A Look Back At National Organising Week 2017!
National Organising Week (NOW)
National Organising Week is an annual initiative led by APDO, a thriving professional community with over 250 accredited experts across the UK and internationally.
The aim of NOW which takes place annually in November, is to inspire people to think about the clutter they are living with and take action to do something about it. Although APDO members provide one to one support all year round, it was wonderful to showcase their passion and enthusiasm to inspire the UK (& beyond!) to organise homes, minds and lives.
As APDO reflects on 2017, NOWÂ was surely one of the highlights. This blog post looks back at the range of activities which took place, the camaraderie between members and the new connections forged.
Donate-a-Day to Charity
This is a brilliant initiative which started in 2016. It gives APDO members the opportunity to volunteer their time and expertise to a worthy charity. Three official charity days took place during NOW 2017, with other more informal ones occurring through the actions of inspired members.
Yorkshire
Four enthusiastic APDO members donated a day of their time to the charity Saint Michael’s Hospice in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.Fiona Bennett (Simplify Your Home), Hannah Young (Revive Your Space), Kate Ibbotson (A Tidy Mind) and Miriam Osner (The Decluttering Queen), donated their time to support the Saint Michael’s Bilton store, which had recently seen a change in staff and a new recycling provider, resulting in a back log of donations building up.Retail Operations Manager, Rob Watson said:
"I have to say how grateful both myself and the team are for the hard work that was put into making the store a tidier, more organised and safer environment for them to work in. Hopefully this will give them a good basis to work from and continue with the systems that you have put in place."London
A large team of APDO members met up to re-organise the stock room in TRAID’s Wood Green charity shop and were certainly a force to be reckoned with as they worked together to get the most out of the day for the clothing charity.Isabelle Lamy (Idea for your Space), Katherine Blackler (SortMySpace), Liz Aitken (Carefully Sorted), Tracy Muir (Support to Sort), Shula Levy (Out of Space), Chloë Howat (Declutter with Chloe), Sam Hofer (Untangled), Juliette Harding (Tulips Decluttering Service) and Marcella Caricasole (Think Tidy) pooled their ideas, energy and creativity - and had a lot of fun along the way!Retail Manager, Rodrigo Flores said:
“The difference in our restock process is incredible. We weren’t digging through numerous cartons to get stock ready for the shop floor. Giving instructions to staff became far simpler as the stock was clearly visible. The time we spent doing the re-stock reduced down to 3 hours instead of the previous 8 hours so we could open up to customers again by lunchtime. What’s also great is that all the empty racks now upstairs are ready and waiting for us to line up the next re-stock onto. We can do that at our leisure before the restock is scheduled in January and save ourselves time and stress again then! Thank you APDO. You certainly got us sorted!â€
