Hire Your Own Organizing Team!
Why Hiring Help for Your Own Home Might Be the Best Thing You Do for Your Business
A conversation with Missi Mills, owner of Clear Spaces Organizing in the Twin Cities
There's a certain irony in being a professional organizer: you spend your days transforming other people's spaces, but when you come home, the last thing you want to do is organize your own. And yet, many of us quietly carry that expectation that our homes should be perfect — that we, of all people, should have it together.
Meet Missi Mills and the team at Clear Spaces Organizing!
Missi Mills, owner of Clear Spaces Organizing and leader of a 12-person team in the Twin Cities, decided to challenge that idea head on. When life got overwhelming during a move, she did something that felt vulnerable but turned out to be one of the best decisions she made: she hired her own team to help her.
We sat down with Missi to talk about what that experience taught her — about her clients, her team, and herself.
When the Organizer Becomes the Client
Melissa: You recently did something that I thought was really beautiful and I wanted to talk to you about it. You hired your own team to help with your move. Tell us what led to that.
Missi: I don't know anyone — unless maybe they've hired an organizer — who's ever had a truly organized move. There's always that moment at the end where you're just throwing everything in a box, taping it up, and saying you'll figure it out later. I didn't want to do that. That sounded stressful and so much worse on the back end when it came to unpacking. The team had some availability, and I thought — you know what? I'm just going to put my name on the project.
Melissa: And you literally took a slot on your own team's calendar.
Missi: I did! I asked them first — I said, would it be weird if you came to help me pack? And they were totally up for it. So I had two team members come over to help with the office. What I didn't realize was how much I had crammed in there. And on the day they showed up, I started to feel all the same things our clients talk about. I was embarrassed. I kept thinking, they're going to open that closet. Anyone who's seen Friends knows the Monica Closet — half of it was organized and half of it was everything I owned, basically.
The Shame Is Real — Even When You Know Better
Melissa: I want to go to that word "embarrassed" because we all know our clients deal with so much shame. Was that the strangest part for you — having people you know personally going through your things?
Missi: Yeah. Because I'm at the helm of this organizing business. And yet there was this feeling of — well, this is what you do for a living, Missi. Perhaps you could do this for yourself. But here's the thing: could our clients organize their own spaces? Most of them probably could, if they had enough time and good guidance. It's not brain surgery. And yet it's so normal to need help. We as business owners are not immune to that.
Melissa: And we all reach a point where we've run out of time because we're doing so many other things. When it's your own stuff, you lose perspective on it entirely.
Missi: Totally. And I ended up hiring the team to help me on the back end too — unpacking at the new place, and then later, going through a pile of paperwork I'd been avoiding. That was liberating. So much left the house. She'd ask, "Do you want me to just shred this right now?" And I'd say, "That would be amazing. Do it." But on moving day? When they asked if I wanted to sort through papers? Absolutely not. There's just a time for everything.
"I Am Our Ideal Client"
Melissa: Were there moments where you caught yourself doing the things you always see your clients do?
Missi: Oh, constantly. We call it "holding court" — when a client just needs everyone's attention while they process something out loud. I totally had that. I'd be like, "Do I want to keep this? I don't know." And in our world, if it's an "I don't know," it's a yes — we keep it. We're not winning awards for how much someone lets go of. And I found myself having to verbalize everything to figure out what I actually thought. I kept clocking these moments going, "Oh. I'm doing the thing." I am our ideal client.
Melissa: That's so good. And what happened when they gave you the classic "we can finish the office OR carry the boxes down — which would you prefer" speech?
Missi: I laughed out loud because I knew exactly what was happening — and I still hated it. In my head I was thinking, I want both. I want all of it done right now. But she was right. There just wasn't enough time. That's physics. And yet I was just like every client we've ever had: you've had months, sometimes years, for a space to become what it is, and you want it all undone in an afternoon.
Melissa: It's like that line from When Harry Met Sally — when you decide you want to get organized, you want the rest of your life to start now.
