Southern Home Organizers

Think of Melinda Anderson as an officer on the front line of the war on clutter. Her company, Southern Home Organizers, helps businesspeople and homeowners file away what they need, get rid of what they don't, and create an organizing system that works for them.

"If you can get a handle on being organized," Anderson says, "cutting out the extra steps and making routine tasks go more smoothly, it leaves more time for you." That is time her customers use to concentrate on business or what she calls "the fun stuff."

Anderson honed her organizing and de-cluttering skills during her family's seven job-related moves over 11 years. She found there's a simple logic to organization, and once an office or home is organized in a way that makes sense, it's so much easier to keep it that way. Anderson began applying her expertise as friends and neighbors asked for help - eventually realizing she could turn her skills into a business. She began Southern Home Organizers part-time in July 2004 and turned it in to a full-time enterprise by the end of that year.

Business focus: a 50-50 split

Anderson says her business is evenly divided between moving services and organizing. She works with real estate agents getting homes ready to sell, and with relocation companies helping transferred executives move in - enabling her clients to concentrate on the new job without being distracted by unpacking. Real estate agent Gail Laney with RE/Max Greater Atlanta in Duluth gives Anderson's move-in services to some customers as a housewarming gift.

"My clients think it's a great service, and it makes me look good," Laney says. "It's part of my repertoire of being a better agent."

The other 50 percent of Anderson's business comes from "busy people trying to catch up with paper." Her clients find paper piling up on every surface, and they are ready for a new filing system or a complete office reorganization but don't know where to begin.

Disorganized? Help is available

"There's still a stigma about admitting you're not organized," Anderson says. However, she credits the popularity of TV shows featuring professional organizers with helping to ease that perception. Online Web searches make it easy to locate a professional organizer. Anderson credits most of her business leads to online referral services, including the National Association of Professional Organizers (www.napogeorgia.com).

One such customer is Paul Kopp, owner of PK Consulting in Lawrenceville. Kopp calls himself "a technical person, not an organizer," and hired Anderson after interviewing several organizers he found through a Google search.

"Melinda was the one I hit it off with," Kopp says. "We have a similar business philosophy. She's allowed me to focus on what I do rather than what I don't do."

Anderson helped Kopp organize his office and set up a filing system, even creating a file for "to file later." She comes back occasionally for touch-ups to keep the office under control.

"It's helped with my business contacts, my organization and my general sanity," Kopp explains.

Setting up her own shop

Earlier this year Anderson moved her business into an office in downtown Dacula, near the historic district. She's looking to get more involved with the community, to "put down roots after all those moves," she explains. She says it helps that she's close to Dacula's high school and middle school; her kids can walk to her office after school. The office also makes it easy to ship out the organizing products she plans to begin selling on her Web site - and perhaps through a storefront in her office as well. It's all part of her service: understanding what her customers need and providing it, so they can get out from under clutter and just enjoy life.