HOME | FAMILY
Does your home environment reflect your life priorities and values?
Does your home inspire you and your family to be more of who and how you wish to be?
In home optimization*, we listen to how you speak of your life priorities and values and discover how they can become more manifest through the way you craft your home environment and family systems.
Home optimization* services are for you if you can answer “yes” to any of these questions:
√ Do you wish your home felt more spacious or purposeful?
√ Do you have trouble finding things or knowing where to put things at the end of (or throughout) the day?
√ Would you like to see more collaboration from family members in home care?
√ Are you constantly moving piles from one place to another so that you can [use the dining table] [sit on the sofa] [have people over] [not trip over things] [etc.]?
√ Do you imagine a home/family life where you and your kids [make art together] [play games] [enjoy the outdoors] [have meaningful moments for connection and for solitude] [etc.] but, for some reason, that imagination is not translating into reality?
To inquire about home optimization services and to schedule a free consultation, please visit the Contact Page.
Want to know how I came to be a home optimizer? Click here.
TESTIMONIALS
“Bernardine was amazing!! After all our work, It was just wow to come home and see the effect – especially our transformed “mud room” [a small landing at the bottom of a flight of stairs] into something practical, functional and minimal and maintainable. Bernardine had a very calm but focused presence. She was great at directing the process, keeping me focused and organized and efficient. I just felt like everything took the right amount of time. Neither too much time getting oriented nor too little time to understand the problem… You could tell that she applied these principles in her own life and this was something that she knew through and through from personal experience. She had experience identifying which tasks might be easier than it seemed, and which might be harder. She’s very knowledgeable and had lots of methodology but was never pushy or condescending or judgmental.
She could tell that…we just wanted to live an organized, purposeful, uncluttered life. When I picked up an object that I did not know what to do with, she took the opportunity to tell me not what to do but how to think about what to do with it. She would ask me questions that would then lead me to the answer. In this way, I felt like I wasn’t doing something just for today, but I was preparing to learn how to do [my own organizing] for the future. My husband and I were able to use the skills and methods we learned from her to sort other areas in our home together — something we were not able to do before because our approaches were so different…I feel empowered. I could see what needs to get done now from start to finish and how to think through all the little steps along the way.”
– M.L, Brookline, MA
*Is this service the same as home organization?
Yes and no. A lot of times when people think of home organization, they think of buying nice storage baskets, maybe a new shelving system, perhaps taking inspiration from magazines and creating a “pinterest-worthy” home. The focus is often on doing something about their stuff, their things (or on replacing those things with “better” things). In home optimization, yes, your home will be more organized. It will flow better. You will like your “after pictures” better than your “before pictures”. Perhaps (but not necessarily) you’ll buy a few baskets or some hooks. Yes, we will deal with your stuff. But, no, our focus is not on “what else can I bring into my home to make it better” nor on making it impressive for a general audience. Rather, in our process of going through your stuff and listening to your life priorities, we discover what it is about your home—including the things and the people inside it—that already lends itself to crafting the home you wish for. We take what you have and what you know about yourself and your family—with all the gifts and challenges—and optimize your home so that it is freed from the things and ways that no longer serve you and enhanced by organizational flow that is purposeful and functional in a way that serves your inspiration, your family’s needs. Working together, you will gain a more organized home and skills and insights to build a framework for intentionality, maintenance, and rejuvenation moving forward.
You can read more about me on the about page, but you may also want to know
HOW I CAME TO BE A HOME OPTIMIZER
As a child, I always loved organizing and re-arranging my room. My mom tells me that from the age of 5, she never had to pack for me when we went on trips or when I started going to sleepaway camp. I knew what I needed and wanted to bring to make my journey comfortable and how to pack it effectively. At age 11 I got my first paid gig. I was watching my brother pack to move into his new life in a dorm, and I said, incredulously, “Is that how you’re going to pack?!” The conversation went like this: [brother:] “How else should I do it?” [me:] “Well, first I’d sort everything — how many shirts do you need…then I’d roll them and place them in like this…” [brother:] “Why don’t you pack for me?” [me:] “No, it’s your stuff, you’re the one going away.” [brother:] “I’ll pay you to pack for me.” [me:] “Okay.”
Since then, I’ve packed, organized, and optimized for friends and family just because I love doing it. Then, my friends starting offering to pay me or saying “if you don’t let me hire you, I’m just going to end up paying someone else” or “when are you going to start your home organizing business?” And then I decided to let people hire me and share with others this work that I love to do so much. So here I am!
Speaking personally, my family of 6 (me, hubby, 4 kids) live in a 1300 sf condo. We love where we live and yes, home optimization* is a regular part of our life. We have crafted spaces to do art, build and play, make music, have a home office, host overnight guests, and come in and out of the house easily, without a mudroom (yet lots of shoes, jackets, and backpacks!). We even have 3 different places where we can all eat together as a family (or eat apart in small groups, for times when just a little more intimacy can be lovely. After all, there are a lot of us!)
This is our home–a place of joy, rest, connection, and growth–and it serves us well.