Column: Shorelines

It is tax time; do you know where  your paper work is?  

If your important documents are in a jumbled heap, you can’t find the desk in your home office or you keep important phone numbers on little scraps of paper, Diane Novak may have the answer.

Novak is the owner of the  newly created business  Organize This! She turns chaotic papers and messy offices into organized files and well-working spaces.

“If people have a home business and/or home office, sometimes they’re really busy and their paperwork and files are disorganized,” said Novak. “That causes a lot of stress and a lot of time to be wasted. What I try to do is, if they have a system of filing, I tweak it to improve it; or if they don’t have a system and they are open, I come in with what I call, ' my tool belt of ideas.’”

Not being able to find important documents can be distressing. Living with clutter can be draining,  said Novak.

“What I like to do is take people’s chaos and clutter and create clarity for them,” she said . “When you organize, you are actually giving yourself mentally more space and time and more emotional energy.”

Novak is a trained social worker originally from Orange County, N.Y. Novak, her husband and son moved to Smith Mountain Lake about five years ago.  

In addition to Organize This!, Novak operates  the lake-area business Reiki Pets. Reiki is a Japanese technique of reducing stress and promoting relaxation to encourage healing. Novak is certified as a master teacher.  As the name Reiki Pets implies, her patients are animals.

Novak also helped create a cat rescue called Barn Cat Buddies  with the help of Angels of Assisi in Roanoke.  The program helps match pairs of stray or under-socialized felines with people or businesses with rodent-control issues.

Novak said the decision to add another business to her plate was simple.

 “Organizing just comes naturally to me, ” she said.

 Novak said she feels better when she is organized.  She realized she was good at it when she started helping her sister.

“She is one of those people who has every closet in her house  filled with clothes,” explained Novak. “It doesn’t matter what the season. It’s all mixed up, or if it is the right size, she never purged anything. So I started playing with her, with closets. T hen we extended that to family photos.”

When Novak embarked on this new organizing venture, she turned to one of the lake’s most experienced organizers, Ann Custer of WOW Organizing Service . Now the two have worked out a referral service.

“Organizing homes is Ann’s niche so I thought, h ow could we work together and help each other?” said Novak.  “What I thought is, I really love working with paper. ”  

“This is great,” said  Custer of the business relationship . “Files and papers are my least favorite area to organize, so I welcome Diane’s organizing skill to that area. I know Diane personally and she is all about creating solutions. And I recommend her because she does excellent work.”

Now that tax season is here, it is time to get your documents in order. For $25 an hour, Novak will help you put a system in place to make this time less stressful.

“I can help them get their 2009 paperwork and donation forms in some sort of format that will make it easier when they go visit their tax preparer and help them simplify what might look overwhelming to them,” said  Novak. “This can also extend to businesses as well .”

Organize This!, Diane Novak, 420-7241.

WOW Organizing Service, Ann Custer, 420-8225. www.woworganizing.com