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Community Corner

One Mom Makes it Her Mission and Career To Get Organized

Local Jamie Martin juggles the demands of motherhood and life as a professional organizer.

Jamie Martin's days are planned out almost down to the minute. Each day she knows exactly what is ahead of her for the rest of the week. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., it’s business and then afterward it's time to spend with her family.

But flipping the switch from work-mode to being a mother and wife can be difficult, since Martin’s workplace doubles as her home. Her home is also her office's headquarters, which ironically helps others balance their lives. It's called Destination Organization, where she helps clients with ways to conquer their clutter.

Juggling the two roles is not easy but Martin handles it through scheduling, time management skills and parenting perspective. In the end, she says the role of being a mom always come first.

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“Although I love being a professional organizer and find it rewarding because I enjoy helping people simplify their lives, being a mom is my top priority,” said Martin, a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers and the director of marketing of NAPO-Chicago. “I also enjoy nurturing Luke and watching him grow. It’s fun to see things through the eyes of a kid again. He’s a unique child and appreciates a wide variety of topics such as ancient cultures, mythology, vampires and zombies that he keeps me on my toes and teaches me things all the time.”   

Martin’s career path began in 1991 in the products management marketing field. Her company  moved its corporate offices to Florida in 1997 and Martin chose not to follow. Her husband had a contract job in Seattle prompting their move there in 1997. This was when she investigated the world of professional organization.   

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“I was there looking for different business ideas that could be home-based,” she said. “I came across organization because it was a natural fit for me. I did a little research into the business. It was difficult at the time how I would market this business because it was unheard of at the time. This was before HGTV and TLC had introduced this concept.”   

After the job ended 1998, the couple returned to Glen Ellyn and Martin worked in her field. In 2004, after leaving the corporate world behind, she had Lucas. It was then that she began to revisit the professional organization topic again. By this time, television programs about organizing spaces were popular, so in 2005, Martin opened her business.   As a consultant, she caters to all clients but also to two specific groups. One is stay at home moms who had professional careers.   

“A lot of the stay at home moms that I work with volunteer for everything,” she said. “Their kids are in tons of activities so I always say that they are ‘overcommitted’ with too much on their plate. Things at home tend to fall apart. I think a lot of my clients are in that category because their minds are stimulated by these other activities.”   

The other group is what Martin calls “serial entrepreneurs" people who create multiple businesses and work at them. They find office activities such as filing as mundane.   

“The whole office part is daunting for them,” she explained. “They’re not typically people who work well in those kind of tasks so I come in and help them get organized and suggest different people who can outsource their ‘boring’ office activities. A lot of them respond really well to that.”    

Martin works closely with her clients to tackle problem areas such as de-cluttering kitchen cabinets or entryways. Entrepreneurs, specifically, want to sort their papers through electronic or normal filing. She also helps them through a “mental de-cluttering” by transferring tasks and ideas by putting them in electronic devices like a Blackberry or the old-fashioned way with paper and pen and task management calendars.   

“They need a way to capture those ideas besides keeping them in their head which is what most of them do,” she said.     

With their new skills in hand and some motivation, Martin estimated that about 75 percent of her clientele maintain their organizing. In her home, she keeps things organized “just enough to make life simple and not complicated.”    

For those attempting to clear the clutter on their own, Martin suggests sorting items into similar categories, throw away things that are not needed and picking out containers or a closet system for storage.  

“One of the key things that I see clients not doing is labeling their containers,” she said. “Most people don’t do that so that means that anything goes. You could put whatever you want in a container.”   

Martin does carve time for herself by being a member of the DuPage Mompreneurs, a group of mothers who are running their own home-based businesses. As a mom and business owner, she doesn’t stretch herself beyond what she can do.    

“I try not to take on more than I can handle, which means saying ‘no’ at times to various opportunities that come up,” she said. “I also try to keep in mind that as my son gets older, he will be more independent and I will have more opportunity to do organizing.”         

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