay for the contest this spring. She hoped for help to get out from under the clutter that was overtaking her kitchen cupboards and countertops.

Most people, say Woman's Day professionals, keep too much stuff in the kitchen. Better planning and organization can help home owners utilize their space.

What she learned during two long work days with the experts was that her kitchen is not so different from everybody else's: Too much stuff, too much paper, and illogical use of storage space were hampering the family's ability to get organized.

"She was chosen as the contest's grand prize winner exactly because she had legitimate clutter issues that would apply to most other kitchens of the same size. Most readers can identify with this," said Janet Soebesky of Woman's Day's New York City office, who visited the Horn home. This doesn't mean the family's kitchen is dirty, Ms. Soebesky explained, but that they could benefit from better planning in how things are stored and used in the room.

Most people, the professionals said, just keep too much stuff. Step one of the project was

to get everything out of the kitchen to decide which items to keep and which to discard. The team set up three large tables in the living room and filled them with all of the contents of the kitchen cupboards and, for awhile, the house looked a lot worse before it began to look better.

Separate cardboard boxes were used to sort items to give away, items to keep, and items to sell in an upcoming yard sale. Family members (parents Susan and Gary, Annemarie, 13, and Brandon, 11) had their own cardboard box of personal items to consider for disposal. Dozens of Glad trash bags were filled as seldom-used kitchenware and everything with an expired date was thrown out.

Betty Huotari, a member of the clean-up team and a professional organizer from Fenton, said, like most families, the Horns struggled with "making decisions about paper - family items, school schedules, loose recipes, and magazines with recipes in them. And there were too many empty bags. When we got rid of those, it cleaned up a lot of storage space."

Debbie Stanley, an organization professional, said it's usually better to tackle kitchen cabinets one or two at a time, rather than to organize them all at once. That approach, she said, would be overwhelming in most situations.

"Ideally, you would do this in stages," she explained. "The reason it works with a professional organizer is that we're not attached to this stuff, so we're not overwhelmed. We help them get rid of things gently. It's not like on TV, where they take things away from people and make them cry. Clients tend not to like that. But we can anchor the client to the task while we're there."

"It's like we're always asking, 'Do you want this? Are you sure you want it? Really?'" said Ms. Huotari with a chuckle.

"These are things I needed to do, but just don't take the time to do," Mrs. Horn said. "That's why I signed up for the contest."

"A lot of things were unnecessarily taking up space," Ms. Stanley said. "There were a lot of old, unused, and mismatched items. We got rid of all mismatched containers."

After four people sorted kitchen items all day Wednesday and Thursday, a mound of garbage bags full of throw-away items had grown outside the kitchen door.

Inside, the kitchen was sparkling.

It was time for the camera crew. Two photographers set up a forest of tripods amid the folding tables in the crowded living room to take pictures of the kitchen for Woman's Day.

"It does look like a perfect magazine kitchen now," said Ms. Stanley as the group surveyed their work. By eliminating the clutter,

the team had made the room seem more spacious and bright. Countertops are clear, the tall stacks of plasticware atop the refrigerator are banished, and everything useful is in its place.

The organizers created a bill-paying center stocked with envelopes, stamps, and other supplies in the kitchen, and installed a paper shredder there to help the family avoid building up future paper piles. Storage tins and colored containers were discarded in favor of clear storage boxes with lids, in which the family can see contents at a glance.

The back of deep cupboards, which tend to trap unused items out of sight and out of reach, were fitted with wire shelves to block seldomused items from falling to the back.

Mrs. Horn said she is pleased with the results. While everyone in the house welcomed the project, she was probably the one most motivated to get the room organized, she said.

This is typical, said Ms. Stanley.

"The household manager, often the mother, is most motivated to make the project

work," she said. "The hardest thing is usually to persuade the rest of the family to get on board with the changes. Everyone will have to get use to maintaining uncluttered surfaces. She may have to remind the children constantly not to fall back on the old habits. It will take awhile.

"The difference between naturally organized people and everyone else is that the organized people make micro-corrections to the process as they go along, like steering a car down a road," Ms. Stanley said. "After you've become an experienced driver, you are correcting your path without even realizing it. For everyone else, if they don't make those constant corrections, it tends to build up.

"People think of organization as an end result. But really, it's a beginning. People should expect that it will always take at least a little bit of work to stay organized."