My obsession with clutter began at a very young age. I didn't have nearly as much stuff (a technical term in the organizing world) back then, but you can bet that everything in my small bedroom was regularly purged, straightened, stacked, and alphabetized. In my adult life, people often comment that I am so organized. Which means I'm more organized than they are – not nearly as organized as I would love to be. As I sit here writing this blog I'm thinking about how the dresser drawers sure could use cleaning out and the bathroom cabinet absolutely must be reorganized this weekend.
When a friend mentioned her professional organizer years ago in casual conversation, I began thinking about becoming one myself. I attended a couple of local professional organizer meetings and soon realized that my day job as a family law paralegal paid a lot better and had better benefits than those of a self-employed organizer. Not to mention I wasn't all that crazy about tackling someone else's mess. Take one look at the TV show Hoarders, and you'll see what I mean.
Then the brainstorm hit – don't become a professional organizer, write a cozy mystery novel about one. And she can uncover a dead body under a mess in the bathroom or in the walk-in closet. Wait – this book is going to be set where I live. It's way too hot in the Houston area to hide a body for any length of time in a house. Okay – make it February, and the body's in the garage. That'll work. And so my character – professional organizer Poppy Cartwright – and her business, Klutter Killer, came into being.
How about you? Are you blind to clutter, do you hire someone to take care of your clutter, or are you obsessed like me?
Cozy mystery author Kay Finch is currently writing her new Bad Luck Cat Mystery series set in the Texas Hill Country to be published by Berkley beginning in 2015. Kay lives in a Houston, Texas suburb with her husband, two rescue dogs and a cat. Visit her web site at www.kayfinch.com.
