Project Profile: Organizing for Educational Events

“We had an outstanding experience working with The Little Details! Their team brought an impressive level of professionalism and expertise to organizing our new events storage closet, not only helping us organize the closet after a move from a much tighter space, but also making it an active working space. A special shoutout to Haley Short, who went above and beyond to create a system that’s not only easy to maintain but also flexible enough to grow and change. Haley took the time to understand how we use the new space and offered thoughtful, strategic adjustments that allowed us to grow from just a storage closet to a highly workable team space. Thanks to her, our new storage area is both functional and efficient. Highly recommend The Little Details, and Haley's organization!” - Madi, Manager, Events and Operations

To celebrate the start of back-to-school season, let's take a trip down memory lane. Many clients wonder how I ended up in a career as a professional organizer. After graduating from college, I was hired at an education technology company north of Boston for an internship, and ended up as the operations manager of their events team. We worked closely with educators and school districts throughout the company, so back-to-school season was serious business.

One of my many responsibilities was organizing the events team supply closet and coordinating the shipping of these supplies all over the country. The events closet wasn't really meant to be that big of a part of my job, but I could not resist the opportunity to place a Container Store order for work. I never could have imagined then how often I would be doing that now! My flexible and generous bosses let me organize to my heart's content in this closet, which made me very happy but also really improved our operational efficiency.

Here are some photos of my organization attempts in our original Events Closet. I was so proud of myself! And enjoyed adapting the storage as our team (and our supply list) grew.

I left that job in 2022 to pursue my long-term dream of becoming a Professional Organizer and could not have been more delighted to hear from my former boss later that year. The team had grown even more and was finally offered the opportunity to upgrade their storage space - but they needed some serious help. Almost exactly a year after leaving that company, I returned to revamp their much larger event closet and to create some really functional new systems to help their operations run smoothly.

This was not a one-day project - as with any organizing project, we started out by sorting and purging all of their materials. All of the products, shipping materials, and event supplies from the mail room and previous event closets were just dumped into the new space, so we had a lot of cleanup to do before we could even start organizing!

Here’s where we got after a long, hard day of sorting and purging.

Many marketing teams have old products and merchandise that they will never use again and they can take up a lot of space. Once we had a good idea of the final inventory we ordered shelving and designed an Elfa workstation to make packing up for events a breeze. This was what I had always fantasized about having in my operations role, so it was really special to be able to make it a reality!

The final result in the closet works really well for the team.

It was so fun to revisit my old job and to contribute to making future educational events smooth and easy for everyone attending. I have had the opportunity to go back and help the team re-set after their busiest seasons and this system has been super easy to adapt as their needs change.

Does your business (or classroom!) need some organizational TLC? Book a consultation with us today to find out how you can get started on your organizing journey!