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Partner Spotlight: Christina Bond, Creating Space DC

Meet our Partner – Christina Bond, owner of Creating Space DC

We’d like to introduce you to another great partner of 123JUNK. In this post, you’ll meet an organizing expert who helps homeowners declutter and keep only those items that “spark joy” utilizing Marie Kondo’s KonMari Method.

Tell us about what you do at Creating Space DC.

I help people declutter. I’m called a professional organizer, but if people that call me don’t say anything about needing to declutter first, before we organize, then I refer them to one of my organizing colleagues. My passion is helping my clients take a fresh look at what they have, where the clutter builds up, and why it is still there. Hopefully, we get some insights into why the clutter accumulated in the first place, which is a long-term solution rather than a quick fix. I am certified by Marie Kondo’s organization to coach people through the KonMari Method.

What is your background?

I was in the Navy and attended the Naval Academy in Annapolis, after which I served on a cruiser and an aircraft carrier. With Creating Space DC, I’m a Certified KonMari Master Consultant. To earn my certification, I took a three-day training in person, and after the training session we had to submit reports on practice clients for at least 30 hours until the organization felt satisfied that we were staying true to the KonMari Method. Then, I had a written test and an interview. I continue to submit reports and moved up through the certification levels, based on the number of hours put into teaching the KonMari Method. I now have more than 1,500 hours in client sessions to date.

How did you get interested in this business?

My interest started with the KonMari Method. I heard about it on Facebook from a friend who posted a picture of her stuff going out the door. Then I read Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up in the airport on the way home from a yoga retreat. It was powerful for me. By the time I arrived home, I had a few pages of notes full of things I wanted to get out of my house, so I did the process on my own home. I loved it so much that I created my own business helping other people through the method. I’m also interested in Japanese culture having lived in Japan and studying there in high school.

Did you have any insights when decluttering your own home?

I actually got stuck partway through the KonMari Method in the paper category. I wished I had a coach to help me through that. I ended up getting through it because I signed up for Marie Kondo’s training and had to complete my own tidying marathon.

What is the KonMari Method?

There are two things that distinguish the KonMari Method from other organizing methods. First is the idea of sorting and organizing by category and not by location. It’s not “I need help with the basement.” Rather, you look at categories, like books, clothes, and papers, for example. Once you start pulling the categories together, storage areas eventually get resolved. The second distinguishing characteristic is the very simple decision-making criteria: Does it spark joy? I have people touch each item and then ask themselves, “Does it lift my energy, or do I feel ‘ugh’ about it?” Then I start asking questions like “Would you pack it for a vacation?” or “When was the last time you used it?”

Marie Kondo has a particular KonMari folding method. Do you teach that?

Yes. I show my clients how to fold items and put them away using that method, but I don’t push that point if they don’t want to do it.

Do you help with downsizing?

Sometimes. But if people are thinking about moving, they have to work with me in advance. If they’re just about to move, it’s too late to do the type of editing we do.

How did you meet 123JUNK?

I joined the local NAPO chapter (National Association of Productivity & Organizing Professionals) where 123JUNK is a business partner. I heard about them at one of the monthly meetings, had a client who needed their services, and I suggested them. When I reached out, I got a great and quick response. They gave me an idea of pricing right away so I could tell my client during our session. The client used them and the job went well.

Do you have a favorite story about 123JUNK?

My client had ordered a lot of things online and had never even taken the items out of the boxes. There were piles of unopened boxes in several different rooms. I helped the client to open the boxes and when we did, there was a lot of cardboard to get rid of. We also decluttered the home and had a pile of both trash and donations. It filled half the garage. When 123JUNK came, they were able to take the cardboard for recycling, the trash and the donations all at one time. 123JUNK is always responsive—I get a quick response, which I appreciate. And after the job, they emailed to thank me for the referral.

What is your favorite part of your business?

I get to see a range of people, and everyone is so different. I love hearing their personal stories. Some people are extremely organized and have just accumulated items over the years and it’s time to go through them. Others are very disorganized and have lots of things. I enjoy the feeling of helping them get unstuck, at whatever place they are, and feeling like I’ve made a difference in moving their lives forward.

What region do you work in?

I live close to Union Station in Washington, DC and I like to work within a 25-mile radius from downtown DC.

What do you do when not working?

I’m passionate about yoga and taught yoga classes for years. I spend time with my family—my husband, my nine-year-old son, and a pandemic puppy. I also like traveling and am planning trips for later this year.

What’s one thing you would like people to know about Creating Space DC?

What I do takes a little more time than, say, a team that spends eight hours organizing everything in a house. I work one on one with clients to make decisions about decluttering. They have to be there and engage in the process. I consider this a longer-term solution. It doesn’t make sense to me to invest time and money into organizing the clutter nicely just to have it accumulate again. When my clients are engaged in the process themselves they get a chance to confront the underlying cause of the clutter. Because people tend to procrastinate, I’d encourage them to set a date with me, and that will help them get started.

