A passion for keeping spaces neat

Just looking at the chaos on our tables and shelves at home is enough to make us exhausted. Most of the time, whatever resolve we’ve finally mustered to clean up our space easily dissipates.

For Issa Guico Reyes, seeing an entire room in a confused and disheveled state seems to give her more zest to tackle the overwhelming task of setting everything in their rightful place.

She has always been an organized person, the type who arranges her files in color so that she can access documents efficiently. Back then, all Reyes wanted to do was to share her obsession—which is keeping her home neat, organized and beautiful— with fellow neat freaks online, with the goal of blogging about her home hacks. To her surprise, people began coming up to her, telling her they need her help.

‘BEAUTIFUL ACCIDENT’

Three years, some 122,000 Instagram followers and a “Neat Obsessions” book later, Neat Obsessions, Reyes’ passion project-turned-business has gotten quite a following. Even celebrities turn to her for help whether it’s a busy kitchen that needs organizing or a walk-in-closet that is bursting at the seams and requires rearranging.

It was all, however, just a “beautiful accident.”

“It was a passion project turned profession,” said the mom of three. She had already given up her career as an HR practitioner and embraced being a full-time housewife.

“I was trying to figure out if there’s something else I can do so I started a blog,” shared Reyes. “When the business opportunity came in front of me, I just wanted to see what lies ahead given that organizing is something I am passionate about.”

To date, Neat Obsessions, a member of the International Organization of Professional Organizers, has helped restore order and neatness to about 300 Filipino homes—and counting. When the pandemic hit last year and they had to halt operations, Reyes pivoted to online consultancy. Doing so even expanded her reach beyond Metro Manila and nearby provinces. Now she has clients in the Visayas and Mindanao, and even as far as the United States and Dubai.

CUSTOMIZED APPROACH

But no household is the same and that is what she loves about Neat Obsessions, according to Reyes.

“It’s always different every time and that’s what I always look forward to. It depends on the client’s lifestyle, their dynamics as a family, their goals in life. That’s how we execute our projects,” she explained.

She sees to it that she gets to know her clients well so she can visualize how they move about their space. This, in turn, allows her to organize their stuff according to what is convenient and efficient for them. Careful thought is given to create an efficient layout, to make sure that a client is able to move with ease around that space.

Although a Konmari consultant-in-training, Reyes does not initiate decluttering right away. Her style involves a gentler, kinder approach, something that is tailored and can better help especially the overly sentimental Pinoy.

Contrary to what many of us assume, organizing and decluttering are two different things, Reyes pointed out.

“Decluttering is letting go of your things while organizing is fixing your mess. Definitely, you can be organized without throwing away your stuff, kasi aayusin mo lang naman yung kalat mo,” she continued.

A Psychology graduate, she understands very well that decluttering can be such an emotional task which can leave one incredibly overwhelmed. It has then become her quest to guide people who have been lost in their sea of clutter back to a renewed home.

‘HOMEWARD TECHNIQUE’

Reyes has developed a process called the “Homeward Technique.” Her first step is sorting, where the same items are put together and categorized. “But when you categorize it, you just have to see how your eyes see it. So if it’s a spoon, it’s a spoon. It’s not a spoon that you got on your wedding day,” she explained.

This step, according to Reyes, allows you to have a visual inventory of the things that you own which then leads to the next phase which is detaching.

“Once you have that inventory, the way you decide on things is now a little bit more assisted,” she said. Here, the process of elimination gets easier because you can now see which things are actually useful and important to you. The trick is to look at your things objectively and set aside the feelings attached to it.

Neat Obsessions, however, skips this step when the client is not around as it believes that the decision of keeping or letting go of things belongs solely to the owner of the space.

“But what it shows is that if you want to be organized, you can be organized without throwing away things,” she said.

The last step, rehoming, involves placing the things in their rightful areas in the house. This part entails commitment from the client because he or she has to ensure that the value of the reorganized space is preserved.

Since Neat Obsessions puts a system in place when organizing, all a client needs to do is stick to this. Each member of the household also needs to be empowered to keep the system that has been set up. This makes misplacing items more manageable and holds back clutter from taking over a space.

Reyes’ vision is for Neat Obsessions to turn everyone into a homemaker: “No matter who you are, no matter what age, whatever your practice is, everybody should accept that there is a role you need to play in your home.”