I had an epiphany about consistency a few weeks ago. I had just finished working out with my wonderful personal trainer Kate Saynor in my one non-negotiable exercise session of the week. I had just achieved another personal best, and as I stretched we chatted about the ups and downs of the last 12 months, and how with consistency, you can still make progress towards your goals. Back story I’ve been working out with Kate for a few years now, during which time my ability (willingness?!) to commit to regular exercise has fluctuated wildly. I managed to get up around the 4-5 sessions a week at one ..read more

The winds of change have been blowing hard for The Ship Shape Shoppe… after a tumultuous 2023, the time has come for a new era of business. I’m so proud to FINALLY announce that I’ve renamed the business, and from here on out we’ll be known as The Decluttering & Organising Co. I had been rethinking The Ship Shape Shoppe as a business name for around 18 months before I landed on The Decluttering & Organising Co (The D & O Co. for short!). The Ship Shape Shoppe was very personal - the alliteration made me smile, but it also represented a 5 year vision that never came to fruition. As ..read more

We recently suffered a catastrophic tech failure. Our hard drive storage failed and died, taking with it about 15 years of digital memories. Poof, gone, just like that. When I first realised, my heart beat a little faster, I asked why, and how, and wanted to apportion blame to someone, anyone. And then an eery calm came over me as I realised that nothing could be done. Knowing why and how and pinning the tech failure on someone’s back wouldn’t bring the photos back, so the most productive option right now was to take stock of what we still had, and where it was kept.    Was ou ..read more

A personal essay reflecting on stress, motherhood and running a business, and the realisation that I was simply not thriving. I’ve been a woman on the edge these last few months, and I hadn’t quite realised how on the edge I was until yesterday. I’ll circle back to that in a moment. First I need to recap, to order my thoughts. If you thought this was just a blog about decluttering and organising, you were wrong. LOL. If my posts sometimes read like a journal entry, it’s because they are. Writing these words helps me to process and understand this busy old life of mine, and I share them because ..read more

Organising busy spaces with lots of fiddly components (like craft supplies) can be overwhelming. Follow these guidelines to reduce feeling overwhelmed when you DIY your home organisation. It's rare for me to work on two similar spaces in one week. One of the things I love about my job is the variety it brings me. And yet this week served me up two very different crafting areas to organise; the first project was creating a craft cupboard for a family with three children, and the second was setting up a craft area within an office for an adult crafter. Even though the spaces to organise and the ..read more

I was working with a lovely decluttering client last week and we were making excellent progress after about 1.5 hours together. I had a couple of my large bags filled with stuff to be donated, and our piles of things of things that had been sorted and required action were in excellent shape. (In case you are wondering, the sorted piles were called "Stuff to sell", "Offer to my sister", "Send to school", "Requires action", "Kids to decide", plus a few more.) We came to a stack of magazines, which had been kept for artistic inspiration, and I could immediately sense a shift; my client was a ..read more

The topic of storage units comes up often when I'm working with clients. I think there naturally comes a moment when the process of decluttering feels a bit hard, and the solution seems to be to hire a storage unit. Surely if we are trying to make space in our home, moving some stuff OUT of the home makes sense, doesn't it?  You might be surprised to hear me say Yes. But also No. Hear me out.  For me, it is an obvious solution in certain circumstances - for example selling or renovating your home. If you have a comfortable level of stuff in your home for daily life and aren't fe ..read more

Jo is a recent addition to The Ship Shape Shoppe. We’ve worked on two client projects together, and I found Jo lovely to work with. She gets down to work quickly, and has excellent ideas about how to organise spaces. She is fast and efficient, but also just a kind, good person. We've spent 3 hours in the van together travelling to and from clients' homes, so we've had plenty of time to get to know each other! It's taken me 2+ years to find the right person to join me and work with my precious clients. I receive 2-3 enquiries every month from people looking for work, but I am very careful about ..read more

I've been a professional organiser for 4.5 years now, helping people around New Zealand declutter and organise their homes. In that time, I reckon I've come across three distinct decluttering personality types - I thought for a bit of fun, I'd share those types with you, plus some insights into what each type should watch out for when working on their decluttering projects.  The Tortoise Slow and steady is the name of the game for you. You’re methodical, in absolutely no rush to finish the job and find that “chipping away” at projects a bit at a time is an effective way for ..read more

Something that I see often with my clients is things overflowing from a designated space into other areas of the home. Think - towels overflowing from the jam-packed linen cupboard to take up space in the spare room's wardrobe; cans of peaches that don't fit in the pantry being tucked into the garage; and of course clothes that don't fit in the wardrobe taking up space in the laundry, the spare room and the kids' bedrooms. (OK, I confess - I'm guilty of that last one as well! Our shared wardrobe is tiny!) One simple way to combat this for most* categories in your home is to introduce ..read more