My Biz: Sisters love organizing, even when people ‘have given up’

MARION — They didn’t know it, but sisters Lori Smith and Sheri Wolverton were preparing for their business even as children.

“When we were younger, we would organize our bedrooms, rearrange our bedrooms,” said Smith, 55, of Springville. “We loved to rearrange and organize, even in elementary school. We would go to friends’ houses, and we would help them clean their rooms. We just always loved to do it.”

Pursuing that inclination on a paying basis was put on hold for a few decades as the two women married and raised families.

“We were both stay-at-home moms when our kids were little,” Smith said. The sisters worked outside the home, too — Smith as an ophthalmic (eye) technician, Wolverton as a paraeducator and front-desk staffer at a chiropractor’s office.

“Part-time jobs,” Wolverton said.

That started to change as their children graduated high school and moved out of their homes.

“Now that they’re all raised, this is our time,” said Wolverton, of Marion.

Idea from TV

A reality TV show provided the final motivation.

“We didn’t think this was an actual job until ‘The Home Edit’ came to light,” Wolverton said. The Netflix streaming show features professional organizers taking on celebrities’ messes.

“They do celebrity homes, and they have a whole crew that goes in, which would be our dream,” Wolverton said. “It’s a bit of our inspiration.”

Working out of their homes, the sisters launched Five Seasons Organizing in November 2020. That year’s COVID precautions slowed their progress only a little.

“Nobody wanted to come out, or us coming into their house,” Smith said.

Until pandemic concerns eased, the pair concentrated on marketing, preparing brochures and delivering PowerPoint presentations to real estate agents and assisted living facilities, two big potential markets they identified.

”If you’re looking at a house, you don’t want to see people’s clutter or their personal items,” Smith said. “We kind of depersonalize the house and lightly stage it with their stuff, and some of ours if it’s needed.”

Folks who’ve ‘given up’

The third market is households where years of deferred organization have taken their toll. Therapists and counselors often provide referrals.

“A lot of the homes we go into, they have given up,” Wolverton said. “They’ve been through some trauma, whether it be physical, a death in the family. Some people will just shut down and can’t function after that, and their house gets so out of control and they’re so overwhelmed by it.”

Those difficult cases can be the most rewarding.

“So many people we have gone in, and you literally can hardly walk, and they can’t function,” Wolverton said. “By the time we leave, everything has a place and they’re in tears. They’ll tell us, ‘My anxiety is gone.’ ”

The sisters charge by the hour for the work, with estimates available before a job begins.

Storage boxes

The sisters investigated other services’ pricing to arrive at an hourly rate, plus the cost of supplies — most often clear plastic storage boxes of every size.

“You just can’t get organized if you don’t have containers to organize with,” Wolverton said. “We create what we call container spaces: ‘This is your container space, and when it’s full, that’s it.’ If it overflows, you should probably pare down. We label everything, and we don’t leave until everything has a place.”

The sisters are the business’ sole employees, although they occasionally draw on friends or family members.

“Our goal is to get to that point, to grow to where we have a team,” Wolverton said.

Their market area is roughly a one-hour drive around the Cedar Rapids-Marion metro area, including Iowa City and Coralville, although they’d travel for a larger job.

“We wouldn’t go to Des Moines for a four-hour job, but if it’s a three-day job and they paid our expenses, we’d do that,” Wolverton said.

Know a business that should be considered for a “My Biz” feature? Let us know by emailing mary.sharp@thegazette.com.

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