Category: From the Expert

BINS! I have found myself using bins at a lot of client’s homes recently. There are so many reasons to containerize things in bins – it helps us know where to find things, keeps items of a certain type together, streamlines visual appearances, and collects clutter that we want to keep accessible. I am picky […]

Social connection is a basic human need, just like eating food, drinking water, and getting sleep. Our brains are biologically wired for social connection and an abundance of research shows that isolation and loneliness are detrimental to our mental well-being and physical health. Yet for some people, socializing induces fear, anxiety, worry, and sometimes even […]

Stress is a normal part of life and stress at a manageable level can even be helpful in mobilizing a response to solve a current problem. Yet some people experience excessive amounts of stress that exceeds the individuals’ range of resilience, overwhelms the nervous system, and becomes disordered. Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or GAD, is characterized […]

My only child is moving across the country for his first year of college. My husband and I are excited for him but have some trepidation about what we will do with our time. No matter how much we spoil our dogs, we won’t go to their baseball games, they won’t call us when they […]

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, is a commonly misunderstood mental health disorder. You may have heard the phrase “I’m a little OCD” used as a way to describe someone who likes things to be a certain way, done in a certain order, or who is organized and cleanly. While phrases like this are not typically […]

I recently moved my home office from a traditional space on the first floor to the guest bedroom upstairs. My husband started a new job working from home and we have an old, needy, labrador that can’t manage the stairs and cries when left alone. Thus, to avoid 8 hours of canine cries, whimpers, and […]

Written By: Jayme Kolbo, MA, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, founder of OCD & Anxiety Wellness Collective Sadness and grief are a normal part of the human experience. Depression, or Major Depressive Disorder, differs from sadness and grief in the frequency, intensity, duration, and functional impairment it causes. It is one of the most common mental […]

The weather is nice! Who wants to stay inside and organize? I am guessing that few of you, if any, said “Oh Me! Forget walking the dogs, going on picnics, or planting things in the garden! I DO want to stay inside and organize – in fact, I want to do it in my cold, […]

I walked in the house balancing an overflowing box of great finds from Costco. A 5-pack of toothpaste! 4 bottles of dish soap for the price of 3! Shoe racks were on sale and, well, shoes have always been a problem, so I thought I better get that too. And new towels that were just […]

Most of us have things that are meaningful to us but that we might not need to see all the time. For example, I frequently find paintings that clients made with friends at wine-n-paint events. While they evoke wonderful memories, the paintings might not be masterpieces – so what to do with it? There are a […]

Does your pantry make your life easy? A lot of pantries are overflowing. There are bags of pasta falling over; 8 types of specialty flour – each partially used; a bag or two of dried fruit of mysterious origin; unlabeled bags of spices; left over Halloween candy; and who knows what else. While we are […]

Happy New Year! Congratulations on making it through another holiday season! Hopefully you found moments of peace, joy, and a little magic! For me, the new year always invites personal reflection. Specifically, I take time to consider what ‘clutters’ my schedule. I think we can fall into activities out of habit, expectations, or feelings of […]