Organizer Extraordinaire

Elizabeth is a wonderful, kind and gentle person. She will take you from where you are in your house to where you want to go. She is very empathetic and positive about moving you through the processes of freeing up your space and your life from your clutter. She is also excellent at keeping you on task when you seem to loose focus. She has been an absolute joy to work with and very, very trustworthy. As for cost, she was $65/hour and I have used her for at least 6-8 years, probably more and have no recollection of the total cost. She is priceless!

As she is preparing to return to her family in the Midwest, she has left me with tools to approach my life. I still have hoarding tendencies and I am chronically disorganized which in my case is I don't pick up after one of my many project or current interests. She has given tools to approach my collection of treasures so they don't get out of hand. 1. If you bring something new in it has to have a place. Also get rid of something that matches its size. 2. (I am willing to change) I now have the attitude of approaching objects - How important are these to keep at this stage of my life. 3. The simple system of putting like with like - then evaluate. (Remember to do achievable quantities.) 4. Don't beat yourself up. Appreciate what you have achieved and maintained. 5. A subconscious blueprint of how to deal with my daily challenges. Her words stay with me. Being blessed by having Elizabeth work with me, train me, listen to me and accept my older generation ideas. It has changed how I look at and approach my life.

Beautifully. Elizabeth works tremendously fast but always took time to make sure I was feeling comfortable with the work to be done. She accomplished far more than I could have anticipated and made my home appealing to me once again.

It could NOT HAVE GONE BETTER! The remodel would take weeks! She helped me empty all my cupboards. Also decide which things I might need during those weeks, which could be done without, and which items I could give away. When the remodel was done she helped me put things away often in a more logical place. I cant say enough in praise of Elizabeth. She is kind, patient, encouraging, flexible, and innovative. She has helped me many times over the years since I found her in 2012. (FYI My first experience with an organizer was on the East Coast. She was a disaster! Rather than help me improve MY filing system she reorganized it to her liking making it useless to me. Also she was definitely not a people person! It took years to try again!)

It went great. We started with a messy front room with many leftovers from previous house. Over ten years or so, every week at the start, then on and off, and now monthly. She supported me to sift through belongings from my last larger house, mother's and my sweetheart's estates while I was deep in grief. She starts by assessing the area and asking me what I think about it. Then she offers suggestions and a draft plan. We get to a vision that we agree. Then she goes to work. Sometimes, she does all the work.... sorting into categories for me to decide whether to keep or not keep. The keeps finds a place and the not keeps are sorted into recycling, donating, or rubbish. As we work, she learns your values and preferences, so the work goes faster and easier. I think I am better now at organizing on my own because she has modeled and shared so much of her knowledge. She is great as a service provider and a coworker. I also value her patient, compassionate approach and her brightness in smarts and project management. I recommend her highly, more than than any other I have ever recommended.

Between many years of work and graduate school (and art projects I thought I was going to get to sooner), my home office had become a dumping ground of old papers, books, things to file, and art supplies that I was going to get to "later". Thankfully Elizabeth was there since "later" never happened! She has been meticulous in sorting through things into categories for me to review later and clearly communicates with me about all steps letting me stay in control of the process, which is a relief since I sometimes get nervous about throwing away (or shredding) old paperwork. Her conversations with me have enabled me to set my vision and her work has enabled this vision to start being realized. My office is now the space I wanted it to be and I actually want to spend time in there doing my art! It was a long way getting here and I could not have done it without Elizabeth's help. She is supportive, directed, and truly an organizer extraordinaire!

Elizabeth came highly recommended by a friend, who used her a few times following a move. I needed someone to help me on a more regular basis, and Elizabeth was a good fit. We met a few times each year for 10 years. We would rotate going through the stuff that stacked up in drawers, cupboards, basement and garage on a couple of occasions each year. On alternate visits, Elizabeth helped me sort through the paperwork I avoided both at home and at work. Along the way, I integrated many of her tips and tricks and have far more efficient systems now. In addition to her talents, Elizabeth is trustworthy, sensitive and operates with a high level of professionalism.

I could not have hired a better person to help get me organized. I got far behind due to a recent surgery and Elizabeth came in and got right to work. Her cheerful, non-judgemental attitude helped immensely. I appreciated that she included me and guided in the sorting and decision-making process. She let me know up front how many visits this project would take, no surprises. I cannot say enough about her excellence. She is the real deal!

Elizabeth's skills are remarkable! she is wise , fast and un-intrusive. Our house was transformed in no time.

Elizabeth truly is the organizer extraordinaire, the consummate helper in seeing clearly what needs to be done to sort out piles of messes about which I am utterly clueless. She is a focused, fast, and hard worker and is always upbeat. She passes absolutely no judgment over my frequent lapses into messiness. At the same time, she is fun to be around! I cannot imagine a better person or personality suited to help people get organized. When she begins to help what had seemed to be a daunting and distasteful task, magically no longer is.

