5 Things I Learned From Professional Cleaners and Organizers!

With the holidays approaching something that is typically on my mind from September onward are the holidays and the season of gift-giving! I have to be one of the most difficult people to shop for because with the nature of my job, I am gifted so many wonderful products and other than that, anything I have my eye on I will usually buy for myself! But, one of the greatest gifts that I could ever imagine for myself (especially as a busy parent!) is a clean and organized house.

I’m so grateful for all of the help we have with the kids, around the house and farm, but since our lives are so busy and chaotic I felt as though I could never get our house as clean and as organized as I would have liked for it to be. Last year, I had the pleasure of working with the incredible team at Go Clean Co, at that time they had reached a million followers and we thought it would be a really great cross-promotional opportunity for both of us to partner up.

So, their team traveled from Calgary to our house shared lots of behind the scenes on how dirty our house actually was, and in exchange, they cleaned our home and I kid you not, the transformation was absolutely mind-blowing! We are so lucky to get our house cleaned once a week and I am so grateful for that, but Go Clean Co really specializes in those deeeep cleans, I’m talking every nook and cranny of your house. From the dishwasher filter to moving furniture around, they do it ALL!

In my opinion, there are so many incredible benefits from doing a good deep clean on a home (whether you do it yourself or invest in someone to take it on for you), I personally feel as though it elevates my overall mental health and sense of wellbeing. Not to mention, I find that it gives me more clarity on a day-to-day basis and makes me feel so happy knowing that we are taking care of our home! It was such a blessing on so many levels to have Go Clean Co here to help us, it was truly a life-changing experience!

One of the things about our home that is unique and maybe unlike others is that not only is it a busy household with two kids, two dogs, Justin and myself, but our home also doubles as our place of business! In fact, it’s where we do about 99.9% of our photoshoots! You may be thinking, but don’t you have an office for that? Well, yes, but most of the shoots happen at the house because we have more variety here versus shooting at the office. In addition to that, we also get quite a few parcels and packages delivered to our home for various work projects from partnerships to The Jilly Box! Many of the items that are sent are required for me to test out so we have to keep them here at the house. That’s right, I will never add a product in the Jilly Box or partner with a brand that I don’t truly love, which is why I love to test them around the house for a while before I give it my final stamp of approval! It sounds like a great problem to have, but naturally, the house becomes cluttered. I never thought that I would be saying this but sometimes all of the products do get overwhelming and there has just never been a spot in the house to organize all of it. Not to mention, in 2020 we were at home more than we have ever been and it just started to feel like it was worn down and bursting at the seams with too much stuff.

With all that being said, in 2021 I reached out to Go Clean Co to see if they would be interested in doing another deep clean, and not only were they interested, they were bringing reinforcements, AKA the Go Simplified team with them! They proposed to send an organizing team, Go Simplified, first for a few days and then to follow it up with the Go Clean Co special, a big deep clean. So I jumped on the phone with Megan from Go Simplified and she suggested that if we want to do this right we would need about 4 days to organize every nook and cranny (or it is crook and cranny? LOL!) of our house. Who’s going to say no to that!?

It was such an honour to have the Go Simplified team at our house a few weeks ago to work their magic. We ended up moving to the farmhouse for the week so that their team could do their thing. For full transparency, they had 6 people a day for 4 days purging and organizing the entire house. Once they were done, the Go Clean Co team came in the following day for a full deep clean and they also had 6 people with them and spent roughly 10 hours cleaning our space. As amazing as this sounds, from someone that loves change and purging constantly, this entire process was overwhelming! LOL! In hindsight, I should have taken the week off, but I didn’t, so while I was in meetings I had the Go Simplified team asking me what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to purge, multi-tasking at its finest.

We strategically and intentionally made sure to get rid of everything once we purged, I didn’t want to hang on to it and end up going through boxes later and then bringing purged items BACK into our house so we came up with a plan. Instead of throwing everything out or donating to the Salvation Army, we decided to partner with Mamas for Mamas and sell all of our purged items at the Bliss Market. In fact, they were able to raise over $4,000 from all of our donated items which will help local families in need!

