Professional Home Organizing: How I got here.

I started in banking at age 19 as a bank teller. It was the only job I could think of at the time that seemed to be a “grown-up girl” job. It seemed more professional and responsible than anything I had found at that point.

It was a job. It was a way to earn money and begin to build the life that I thought I wanted. It seemed to be safe. As long as I showed up to work, did my work, and kept my drawer in balance every day, I was good. Life would be easy if I just kept that going.

I worked my way up a little. I was a teller for several years, then took time off when I had children. I went back to work when my kids were little and I was feeling stuck in my marriage.

I went back to being a bank teller, and I loved it. Something about keeping the numbers balanced felt very satisfying to me.

I worked my way up to working in the “Cash Management” department, helping businesses with the movement of cash, whether that was paying employees or receiving payments for services. Then it became “Treasury Management” when I went to work for another, slightly larger bank.

It felt responsible and “accomplished,” and it helped to soothe my unspoken feelings of underachievement.

I didn’t actually like it, though.

I wasn’t interested in the mechanics of the job, all of the pieces that I pretended to be interested in when I was selling something to a customer. I remember telling my sister-in-law at one point, “I’m a fraud.” Question me for too long about banking products, and you’ll know that I really don’t care.

What I DID love about my job was the people I got to work with. I loved connecting with the business owners. The familiarity that was created once the relationship was up and running. The trust they would put in me to handle a task that I promised to take care of.

I liked the warmth.

Then Covid happened.

I’ve heard that phrase from so many people, in so many stories. Covid really was life-altering.

When it was time to get back into the office, I was no longer seeing clients in person. I was behind a desk, doing everything remotely by phone call, Zoom meeting, and email.

That’s where my banking career lost whatever it had that made it doable for me.

I began to do some soul-searching and serious thinking about what was important to me.

Around this time, I had also gone through a devastating relationship breakup that was extremely painful. Honestly, it broke me. The kind of break that makes you reevaluate every single detail of life.

I started to think about the word integrity.

Integrity is defined as the state of being whole and undivided.

Was I the same person at 10 a.m. while doing banking work as I was at 8 p.m. in my own personal time?

For me, that answer was a wake-up call. I was a completely different person at work from who I was at home.

Whole different personality.

When the bank I worked for came under new management and everything changed, I knew I had to go. I hated every single day from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.

At the same time, I was watching my cousin, who was very dear to me, struggle with an illness that she did not recover from.

Something felt horribly wrong about watching her spend her last days in this life suffering while I was hating the days of my life.

I knew that something had to change, and it felt urgent.

This is where my home organizing mission came from.

By this time, my heart had been broken by a few major situations in my life. My understanding of my own life and my time here on this planet had been challenged in ways I never could have imagined.

Everything had to be an honest expression of myself, or I was no longer interested.

Home organizing is my way of reaching out to the world around me and walking with others through times that seem confusing and chaotic.

I had realized by this point that one thing I do extremely well is crisis management.

Not every home organizing situation is a crisis or a chaotic one, but disorder is always some version of uncertain and unsteady.

My mission in life is to share the skills and the heart that I’ve been given with the people who can’t see a path back to peace right now.

This is the purpose I’m willing to build my life around.

Thanks for reading.

Love,

Bobbi

Roberta Bobbi Ritter on her way to a relocation Support job for SadieLane Home Organizing