'Hot Mess House': Cassandra Aarssen virtually helps a couple declutter their basement and make space
Organizing expert Cassandra Aarssen is famous for helping thousands of people with her organizing and decluttering skills. She's not someone who suggests drastic changes to declutter one's life but is someone who helps people identify their organizing patterns and suggests tweaks and changes accordingly. In the episode titled 'Hide The Clutter', Aarssen was seen helping Tim and Brandi organize a part of their house which they've lived in with their three daughters for 10 years.
One of Brandi's passions included indulging in crafting. She had everything that craft lovers would normally own. The fun part about it was that even though her entire house was cluttered, she had very well organized her craft material, in a way that she could just reach out for a thing of her choice without having to swim through multiple items. Another thing that she loved was gymming but all her equipment were scattered around and therefore, Brandi wanted to turn her basement into a craft area, a gymming space as well as use it to store things. Tim too could benefit from clearing out the basement as he'd mentioned earlier in the episode that sometimes it gets really overwhelming to see so much stuff lying around. Since the pandemic made him work from home, background options on zoom calls were the only saving grace for when he had virtual meetings.
Aarssen firstly tried to figure out their storage patterns and after a long conversation with the couple, she came to her conclusions. According to Aarssen, there are four distinct organizing styles, and they can all be associated with bugs. She sorts clients into ladybugs, crickets, butterflies, and bees. Here, in this case, Brandi was a bee, and Tim, a cricket. Aarssen's website gives a lot more details about the organizing patterns of bees and crickets.
Coming back to this couple, Aarssen tasked them with homework. She asked them to divide their basement into two parts using duct tape. She later suggested they segregate all the necessary items that they own on one side and things that they think they can donate on the other. The declutter expert was also very firm when she said anything that is untouched for 12 months is non-negotiable and needs to go to the "donate" pile. To help the couple and their family further, Aarssen also sent a foldable crafting dream box with multiple subsections within which Brandi could stock all her craft items and still have space that she could use for stowing something else, in a neat pattern. She also sent an organizing desk for Tim to add more functionality to his home office setup.
Catch the rerun of this episode at 3.30 am and for new episodes of 'Hot Mess House' tune in on Wednesday nights on HGTV.