Celebrating Women of the Professional Organizing Industry: Women’s History Month

The month of March celebrates the contributions women have made to history (or HERstory!), culture, and society.

In February 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued the first Presidential Proclamation declaring the week of March 8, 1980 as National Women’s History Week. Presidents after Carter continued to proclaim a National Women’s History Week in March until 1987 when Congress passed Public Law 100-9, designating March as “Women’s History Month.”

Between 1988 and 1994, Congress passed additional resolutions authorizing the President to proclaim March of each year as Women’s History Month. Since 1995, each president has issued an annual proclamation designating the month of March as “Women’s History Month.” President Biden followed suit on February 29th, 2024 and invited citizens to learn more at WomensHistoryMonth.org.

I’m not the President of the United States but I invite you today to learn more about one group of women and two individuals who have made historic and ground-breaking contributions to the professional organizing industry. There are so many women I could have profiled. I chose these three (and a *bonus* fourth) because I felt they were pioneers in the field of organizing. Their work has had a remarkable ‘ripple effect’ on the professional organizing industry and on those who have benefitted from their knowledge and efforts.

Where to begin? At the beginning, of course!

The APO 5: The Founders of NAPO

It all started in 1983, when a small group of women who all offered organizing services gathered in a Los Angeles living room to exchange ideas. As trailblazers in a new and up and coming industry, they recognized the value of sharing their knowledge and becoming a support system to one another. They called themselves APO, Association of Professional Organizers.

Two years later, APO formalized by electing officers, who later that year would be named as the founding members: Beverly Clower, Stephanie Culp, Ann Gambrell, Maxine Ordesky, and Jeanne Shorr. In 1986, APO changed its name to the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO).

What came in the decades afterward is remarkable. Thousands of members. Education and professional credentialing. Publicity initiatives. International relationships with related associations both domestic and international. All stemming from a meeting in one person’s living room.

Below, is a short video created in honor of the 30th anniversary of NAPO. In the few minutes that it plays, I heard three heartwarming quotes that echo the sentiments of why we celebrate Women’s History Month:

“We were all like sisters in this together.”

“We were women helping other women.”

“What made it all work was that five women came together to form a once-in-a-lifetime team.”

Thank you Beverly, Stephanie, Ann, Maxine, and Jeanne for coming together to dream and work together to create an organization that enabled women (predominantly) to start and grow organizing businesses that help bring order, calm, and efficiency to their clients’ lives.

Julie Morgenstern

In October 1998, Julie published her first book, Organizing From the Inside Out. In the book, she writes about how she had lived most of her life in a ‘constant state of disorder.’ That all changed when she had a baby and realized that if she didn’t get organized, her child would never see the outside of their home! Her daughter’s diaper bag was the first thing she successfully organized and she says that “it was truly the beginning of my path to organization.”

Julie began her business, TaskMasters in 1989 and soon thereafter created an organizing philosophy called ‘organizing from the inside out’ that focuses on one’s individual habits, needs, goals, and personality. She also invented an acronym for an organizing system now-famous in the organizing world called the S.P.A.C.E. system (Sort, Purge, Assign a home, Containerize, Equalize). I, as well as many other members of the professional organizing industry use this intuitive five-step system to help our clients get and stay organized.

I had the good fortune to train with and work for Julie at the very beginning of my career as a Professional Organizer back in 2001-2002. I learned many organizing and client management tips and techniques from her that I still use in my business today.

Julie was the recipient of the 2002 NAPO Founder’s Award and has continued to offer her organizing expertise on television, magazines, and in books on the topics of time management, workplace efficiency, and parenting.

Thank you Julie for creating an organizing system that makes the art of getting organized easy to understand and easy to apply to one’s own life. Thank you for trusting me with your clients as a professional organizing newbie and for sharing your knowledge and experience so that I, too could help people live an organized life.

Judith Kolberg

Judith Kolberg started FileHeads, her professional organizing company in 1989 and is credited with launching a field of professional organizing that addresses the needs of those who are chronically disorganized (CD). She founded the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization, which later become the Institute for Challenging Disorganization (ICD).

She has authored and co-authored books on the topics of ADD, Chronic Disorganization, Emotional Labor, Organizing in the ‘Era of Endless,’ and Disaster Preparedness–all topics related to the professional organizing industry. Even though I do not work with clients with ADD or Chronic Disorganization, I own a copy of one of her earliest publications, Conquering Chronic Disorganization. I was advised to add it to my professional bookshelf because the ideas, techniques, and examples in her book would not only help a chronically disorganized client, but would work for most people wanting to get organized. And those people who advised me–were right! My favorite strategy in the book is called: “Friends, Acquaintances and Strangers” which I have successfully used with my clients for years to help them declutter.

Judith is the recipient of the 1996 NAPO Founder’s Award and continues to be a future-focused trend strategist in the field of organizing.

Thank you Judith for your foresight and on-going dedication to our profession.

Bonus – Joyce Dorney

You may not recognize her name but if you’ve been ‘in the biz’ for a while, you’ll recognize what she created for our industry. Joyce Dorney was the Editor-in-Chief and the woman behind the idea of Organize Magazine.

I recall balancing my not-yet-toddler son on my lap while checking email one day in 2007 and there it was–a short note from a woman named Joyce who was starting a magazine about organizing. She had done a Google search and found me through an article I had written for my website (before I started blogging) on the topic of organizing on a budget. She was looking for someone to author the recurring ‘Organizing on a Shoestring’ section of the magazine and I jumped at the chance. Joyce gave me the opportunity to write for her ‘baby’ and I could not have been more grateful.

Although the magazine stopped publication a few years later, Joyce was a pioneer. She saw a need in the market and had a vision for filling it. She was quoted as saying,

“I looked and I looked and I looked and I looked, and it [a magazine dedicated to organizing] just wasn’t there,” Dorny said. “And kind of in this moment probably of insanity, a lot of people would say, I thought, well I could start an organizing magazine.”

It’s in that moment of ‘insanity’ when ideas are born and turned into reality. Thank you Joyce for your vision, your passion, and for bringing a magazine all about organizing to those of us in the professional organizing industry and to the general public.

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Over the course of their careers, the NAPO 5, Julie Morgenstern, and Judith Kolberg have all won the NAPO Founder’s Award. The NAPO Founders’ Award “is presented to a NAPO member, or a group of NAPO members acting in concert, for outstanding innovation, inspiration, and creativity both within, and outside of, the field of professional organizing and productivity consulting.”

The achievements and contributions of these women will be felt for decades as the professional organizing industry continues to grow and flourish. Thank you NAPO 5, Julie Morgenstern, and Judith Kolberg, and Joyce Dorney for making organizing (HER)story.

References:

NAPO History
A Proclamation on Women’s History Month, 2024 (The White House)
Women’s History Month (National Women’s History Museum)
Call to Order: Local Mom to Launch National Magazine About Organizing

 

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Categories: Basic Organizing Principles, Clutter, Organizing on the Cheap, Organizing Quote, Uncategorized