Missi: Exactly. And so I did what motivated clients do: I stopped what I was working on and became the box mover myself. I carried every single box down to the basement and categorized them while they finished the office. When they came out and all the boxes were gone, they said, "Where did they go?" And I said, "I brought them down." And I did the thing.
What It Taught Her About Her Team
Melissa: What surprised you most about the experience?
Missi: Honestly, how good they are. On the paperwork day, one of my team members came over and I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I said we needed to make a list because everything was just swirling in my brain. And she said, "Okay — have you eaten breakfast yet?" I said no. She said, "Why don't I go get paper for the list, and you eat breakfast?" And I said I didn't want to. And she said, "I know you don't."
Melissa: She used your own training on you.
Missi: She did! That's literally something I taught them to do with ADHD clients — because we're not eating breakfast, we're just onto the next thing. There was nothing I wanted to correct. It was just pure affirmation of: you guys are really good at this. And it's so helpful, and you're so gentle about it.
I used the whole experience as a story when I opened our next team meeting. Just to tell them — the work you do is genuinely life-changing. And now I can say that not just as a boss, but because I felt it myself.
The Permission to Ask for Help
Melissa: What do you think would have happened if you hadn't hired them?
Missi: I think I would've cried a lot more. I would've been so overwhelmed. There's a point when there's so much to do that you go into a freeze state — you can't do anything. What hiring the team did was bring in the non-attachment to the stuff, the woman power to just get things done, and honestly, the fun. They had their music going, we were singing along — it just made it more enjoyable and it made it done. And that was the most important thing to me.
Melissa: I love that phrase: it made it done.
Missi: Right? And when I reflected on it later, I realized: that was a gift. Truly. And now the team has started inviting each other over too — trading visits to help each other with a closet or a basement. Because they see the value now firsthand.
You Can Do for Others What You Can't Always Do for Yourself
Missi: This is what I keep coming back to: we do this in other areas of life all the time. We pay someone to cut our hair, change our oil, file our taxes. Organizing is just another thing we can ask for help with. And as people in this service industry — people who know exactly how big of an impact this work has on someone's life — if you're sitting around looking at your house thinking you could really use an organizer, just consider it.
Melissa: And I think it's about getting over that pride piece — the "I do this for a living, I should be able to handle this myself." I had organizers offer to help me with my garage situation recently, and honestly? I was a little offended. Like, I'm fine, leave me alone. But the truth is, when I come home after a full day of thinking about organizing, the last thing I want to do is organize my own mudroom closet. It feels like being at work.
Missi: It's like carpenters with unfinished projects at their own house. It's the same thing. Almost every consult I do, the client says, "I know I could probably do this on my own." And I tell them: you could probably go over to your friend's house and help them with their basement. But when it's yours, you're too close to it. We don't know your stuff, so all our questions come from genuine curiosity. There's no judgment. That's the whole difference.
The Bigger Message
Melissa: If someone is reading this and waiting for permission to ask for help — what do you say to them?
Missi Mills of Clear Spaces Organizing
Missi: Just do it. And I say that as someone who is still learning how to do it myself. We have so many clients who are absolutely crushing it in their careers — doctors, lawyers, business owners with incredibly high-performing lives — and they feel shame about their homes. Like, why can I perform so well in one area and not the other? And the answer is: because you're performing so hard over there, there's nothing left. Your executive functioning is spent at work. You're coming home and door-dashing dinner and driving the kids everywhere. When exactly would you have time and energy to dedicate to the house?
Melissa: There's no failure in that. There's just bandwidth.
Missi: Exactly. You can do for others things you can't always do for yourself. And that's true for our clients, and it's true for us. The more we can normalize that asking for help is just another form of self-care — not a weakness — the better off everyone is. That's really my whole message.
Missi Mills is the owner of Clear Spaces Organizing in the Twin Cities. You can find her at creatingclearspaces.com and on Instagram at @ClearSpacesOrganizing. She is also an active member of the Inspired Organizer community.