Elizabeth was extremely professional and friendly and helped create a safe space for us to do this. She understood the shame of having these piles and the emotions attached to the process. Without her ability to do this I don't think we would have been open to the process of letting her come into our home. She talks on her web site about "home as sanctuary" and she really helped us move towards this and actually feel positive about the process.

It was uplifting and freeing to have support and direction in cleaning my home office and closets!

We set a 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. work window. Elizabeth arrived a few minutes past 10 a.m., at noon took maybe a 15-minute lunch break (for which she does not charge), then continued working past 2 p.m. to compensate for her ?late? arrival. She has exceptional organizational skills, apparently boundless energy, amazing strength, and does not waste time. She sorted into three categories, rearranged what remained to create neat storage and make items accessible to me, all the while asking my wishes. Throughout the process she wiped off accumulated dust, swept, etc. Then she packed all the donated material and items to be recycled into her car and headed out for the closest donation location. So something I had rather dreaded ? facing piles (categories) of things to take heaven knows where to donate and recycle following the clean-up ? Elizabeth took care of for me. Other reviews have raved about Elizabeth?s easy manner. They are right: I felt like I was dealing with a long-time favorite neighbor. ?Organizer Extraordinaire? is absolutely accurate. Considering her range of talents one learns of in the reviews, I?m amazed (but very grateful) that she would agree to do this job. Elizabeth is simply flawless. Of all those I?ve hired over the years to make improvements in my home, this was my all-time favorite experience. What a treasure!

I guess I have been using Elizabeths service off and on for 3 yrs or so. I feel I should say that it was due to unexpected illnesses that it took this amount of time to complete this job. Otherwise she would have had me whipped into shape in the twinkle of an eye. The lower level of my house was jammed with 20 yrs of thought I had to haves and just living here and when my mom passed, her stuff was added to the mix creating a nightmare of a mess. We couldn't use any of the rooms because of all the stuff and I didn't know how to even start to fix it. It was embarrassing to even think of letting someone see all this and took me quite a while to call Elizabeth. I have to say she is the easiest person to be around and one of the nicest. She got me past the discomfort and yes a degree of shame at all this mega clutter and set a plan that got the ball rolling. By putting everything into 3 catigories- keep- take to Salvation Army- and toss, the headway made was amazing. She is not there to and will not try to force you into getting rid of anything you want to keep but to organize you to the point you know what you have, where it is and so you can finally relax and enjoy your space. We also asked her do the garage, it took her one session to clear it out. You could actually get a car in there now. We now have so much amazing space we hardly know what to do with it and it is all do to the Organizer Extraordinaire. There just aren't enough words to express how much her expertise and ability are appriciated. Anyone thinking about decluttering and needing help- DO IT - call Elizabeth you will never be sorry.

Elizabeth was wonderful! Not only did she give me great ideas, strategies, and very practical advice, but she also rolled up her sleeves and got in there with me to actually do the work alongside me. She was a life-saver in my post-move chaos!

None of the boxes in that room were packed with like items. Meaning that each box had a mix of items from all over the house. With my permission, she went through all of the boxes and sorted the items with like items. She then helped me to further sort the items so that it was easy to determine where I had excess. We discussed various agencies to donate items to, to sell items, etc. It was easy for me to then decide what I wanted to do with the excess items as well as items that I was no longer using. Elizabeth loaded up the car with my donations each day we met before she left. That made it very easy for me to then drive the stuff to the organization of choice. She also took out all of the recycling and trash. I can see there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The room that has been unusable for the last 4 years is almost cleared out will be put to use as a family room again. I plan to continue to use her services to help me organize my storage areas in my home so that I can better utilize my space and incorporate my items into my house. With her help, my house is beginning to take on my personality and when I walk in, I feel like it is my home as well. This has energized me to do more in all of the rooms and to continue until I am done. I wish I had found her years earlier.

I found her on Angie’s List. She is pretty special, she really knows what she is doing, and she is just what I needed. I absolutely am going to use her again in the future.

It has gone really well! I continue to use Elizabeth. At one time I tried using a business coach, with whom I saw once a week for an hour at her office, without much result. But Elizabeth comes to my home office and gets down in the trenches with me for 3 hours every session, helping me with a wide variety of the (dreaded) administrative tasks involved in running my business. She has a wonderful business sense, and has been indispensable in helping me to grow my business and keep me centered and focused on the most important tasks. I can't recommend her highly enough!