Organizing a home

Top 5 Books for Organizing Your Home

Go to any bookstore or library and you’re faced with shelves of books offering helpful hints and systems for organizing your home. Here are some of the best-selling books on the subject:

Organizing Your Home Book Recommendations

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo

As a professional organizer, Marie Kondo created her own method for organizing. She suggests taking everything and putting it into one pile, then seriously sorting items to only keep the ones that you truly love. Even sentimental items can be culled, although she recommends taking time to accept closure in order to move on from those items. With fewer belongings and less clutter, Kondo claims that her KonMari method will “magically transform your life.” This #1 Best Seller was followed by Kondo’s second book, Spark Joy.

“We should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of.” –Marie Kondo

Make Room for What You Love, by Melissa Michaels

Melissa Michaels focuses on why you develop clutter in the first place, and defines how to make decisions about belongings and organize them in a way that offers a new perspective and makes them special. Like Kondo, she encourages readers to keep only the things they love right now, disposing of things from the past. Michaels’s blog, The Inspired Room, is a Better Homes & Gardens favorite. She is also the author of Love the Home You Have.

“The home that is supposed to be our sanctuary, our haven from the chaos outside, is full-to-overflowing with things that drown out the peace we are craving.” –Melissa Michaels

How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House’s Dirty Little Secrets, by Dana K. White

While most organization advice comes from organized people, self-confessed slob Dana K. White chronicles her failures and successes with her self-described “deslobification process,” ideas she has developed, tested and proven in her own home. With humor, she explains that cleaning is a series of ongoing pre-made decisions. White is also the author of Decluttering at the Speed of Life. Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff that helps readers end their paralyzing emotional attachments to stuff and make real decluttering decisions.

“My attention span and my available time and caring “whatsoever about this mess” are not guaranteed to exist in Later Land, so I can’t go there.” — Dana K. White

The Complete Book of Home Organization, by Tony Hammersley

“Less is more,” says Tony Hammersley in her #1 Best Seller. This book is pretty enough to display on a coffee table and pick up time and time again for quick-reading methods and tips on how to organize every space in your home. She offers a yearly 14-week challenge to help others conquer clutter and is the author of the popular blog A Bowl Full of Lemons that offers a variety of printable organizational tools.

“Clutter happens when we have too much stuff to realistically manage.” – Tony Hammersley

Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism, by Fumio Sasaki

Fumio Sasaki was a regular guy who eliminated stress by saying goodbye to everything he didn’t absolutely need, with remarkable results. He gained true freedom and focus, and felt a sense of gratitude for all that was around him. He shares his minimalist experience with tips on how you can reduce your belongings and enrich your life.

“Why do we own so many things when we don’t need them?” –Fumio Sasaki

Organize Your Home with 123JUNK

These books offer great advice on how to declutter and streamline your home for a happier and more fulfilling life. So what do you do with all the stuff you’re getting rid of? Call 123JUNK. We make it our business to make it easy for you to donate, dispose, or recycle items you no longer need or want. Like Marie Kondo says, “Just make piles.” Our uniformed team members will take your entire lot so you don’t have to go through the trouble of sorting out items again. We make it our job to sort through each pickup to pull out items that our charitable partners can use or sell to raise money, cull out recyclable items like electronics and metals and take them to the recycling center, and take only what is truly unusable to the landfill.

Organizing a home is never easy, but we’re trying our bit to make it a less challenging task. Call 123JUNK today to make your pickup appointment.

NY-Times-Best-Seller

Book Review: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

In the #1 New York Times and International best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, author and Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo leads readers through a step-by-step guide she calls her KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing and storing.

In the book, Kondo promises that once you perform her method of properly simplifying and organizing your home, you will never have to do it again. It must work—she reports that none of her clients have lapsed into their old habits, and continue to improve their spaces.

What differs in her approach is that while many organizing professionals advocate a section-by-section approach that never seems to end, Kondo’s KonMari Method espouses a category-by-category system where everything you own in that particular category is gathered and dealt with, either by storing, recycling or disposal. Categories include clothing, socks, books, papers, sentimental items, photos, and more.

Kondo explores motivations for messiness, psychological benefits of tidiness, and the creation of areas in your home that “spark joy,” (which happens to be the title of her next book released in January 2016.) She also shows readers how the living space affects the body, anxiety levels, relationships, and even your good fortune.

“A dramatic reorganization of the home causes correspondingly dramatic changes in lifestyle and perspective,” she says. “When you put your house in order, you put your affairs in order, and your past in order, too. As a result, you can see quite clearly what you need in life and what you don’t, and what you should and shouldn’t do.”

Let 123JUNK Help

123JUNK can also help you bring peace into your life, by hauling away the items (or junk) you no longer want or need and donating them to charities or disposing of them. Just give us a call!