 |
Baltimore
MD Professional Organizer
|
Why Organized! by Romanic®?
Help Center
Charities
History of Organized! by Romanic®:
Why I became a Professional Organizer:I grew up in a cluttered home in a very small town in northwestern Pennsylvania with a lot of lake-effect snow from October through March. Mom is an artist, and Dad restores antique cars. Because they are both highly creative people, I grew up valuing the artist in all people. However, I was also embarrassed to let anyone come into the cluttered home in which I grew up, so I know from first-hand experience how bad it can feel to not be able to invite anyone into your home. As a young girl, I was a member of 4-H, where I learned to sew and to cook. I was one of the first girls in my high school to take wood shop and metal shop. I am the first one in my family to go to college. I worked full-time to pay my own way through college because my parents did not have the money to pay for me to go to school. It took me an extra year, but I earned a Bachelor of Science in Education and graduated magna cum laude from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. I later pursued, but never finished, a master's degree in Counseling at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. During college, I was a Resident Advisor in my college dorm. I was an interior and exterior painter. I worked with a lawn service cutting grass. I served food in a cafeteria. I was a cleaning lady and a baby sitter. I was a house-sitter for professors who were on sabbatical. I worked as a front desk clerk in a hotel. I worked as a server in several restaurants. I worked as a dining room supevisor/hostess in a restaurant. I married “Mr. Meticulous” after college and went from the cluttered home in which I grew up to the opposite end of the scale. Mr. Meticulous had to have the coffee cups he collected on business trips in the “right” order in the cupboard. Even though I am organized, it was impossible to live up to the standards that he set for himself. After 6 ½ years of trying to make our marriage work, I left Mr. Meticulous, and I am all about balance now. I have served as a deacon in my church, Saint Mark's Lutheran in Baltimore, MD. Serving as a deacon means being called to “a quiet ministry of service,” and that is very much how I view what I do as a professional organizer. I have watched countless clients move from not being able to let me in the door on our first visit to inviting their friends and family into their home for the first time in many years. I truly understand that clients find themselves in a mountain of clutter for many different reasons, so in compassion, I just roll up my sleeves, dig in, and clean up the mess. I make no effort at all to tell anyone about my faith -- I let the way I live my life do that for me. Hobbies/Interests:John and I are into antique cars. We spend sunny afternoons out in one of the old cars. John has a 1917 Model T Ford, a 1929 Model A Ford, and a 1937 Packard. I have a 1962 MG Midget that still needs to be restored. We like to go to antique car shows, auctions, and flea markets. We also had a large koi pond until the end of the summer in 2005. It just got to be too much work for us to keep up with. I don't have a boat, but I love being out on the water any chance that I get. When I am not out in an old car or organizing someone's home, I can usually be found outside relaxing in my flower garden. 3-Mile Haunted Hay Ride Volunteer:John and I used to host a huge Halloween costume party every year, but we decided it was too risky to have so many people in costumes on the property when the party was crashed the last year that we had it. The following spring, I met John Frank, the Director of the Howard County Living Farm Heritage Museum at the home of one of my clients. The client’s father had collected and hoarded a lot of tools and equipment that she was donating to the museum. I was there cleaning out her father’s bedroom after he had passed away. I didn’t think much about the museum until a few months later when I was in the home of a different client. She had a LOT of old spices in old tins, but she did not want to let me get rid of them. She said, “they’re still good!” I replied, “No, Ma’am, they are old leaves and seeds, which means they decay and become compost.” She said she didn’t care that she wanted to keep the old spices. Suddenly, I remembered meeting Mr. Frank, so I asked my client if I could donate her old spices and the tins they were in to the Howard County Living Farm Heritage Museum, and she let me do it. When I went to the museum to donate those spices, Mr. Frank gave me a quick tour, and when I spotted a boarded-up 2-story house, I said, “Wow! That would make a great haunted house!” He said, “We’ve always wanted to do that here, but we just don’t know how to go about haunting it.” I told him about our Halloween party problem and that we had all kinds of props we could use but that we didn’t know the first thing about the logistics of hosting a large event for the public. Mr. Frank said that the museum was very able to handle, parking, refreshments, and so forth. We learned that we could not host an indoor haunted house in 2009 because the farm museum needed to raise over $100K to install sprinklers in the buildings. So, our haunted house morphed into a 3-Mile Haunted Hay Ride. The first one was a small success in spite of being rained out 6 out of 6 nights. On the last 2 nights it was just drizzling, so we went ahead with the ride and pulled in over $1500 for the museum. In 2010, the 2nd Annual 3-Mile Haunted Hay Ride was one of the biggest fundraisers the museum had that year! We raised over $7600 for the museum. In 2011, we are hoping to find other companies that will offer donations to sponsor the 3rd Annual 3-Mile Haunted Hay Ride. To thank them for their donation, we will list them as a sponsor on the flyers that we hand out at the Howard County Fair and Farm Heritage Days. The farm museum gets every penny that we raise, and we are really looking forward to the day when we have raised enough to have an indoor haunted event in addition to the outdoor haunted hay ride. If your business would like to sponsor the hay ride, please be sure to put a note on the memo line of your check that it is for the Haunted Hay Ride and make it payable to the Howard County Antique Farm Machinery Club, Inc. The Centennial High School National Honor Society students and Cub Scout Pack 456 Den 2 (and their parents) from Sykesville, MD along with lots of fellow Antique Farm Machinery Club members volunteered to help haunt the hay ride. If you have a group of folks who would like to volunteer to help us haunt, please . We have had volunteers ranging in age from 8 to 80+ at both the first and second hay rides. If you do nothing else, please come out to just enjoy the 3rd Annual 3-Mile Haunted Hay Ride fundraiser for the Howard County Living Farm Heritage Museum. Favorite Quotations:“SUCCESS: To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, that is to have succeeded.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson “Spread the gospel to all the world — and if necessary, use words.” — St. Francis of Assisi “Early to bed, early to rise; work like hell and advertise.” — A guest on the Tonight Show  |
