After splitting with her husband last year, Chiara Giovanni finally felt ready to revamp her space, cancel the clutter and “sever some of the emotional hangovers” of items that were hard to part with.
“I wanted to take steps toward making this a forever home,” said Giovanni, a management consultant, of her Astoria rental. She knew she lacked the wherewithal to do it herself, so she hired Melissa Riepe, a professional organizer who lives in nearby Sunnyside and finds herself with many post-breakup clients.
“I had complete paralysis around anything that belonged to my ex,” Giovanni, 32, told The Post. That included a sentimental Bronx Science sweatshirt. It is now boxed with his other things, awaiting the day — which is approaching — when she feels ready to give it back.
“Now I have a home that feels like my own and not a waiting room for another partner,” Giovanni said.
Breakups are bad business, but they mean business for professional organizers like Riepe, who says they’re among the biggest reasons clients call on her the most. And when it comes to needing help, there are plenty of people — primarily women — like Giovanni who contribute to the growing demand.
Indeed, organizing has become a huge growth industry since its inception 40 years ago, said Jalene Bowersmith, executive director of NAPO, the National Association of Productivity & Organizing Professionals, which has around 2,000 members. A report commissioned by NAPO shows the market size of professional organizers in North America is around $3.5 million this year, projected to reach around $6 million in 2031.
“People can always try to do it themselves,” Bowersmith told The Post. “But on Tiktok, you see a before and after, and a quick video of a messy room being organized. You are not seeing the whole process.”
To proceed in earnest, plenty of people need the helping hand of a sympathetic ally. “The emotional side of it is one reason organizing professionals exist,” Bowersmith said.
Of course, it all comes at a cost. Prices vary widely, but can range up to $250 an hour on the high end, with organizers typically offering half-day or full-day sessions, and packages of several sessions.
Not surprisingly, huge life changes stand out as key moments when people are finally ready to get their apartments, and their lives, in order. And they must be emotionally ready to declutter, which is the first and most necessary step.
“Decluttering automatically solves a lot of organizing challenges,” said Riepe, who always had an itch to organize — to the point that “it became this guilty habit where I would organize my friends’ kitchen counters as we were chatting.”
She started her business a year and a half ago, after she was laid off from her job in corporate sustainability. She couldn’t help but notice that many of her clients were demographically similar to her — women in their 30s in the aftermath of a recent breakup.
“I think a breakup usually hits women pretty hard,” she told The Post. “It really is a crossroads moment when they end a relationship in their 30s and have to evaluate their life moving forward.”
Over several months, Riepe also helped Giovanni cull the wardrobe of her younger self to usher her into a new era.
“I had a lot of grief around needing to adjust my wardrobe so dramatically,” Giovanni said. But she knew it was best to donate the stilettos that caused foot pain.
“I really see a change in my clients, said Riepe, who calls her business Honeybee Home Org, and posts before and after photos on Instagram. (“Melissa” means “honeybee” in Greek.) “I can see them taking ownership over their lives, and that is very gratifying.”
Her post-breakup clients feel plagued by the residue of an ex-partner, she said. She has seen abandoned hoodies, basketballs and climbing shoes.
Some cope with the breakup by compulsively shopping, and are buried under piles of brand-new clothes, items with tags remaining and unused hobby equipment.
“They describe themselves as out of control,” Riepe said. “They open the door with embarrassment and shame.”
Another big reason for hiring an organizer: planning a family.
Riepe also sees plenty of clients in the baby-prep stage. Those people often failed to pare down when they paired up, and worry about squeezing a baby into a small or badly configured space.
That was a problem for Lara Roth, a software engineer planning for a baby, who has felt overwhelmed with clutter for nearly five years, ever since her husband joined her in her Greenpoint railroad rental.
The apartment is rent-stabilized, so moving to a bigger place would mean leaving the neighborhood or tripling their housing costs.
The bedroom included a pair of nightstands from Pottery Barn, way too big once the couple upsized to a queen bed. “Every day I woke up with anger toward my room,” Roth said.
With Riepe’s encouragement, she sold the nightstands and drastically downsized the cosmetics and cords that filled the drawers. Now, the bedroom has space for a bassinet.
“I felt so embarrassed about the apartment for so long,” Roth, 32, told The Post. Decluttering, she said, “changed my mental state and my day-to-day. It was transformative for my vision of my life. It doesn’t feel like having a child is impossible.”
In overstuffed and space-starved New York apartments, where a one-bedroom is generally 300 to 900 square feet, “we must be very strict about what these clients keep,” said Sharon Lowenheim, who has run her business, the Organizing Goddess, from her Manhattan apartment for 20 years.
“The pain of living with the clutter has started to outweigh the discomfort of getting rid of things,” she told The Post.
Most organizers are female — and so are their clients, though organizers do encounter the occasional male, sometimes newly divorced.
Occasionally, an organizer will be hired by a couple — but that doesn’t mean there are always eager participants.
“The wife wants the organizer to organize the husband’s stuff, and that’s a huge no-no,” Bowersmith said. “That’s a boundary we cannot cross.”