I called Elizabeth after realizing that I would never get my home office organized on my own. For years I had been vowing to get it organized and it only got worse. I also had a small, one car garage that needed work. I called Elizabeth after reading her reviews on Angie's List. In one four hour session we got most of my office clutter cleared out and began setting up a filing system (we will finish that in a second session later this month--our work sessions were interrupted by my summer travel plans). Although we still need a one more session to complete the office organization, since the first session my office has been much more functional and pleasant to work in ( I am a teacher who does a lot of school related work in my home office). In another four hour session Elizabeth managed to get my garage sorted out, and gave me excellent advise on buying shelving that I could easily assemble myself. Before I called her I thought I would have to hire someone to build shelves to accommodate my garage stuff and leave room for my car. With Elizabeth's organization plan, I bought and assembled the shelves the next day for a fraction of the cost of custom shelving, and now have workable storage in my garage, and room to park my car. What I appreciate Elizabeth is that she tailors the organization plan to your lifestyle and needs. She doesn't come in with a preset idea of what you should keep and what you should throw out. in fact, she has the client make those decisions. Her goal is to get your home organized in a way that works well for you, and that is what I fell we have achieved. I have to stress that success really depends on the client following through with her suggestions so that you don't fall back into your bad cluttered ways again!

ELIZABETH TO THE RESCUE!! Able to REDUCE CLUTTER and mess in a single 4 hour visit! Elizabeth had helped me several years ago with organizing some of the areas (closets, desks, computer hutch) that had completely become unbearable obstacles in my home/life. SHE REALLY WORKED WONDERS and truly helped not only to clear up the messes in my home, but also reduced that smothering, out of control feeling I had every time I looked around in my house. Well a few weeks ago I was feeling the clutter was completely closing in on me and creating chaos for both me and my family...so I called Elizabeth. She was able to rearrange her schedule for me and came over the very next week (maybe she heard the complete desperation in my voice!!) and once again she worked her magic in just 2 four hour sessions. Now I not only have a cleaned out/totally organized and useable closet, but my mind and conscience have become clearer so that I'm not feeling that smothered feeling as much and can now take a deep breath and start tackling some of the other extreme cluttered areas of my house. It is such a great peace of mind for me to know Elizabeth is out there ready to help me tackle my clutter catastrophes!

We desperately needed help with the garage...it was like a black hole that was sucking in a lot of items and our energy. ADD and other physical challenges had to be dealt with too. Elizabeth work very hard to help us achieve some sanity. Our first session was just de-cluttering the garage by weeding out items that did not belong then putting like items together; this took us at least 4 hours. At the end of the session we had some homework assigned by shopping for some storage supplies, but Elizabeth tried very hard to utilize the items we already had. We also became users of an online auction website. The next session was organizing the space which took place 4 days later. She took into account ease of access, the ADD, physical challenges, habits and our usage needs of the garage. We learned that items need to be clearly seen, labels need to be big, and there should be defined area in the garage. I?m happy to say that when we walk in the garage we know where everything is and the stress is gone.

When we moved into our house, we had sort of mapped out where and how we were planning on utlizing the new space. This was a very different home than we left, with much more space that needed some planning to use efficiently. We had had Elizabeth help us organize a very busy kitchen for our family - we cook almost all of our meals from scratch. By her observation and our input, she was able to get that up and going in a couple of days. The office she just helped us with, I needed to have access to computer, grad school resources and bill paying items. Elizabeth took out all the clutter, organized the office closet with kids art supplies and helped me rearrange ths space to use it and to offer a warmer space. Elizabeth is always a pleasure. We completed our work yesterday in a 4.5 hour session, and we will be having her back to assist in organinzing a basement space. If you have ever considered working with an organizer, you can not go wrong with Elizabeth Perine!!!!

It's an amazing experience. Taking someone into your most personal and vulnerable spaces -- that you haven't seen for 7 years -- and have her help organize things without judgement. Friendly and helpful so that I could donate, recyle and trash stuff. We have done two sessions -- and I'm excited to see amazing progress so soon. It's making me start living differently and I EVEN KEEP THE DOOR open to that room now. I am actually looking forward to the next session and taking a sign of relief. Still using her and still amazing at what she can do in 5-minutes when I've been looking at clutter and disarray for weeks. She turns a house into a home.

Elizabeth is absolutely terrific! I have ADD and the clutter was destroying me. Elizabeth came in, and within minutes, I knew I could hand everything over to her and she would give me just what I needed. She "learns" about a room and feels out its best use and organization, and then works tirelessly to make it happen. She's been out four times (I think) and I expect will be coming back to help me with more tasks. She's thoughtful, detailed, hard-working, reasonably priced, and encouraging to those of us who are organizationally-challenged. I can't recommend her highly enough!

As always, Elizabeth's skills, clarity, tact and temperament are a perfect match for her job. I always feel lighter after she leaves!