I wanted you to hear from someone who has experienced an organizing over-haul and lived to tell about it. Who better to talk to than the warm and vivacious Dawn Joyal — actress, mother, wife, knitter, doggie owner and all-round busy gal. Dawn and I began organizing the entirety of her two-bedroom home (plus garage and guest house) in the fall of 2002. I am so pleased she agreed to share her candid and good-humored point of view of the journey we undertook.

K: How or why did you come to decide that you needed to tackle organizing your environment?

D: There came a point after nine years in my house when I realized it was taking more energy to look at the mess everyday - and have that reaction to the mess that I wasn’t dealing with - than it was going to take to finally do something about it.

K: What, if any, hesitations or concerns did you have before making the call to hire a professional organizer?

D: I had a fear of it being so upsetting to have to deal with stuff. I thought, “Oh, she’s going to hand me things and go ‘Put this away,’” like a mom… and I’d be like, “Away where?”

The first day was horrible. I think I was exhausted in twenty minutes from just the stress of you pulling out that giant mountain of stuff underneath the butcher block, where you started. I had that first moment of going, “Oh no, this could be awful.”

K: How did you get through that first session?

D: Because the things I was most afraid of never happened. Whenever I had a hesitation you would always just go, “Oh that’s okay, we’re going to deal with that later.” You didn’t go, “What do you mean you can’t put this away right now?” You didn’t make me do anything like that.

We didn’t put anything away for a while, until everything was out and all like items were together. I mean, who would have thought all of my craft supplies would have filled that whole closet? Right? And there was a little bit of craft stuff in every corner of the house… so it would have been silly to find a home for each bit it until everything was all together. So that was the thing - I kinda went, “Alright, the mess will become a bigger ‘mess’ of organized piles. Then it can all go away.” And I started to relax once I realized the system was kind of… easy. And, of course, there was somebody who was doing it with me, doing half the work. Because I still wouldn’t have done it alone.

K: What were some of the biggest frustrations you had before starting the process and what made moving through those frustrations worthwhile?

D: OK, the other thing that was making me decide that I had, Had, HAD to do this was when it took me until October to do my taxes the year before. That was ridiculous and that had never happened to me before. I had always been able to pull what I needed out of the mess and I no longer could do that. There was no system because the filing cabinet had been full, now, for a couple of years. There was probably four years worth of paper in a box on top of the full filing cabinet.

We started working together in September… five months later, I could do my taxes in January. It was great because that meant money coming back to me. And, by that point, all the “bad” paper was gone and never had to be seen again - didn’t have to get moved or shuffled or stored or boxed or dusted off or sorted through. It was down to just what I absolutely had to keep.

K: What was the biggest benefit of organizing?

D: When you told me, in the beginning, “You’ll have more time to do fun stuff…” Well, I wasn’t sure about that. But it’s true. I have so much more time now that I am not looking for things.

We went to New York at Thanksgiving… and packing was so fast! When I bought a new piece of luggage for Christmas it was with a much, much clearer idea of what’s actually going to go in there and how I’m going to use it.

And the drawer we set up that has a file for every production I have been in - the director from the show I am in now said, “If you give me copies of reviews and production photos from your past shows, I’ll put together a production package for you.” I was able to open the drawer and, in ten minutes, pull photo, review, photo, review, for each show! I could never have done that before because it all used to be in that mountain of stuff in the bottom of the file cabinet. The freedom… there’s no more stress in so many different areas.

K: What was the most unexpected result of organizing?

D: How much money we found. Gift cards from Best Buy, gift certificates, those very expensive exchangeable plane tickets!

K: Were there any expectations you had of either the process of organizing or of hiring a professional to help you that were unfulfilled?

D: Um… no. And I’ll flip the question on you and say there were things I thought I was going to have to do that I didn’t have to do. I thought I was going to have to buy a lot really expensive organizer-type things and it’s the opposite. There were times when you’d say “This cardboard box will do,” and I’d say “Nooo, I could really buy a basket for that,” …but in the meantime I could make do with the cardboard box.

K: How did your initiating this process affect your family? (Dawn has a husband and teenage daughter.)

D: Well, I think they were hesitant because they didn’t know… again, it’s the mom handing you things and going, “Now you have to put this away.” I think they thought I was gonna just foist all this stuff on them to have to do, but we didn’t. We kept their areas very sacred.

And when they started to see the flow of the house and the space opening up, they kind of wanted their turn… I think they both were very open when they ended up having their time with you.

K: After this financial investment, what elements make you confident that this organizing will really “stick?

D: I can’t, I can’t backslide to where I was before - it’s not in me anymore.

I feel so happy to find things when I need them. It has changed how I think about how things get put away or what I really need to keep and what can go. I get too excited about the fun of giving things away. It felt really fun to donate those bolts of fabric to the people who make quilts for the babies with AIDS. I mean, that was great - instead of them sitting in the bottom of my closet.

And I’m less shy about returning things I don’t like. I used to think, “Oh, it’s a gift you have to keep it.” You know what? You don’t! It’s a gift for you to do with what you want.

K: Have you been able to use the skills you’ve developed while organizing your home in any other area of your life?

D: Absolutely. I think whenever I’m serving on committees now and there’s any time when we have to organize stuff, I notice that often people are doing too much extra work to “organize.” They are making it much more complicated than it has to be. I find myself thinking much more in a straight line towards getting things organized.

And, in an interesting way, it’s helped me delegate more. I don’t have to “do it all” because I don’t have to go, “Well, nobody will understand ‘cause it’s all inside my head.” I can go, “Here’s the printout, you read these and you talk to so and so.” That’s the stuff I didn’t expect at all.

K: Which, in turn, frees up more of your time.

D: Of course! I hear people talk to me in the place that I was in pre-organizing and they say, “Oh, it’s such a mess and the garage and my office…” - most people say it about their home office - “Oh my office, it’s so awful!” and “Oh no, no one could ever help me because only I know where things are.” And, see, that was something that was completely de-bunked for me. Nothing got lost or went missing just because someone else was handling it with me.

K: Why would you recommend organizing to others?

D: Just to know that going through it is way, way, way less work than looking at the mess and hating the mess everyday of the year for years and years and years and going “Some day I’m gonna…” Doing it like we did it with that little, tiny homework assignment in between each week got through it so much faster than I ever thought we would. When the office was done within three weeks - completely organized - I never thought that was going to happen.

Basically, it’s the cliche of “it’s not as bad as you think it’s going to be.”