Kitchen & Pantry Organization w/ Neat Method
Before Kate was born, I went into major nesting mode. Like MAJOR. Candidly, it was to the level where I stressed myself out. But looking back on it - even with the benefit of hindsight - I have no regrets! 🤷🏻 For me, the hassle of dealing with project after project was absolutely worth it in the end. I’m just the kind of person who hates when things are unfinished or disorganized, and I love when things are tidy. Getting all my projects done and everything in its place has made the transition into motherhood easier for me. 👍🏻
I mentioned it briefly in last week’s Kitchen Before & After post, but our home renovation went a bit sideways. Accordingly, there were a lot of odds and ends to finish up around the house. A couple spaces still had the home’s original flooring, some rooms had been painted the wrong color or were never painted at all, and all sorts of various projects had been left 90% completed. Once I hit my second trimester, I hit the ground running scheduling contractors to finish everything up. Obviously, I wanted everything done before Kate arrived so I didn’t have contractors in and out of our home with a newborn. It was a bit of a mad dash, but I made it happen! 💪🏻
In addition to construction-related things, one project I knew I wanted to tackle before baby was a complete organizational overhaul. And I mean every room. Post-reno, we never got around to properly space planning or organizing since the move in was rushed + I was recovering from foot surgery and had limited mobility. Then, life just got in the way!
Getting pregnant gave me the kick in the toosh I needed to get started again. 💃🏻
Starting out, I intended on organizing everything on my own. In my head, it seemed simple. I followed organizers on Instagram, had read Marie Kondo, and was somewhat familiar with The Container Store. I could do it! But as tends to happen, the construction side of things took longer than planned so that messed up my timeline. Not to mention, once I started looking at all our STUFF I got extremely overwhelmed!
Stuff. We had a lot of it. Then I had my baby showers, and we got more of it. More stuff. Where would all this stuff possibly go?! 😟
After stressing about it for a couple days, I decided to call in the experts. I’d run out of time and energy as I was well into my third trimester by this point. Sometimes you just need to know when to phone it in and outsource a project to a pro! That’s when Neat Method entered the picture.
Best. 👏🏻 Decision. 👏🏻 EVER. 👏🏻 As soon as Kelly w/ Neat Method came over to give me an estimate, I knew I’d made the right call. It was just a feeling of being in good hands, ya know?
I shared some of the behind the scenes of this process on my Instagram stories, and I received a lot of questions about how it worked and whether I was happy with how it all turned out. And how much it costs, lol. 😅 I’m not going to share specific cost numbers (and honestly, that’s going to vary depending on your space, needs and market), but I will share how the pricing works!
Here we go…
First, Neat Method comes over to access your situation. Shortly thereafter, they’ll provide an estimate broken down into two categories - service hours and product needs. As you might have guessed, the service hours is how much time it will take to finish a particular space. You pay the hourly rate of however many organizers they’ll need for your project. For my house, it was two lovely ladies working over 4 days. For perspective, we organized: the kitchen, pantry, butler’s panty, laundry room, master closet & bedroom dressers, master bathroom, garage, and nursery. The product category is an estimate (in dollars) of how much they’ll need to spend buying organizational products to complete the space.
Once you approve the estimate, then you get on the schedule. Now comes the fun part!
When they arrive, it’s time to take everything out of the cabinets and drawers for a clean slate. The ladies organized all our stuff into three separate piles: keep, donate, trash. Obviously, I had to provide input at this stage. Everything that’s being trashed (mainly expired pantry items) is disposed of and Neat Method takes your donations to Goodwill for you.
In the pictures below, you can see how things looked in progress…
Things get worse before they get better! HA!
Now that we’re left with only the items being kept, the ladies spend time analyzing your space and your stuff. Basically, they sit and stare for a while and discuss amongst themselves where everything should go. There’s actually a LOT to consider to make sure this is done properly. Like, you might be surprised… it’s not that easy!
This is definitely the stage of the project where I knew I’d made the right decision hiring the experts. The ladies came up with organizational solutions I never would have imagined on my own. The things you can do with a turntable! 🤯 There’s no way I could have executed as well or as quickly.
After space planning, that’s when product comes into play. And again, this is another moment where it really hit me how much time and headache they were saving me. Because the ladies are pros, they’re super familiar with alllll the organizational products on the market (Target, Ikea, Container Store, etc.). Once they know where things are going, they know exactly which products out there will work best for your space - literally off the top of their head!
Before shopping, they measured all our shelves and drawers to ensure everything would fit properly. Another point to make here… they choose product to fit the style of your home so it fits within your design aesthetic!
Now that everything was in its new place, it was time for us to “live in the space”. Aka use the kitchen like we would as usual… prepping, cooking, and cleaning. Inevitably, there are going to be things you move around. If memory serves me, we moved our oven mitts and swapped some of the drawers that held our cooking utensils.
The final step is to label. Obviously, you don’t want to do that step until you’re totally sure everything is in the spot it’s going to stay in.
And that’s all she wrote!
One question I got from a few people on Instagram is whether I felt like we’d be able to keep things organized after Neat Method left. So far (and it’s been about 2 or 3 months), we’ve done pretty well! Especially with the kitchen and pantry areas. We have made a bit of a mess with our closet and dressers, but it’s not too bad. I need to schedule Neat Method to come back and help us “tidy up” our spaces (which they can do for an hourly fee!), but I’m not going to do that until David and I have cleaned out our closets. We’ve got too many clothes and need to purge first!
Another question I received was whether it was worth the money. One THOUSAND percent yes. If you’ve got the money and are too busy to do it on your own, then do it! Honestly, even if you aren’t too busy to do it on your own, you should still hire it done. I promise Neat Method will do a better job than you! 😂 Not to mention, I wholeheartedly believe they saved me money on product. Based on past experiences, I’ve purchased the wrong product on many occasions (whether I bought the wrong thing altogether or didn’t measure properly, etc.).
This post sparked joy for me! I hope it does for you too and that maybe you’re inspired to tackle your own organizing projects! I’ll be sharing more of the spaces we completed with Neat Method in the future. 😘
Finally, I’ve linked some products for you below in case you’re interested in buying anything you see in this post for your own home.
PRODUCT LINKS
Photography by Dakota & Co.