Now that I am sitting here and writing this blog after the Go Clean Co and Go Simplified teams have worked their magic, coming home and opening up undie drawers, jean drawers, and spice cabinets knowing that everything has a home and has been cleaned is such a dream! Both teams are absolutely phenomenal at what they do. It was especially hard having a team of people go through all of my things, but I have to say I have never trusted a group of women, Megan’s team, so much in my life. They were so respectful and overall just amazing at what they do, so if you had any hesitations about welcoming people into your space, Go Simplified will not disappoint! Now, here are some of the afters that you will be beyond impressed with, that is if you love all things organization and sparkling clean like I do! Make sure to hold down on the arrow and slide it left and right for the full effect 😉

Also, a HUGE shoutout to Stor-X for helping us redo the organization system in our garage. Some of you may remember we teamed up with Stor-X back in 2018 to help us with an organization system for our garage. At the time this was Justin’s man cave before he upgraded to his new one, you can read all about that here. With that being said, what we organize and store in the garage has evolved a lot over the last few years. So, when Megan proposed a new organization system, Stor-X Kelowna was completely on board. Our new organization system in the garage was gifted, but if you’ve been following me for a while you know just how much I LOVE the Stor-X team. They have helped us with so many projects over the years and their products are the best out their and their customer service team is next level. So if you’re in the market for an organization system for your home or any project for that matter, make sure to check them out!

Before & Afters

Bedroom

Bathroom

Annie’s Room

Linen Closet

Kitchen

Laundry Room

Garage

I completely acknowledge and respect that not everyone is able to budget for a professional cleaner or organizer. So, I would love to share some of the amazing tips that I personally learned from both teams while they were here to help you tackle your cleaning and organizing dreams! Ps. Make sure to pop over to @jhthebrand for 10 tips from Go Clean Co and Go Simplified as well!

5 tips for a clean and organized home!

1. Time blocking

If you are enrolled in The Jilly Academy you are probably sick of hearing me say this by now. But if this term is new to you, it’s something I swear by. So, go into your calendar and see if you can dedicate two full weekends a year to cleaning, purging, and organizing. Try your best to get everyone out of the house and bring in one person as a reinforcement. The first day spend the entire day pulling everything out, purging and organizing, and the second-day cleaning and putting everything back together! It is an investment in yourself, time block it in, get it done and it will feel like a huge weight lifted off your chest, I promise!

2. Birthday or holiday gift

If you can’t carve out a few weekends throughout the year to dedicate to this. Can you potentially ask for a professional cleaner or organizer as a holiday or birthday gift?

3. Invest in organizational solutions

Now, you don’t have to go out and spend all of your money on cohesive boxes and drawer dividers, but you can start collecting shoe boxes (or Jilly Boxes 😉) or even your local Dollar Store to score some cute containers at great prices to help you organize your space! Two of my favourite products that Go Simplified Co introduced me to are the OXO Pop Containers that keep your crackers and snacks fresh, and these hyacinth wicker baskets!

4. Go Clean Co Handbooks

If you are planning on cleaning every nook and cranny of your space, I would highly recommend grabbing a few copies of Go Clean Co’s handbooks to use as a guide!

5. Follow inspirational accounts

Last but not least, make sure to follow both Go Clean Co and Go Simplified Co on Instagram as they share so many useful tips on their platforms!

I am beyond grateful for the Go Clean Co and Go Simplified teams that got our home in tip-top shape. Now knowing what I know, I would highly recommend asking for a cleaner or organizer as a birthday or holiday gift!

xo

Jilly

For full transparency, we were not paid for this partnership, but their services were provided to us complimentary in exchange for posting on social media! I did pay for all of the storage solutions that Megan’s team used throughout our home. But as always please note that all of the thoughts and opinions within this blog are my own.