I had imagined the first date as a sort of contrite confession: “ Hello, my name is Maud and I am messy. When Sévan Matossian walks into my Parisian two-room apartment of 30 square meters, one July morning, I am in awe. The 40-year-old launched her home organize three years ago. In good English, she is a storage coach. In good French, she is a magician. From my apartment, where unnecessary objects have piled up for years, she promises to make a space à la Marie Kondo, famous Japanese consultant in home economics, breathing calm and the absence of superfluous, for 400 euros a day. It’s expensive, yes, it’s a luxury service, undeniably, but it’s the price to pay for my legendary laziness and my almost pathological inability to tidy up.
Sévan Matossian reassures me: “I never judge anyone. We enter into people’s privacy, which is not always easy for them. You have to be patient and benevolent ”, she explains. The first meeting is used to assess the damage… uh no, the needs. “I adapt to everyone. I try to find out as much as possible about the lifestyle of the clients. Are you cooking? Do you work from home? Your shopping habits? Do you read a lot What room do you wear makeup in? Do you receive your friends a lot? What do you expect from this experience? Do you have trouble separating yourself from your items and clothes? “
The diagnosis is refined. If it is not quite a question of “Rediscover my joy”, as Marie Kondo proclaims, I want to gain space, serenity, and above all to lighten up. Two and a half days of storage will be necessary, according to Sévan Matossian, who breaks down the task as follows: living room, library and administrative papers on day 1. Bedroom and dressing room on day 2, and a morning for organizing the kitchen. “The bathroom is so small that I can’t really see what we could do”, she said to me. Welcome to Parisian interiors.
“Take it all out”
Armed with her equipment – plastic gloves, garbage bags, various storage boxes, a small labeling machine – the young woman arrives in my messy interior on a sunny morning. His method has the merit of being effective: each chest of drawers, each floor of the library is emptied of its content, which ends up stacked on the living room floor. The resulting mountain causes mild heart palpitations. “ You have to get everything out to have everything under your eyes ”, she said, probably reading the terror in my eyes. Then, we classify by categories: books and records, administrative papers, souvenirs (trinkets, letters, grandparents’ watch …), office utensils (notebooks, stationery, pens that we test one by one to keep. finally only a handful), documents and important objects (passport, keys…).
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