Megan Arthurs, TV home organizing expert and founder of H:OM Organizing, knows the decluttering process involves a lot more than just sorting things into piles. It’s about our overall well-being.
By Martha Uniacke Breen
Professional organizer Megan Arthurs understands there’s a lot more to the decluttering process than simply choosing what to keep and what to discard. The stuff we tend to collect in our homes can have profound implications for our overall emotional health.
As founder of the evocatively named H:OM Organizing and a frequent TV guest expert, Arthurs helps viewers and clients navigate the sometimes thorny process of going from disorder to clutter-freedom. Your home, she says, should be your safe place, the place where you feel most in control; and an orderly, well-organized environment can have a significant effect on your wellbeing.
Megan didn’t arrive at her calling in the conventional way. She comes from a fine arts background and spent the first part of her life as a professional dancer, eventually earning a master’s degree in dance. But by age 26, she says, “I got to a point where I felt there was a different calling, in something other than dance. I wanted to get into something entrepreneurial.” Organizing was a natural choice, since she’d had a knack for it since she was a little girl, and she discovered there was a gap in this kind of service in her part of the GTA.
The timing – the beginning of the pandemic – could have been risky to launch a brand-new business, but in fact it proved to be opportune: people, forced to stay home, were having to figure out how to carve home offices out of cluttered kitchens and bedrooms, or simply got tired of staring at piles of junk. The company quickly took off; today, H:OM employs
a staff of five, has earned awards that include Sagen Next Generation Leader of the Year Award for The Oakville Awards for Business Excellence, and serves clientele across the GTA and beyond.
Along with decluttering, Megan and her team offer complete home organizing services as well, which for many of us is just as challenging. “Once the clutter is cleared, we create a system in the space by giving all of the items a ‘home’ and ensuring everything is visible, accessible, and aesthetically pleasing,” she explains. “Many of our clients are young, growing, and very active families, and time is not on their side. They really benefit from having organizational systems in the home, to help with ease, flow and routine.”
Not long after she launched her firm, Megan came to the attention of Jennifer Singh of She’s Newsworthy Media, a PR coach who specializes in helping women entrepreneurs land on TV. Singh helped her book her first TV appearance on CP24 Breakfast, offering advice on spring cleaning during lockdown, which led to landing appearances on morning shows like Global News Morning, Breakfast Television, CHCH Morning Live, and others. Nowadays, Arthurs is CTV’s resident organizing expert, and regularly appears on The Good Stuff with Mary Berg and CTV Your Morning.
“I love doing TV,” she says. “It appeals to the performer in me – I am a former dancer after all! – and I love being able to share my message with the world.” She particularly enjoys the buzz that comes from working with creative people both in front of and behind the camera.
It may have been her artistic bent that, early on, helped her become attuned to the emotional aspects of organizing. She freely acknowledges the basic decluttering process is simple: you take items, one at a time, and place them into one of four piles: keep; toss/recycle; donate; and relocate (to another room). Then dispatch each pile to the trash, donation centre, or wherever it’s meant to go. But to leave it at that ignores the indecision and even fear that the process can generate, and the reason why so many of us put it off for so long.
And yet, procrastination usually just makes things worse. “Sometimes, something as simple as a disorganized household can cause tension and alter your emotional wellbeing for the worse. We’ve all had experiences where we didn’t feel in control of our environment, and that can be very stressful.”
It’s a very common feeling, she goes on, to have difficulty letting go of things. “We tend to hang on to things for all kinds of emotional reasons,” she observes. “Maybe it’s a gift that someone gave you that you don’t like but feel guilty getting rid of; or something that just doesn’t work for your life anymore but has strong memories.”
But, as she points out, there’s another way to look at all of this. “Remember that decluttering can also be very powerful. By doing this, you are gaining control of your environment and creating space for the future.” Growing piles can quickly become overwhelming, and by tackling the clutter you are, in a very real sense, reclaiming your life back.
All well and good, but where does one start? Arthurs has a simple, enticingly reasonable suggestion: start small. “Pick one drawer, one shelf or even just one pile, and organize that. Then the next day, do another. That way you make it doable, and you’ll begin to see results.” Sure, you might feel some feels, but in small doses, and before long the experience will seem less intimidating.
Conquering accumulated clutter, however, is only half the battle. “Many people struggle with clutter because they haven’t gotten into a routine of organizing,” she says. To help keep your home from getting out of control again, she recommends a process called habit-stacking.
“It’s a way to create a new habit, by ‘stacking’ it on to a habit you already have,” she explains. “For example, you could organize for five minutes every night before you brush your teeth.” Eventually it will become a routine, and will help you keep clutter – well, more or less – under control.
“Organizing is ‘deep’ work,” says Megan. “It often brings up a lot of emotion and psychological issues. If you’re struggling to let go of something, it can often be an indicator of issues deep inside, maybe even from childhood. In a way, it can help you know yourself better and even grow.
“It’s not really just about piles or baskets. It’s about people’s lives, as we all go through changes, our good, beautiful and hard times. It’s about life.”
