Testimonials

I have employed Mary Martone’s organizing services several times over the last few years.  Each time, I’ve been extremely pleased with the results of her work-and pleasantly surprised at how painless the process of organizing can be, with the right help.

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The first time I hired Mary, I was clearing out a room to be transformed from a child’s bedroom into a home office. She quickly assessed the space and set up a sorting system that helped us to clear out the room much more quickly than I’d expected. Where I’d imagined packing up boxes of my son’s stray toys and clothing, and simply moving them into his new room, Mary saw the opportunity to greatly reduce the clutter that had long bothered both me and my son. In less time than I’d expected to spend packing up and moving items, we packed up and moved what he still needed-and stored or donated an almost equal amount of accumulated “stuff.” The result was a great new bedroom and a clean and neat space I was able to turn into an office.

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I lacked the time and energy to tackle my clutter, so I asked Mary to come in and help me reorganize, which she did in a single afternoon. Many of her suggestions from that day have been incorporated into how I manage my space now, greatly reducing the recurrence of out-of-control clutter.

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When my mother passed away in 2005, Mary was the first person I thought of asking to help me with the overwhelming task of clearing out my mother’s home. Clearing out a loved one’s belongings while grieving is a difficult process to do alone; at the same time, it’s also difficult to entrust something so emotionally loaded to another person. To make matters worse, my mother was a packrat. Her two bedroom home was overflowing with paper, clothes, photographs, kitchen supplies and enough furniture to furnish several homes. The process of clearing out the house was not brief, and had to be staggered over many months because the house was in another state, but the work went much faster with Mary’s help. Mary was respectful of the complicated process of going through my mother’s belongings, and helped me to think clearly about what I could sell or donate, and what I needed to keep temporarily or permanently-as well as how to organize what I was keeping to minimize the clutter in my own home. Mary helped me clear out the entire house for sale-all while being a sensitive and compassionate companion in the emotional arduous process of going through the material remnants of my mother’s life. In addition to helping me prioritize and organize during that process, Mary also helped me plan and then oversaw a large estate yard sale. I know that if I had not had her assistance, that event would have ended with yet more work in putting away things that were not sold, and my physical and emotional exhaustion would have led me to throw things together in a haphazard way.

Mary has also been extremely helpful when I’ve needed assistance with filing and organizing the tremendous amount of paperwork that has been generated by the administration of my mother’s estate.

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I highly recommend Mary Martone. She approaches organizing with her own strong sense of order and a heart full of understanding for how difficult it is for most people to maintain their own ideals of neatness and organization. As a parent and a person with a full life, she is very well aware of how difficult it can be to manage all the “stuff” that comes into our lives every day. Her incredible organizing skills are well-matched by her patience and compassion. I would absolutely use her services again.

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My partner and I have lived in our apartment for nearly three years, but never truly felt as though we’d made it into a home. We’re both busy, and had always meant to organize the space and make it more comfortable, but the project seemed overwhelming and we didn’t know where to begin. We are two people (plus a cat) sharing a relatively small one-bedroom apartment in an unfinished house with no basement storage. Soon we were faced with overflowing closets and no distinction between working and living spaces (my partner is an academic, and spends a great deal of time working from home). It was intensely frustrating.

Mary stepped in the moment she heard me complaining about our overstuffed storage closet. She helped us deconstruct the accumulated junk, sort out and organize what we needed to keep, and carted away what we realized we could very easily live without. Suddenly there was room in the closet, and a system in place! We jumped at the opportunity to have her take on the rest of the apartment, and she did it: in one day, she completely made over our living room. She created a suitable, separate, office space for my partner, reorganized the bookshelves, and repurposed an antique secretary into a letter/mail station and display case for our knickknacks, allowing me to get rid of an unnecessary desk and free up a lot of space. Following her lead, we also rearranged the bedroom and cut our stash of magazines tremendously.

The new living space is exactly what we’d hoped it would be, but could never envision ourselves, and the system has proven sustainable now for months. Mary provided the direction and tireless encouragement we needed, even through the drudgery of sorting through ten years of academic paperwork. She has an intuitive sense for where furniture would best fit in the room, and she knows exactly when to push (“is this something you’ll ever use again?”) and when to postpone a decision. And, unlike many interior specialists, she is very budget-minded and an expert at finding innovative uses for existing items, rather than spending unnecessarily. I have no doubt that this is her calling and would recommend her highly to anyone.