Grand Diane

Grand Diane Cash & Consultation Giveaway!

To celebrate hitting 300 followers (and get serious about adding more…) I am giving away $50 cash to spend on your space and an hour of free consultation to one lucky winner. Entry is simple: follow me, share this post in your stories, tag 3 friends who don’t follow me but should in the comments. That’s it! Consultation can be remote so there are no geographical limitations. Contest closes Sunday at midnight so enter now so you don’t forget. xoxo Eve

Although I came to this work, or at least the fullness of this work as I now practice it, well into adulthood I have since come to believe that I was in fact born into it, that I am carrying a family legacy which values aesthetics, design, and the home just as strongly as some families care about sports or ethnicity for example. My maternal grandmother Alice was not only a college graduate, remarkable in itself at the time, but went on to earn her M.A. and taught Home Economics at the university level. Without a doubt my interest in keeping house and sharing that knowledge with others originated with her. My paternal grandfather Al was a complicated man like so many of his generation but was truly unparalleled as an architect and artist. My earliest memories of him remain lessons about design and the use of space that I carry on in my work to this day. I am grateful for what they have given me and take my responsibility to carry on their work as seriously as I do taking care of my clients and their needs. I wish they could be here to see what I do, to teach me more, to stand alongside me. But it is enough to know that they would be proud of me and the value I place on what they too love.

After more than a decade in business this is the year that I want to grow into a team business with baby organizers and packers and movers being trained in the weird wild world of conjuring stuff but one thing I will never ever ever do is use a team to earn money for me while I do other things. This is wage theft and it is common practice in almost every industry but will not be common practice in my business because I am here to train up the next generation of Mary Poppins realness not sit around and make money while someone younger and more vulnerable than I am does the work. My promise to you is that if you work with me you get me 100%.

Ok now that we have our supplies covered we can move on to actually packing. I should note that my packing paper is pre-crumpled because all my boxes and paper came 2nd hand from a recent client move. Yours will come laid out flat crisp & clean & new. Now when you are packing it’s a good idea to move from most fragile/time consuming to least & from least essential to daily life to most. That means that a kitchen will probably get packed later than the books & art & crystals in the living room.

When it comes to packing a box you should think about balance. We are trying to: maximize the amount of stuff in the box, fill the box completely so it doesn’t get crushed, make sure the box isn’t too heavy for whoever has to carry it, and protect the contents inside from getting broken or dirty. The best way to accomplish all of these things is to start with your heaviest items on the bottom. If an object is heavy, fragile, or important enough I will reinforce the bottom with more tape. MOAR TAPE 💁🏼‍♀️. Gather the objects that you want to pack near the box so that you can try and visualize where the objects are going to fit & decide what is the most important thing you are placing in the box. It may not be the same as the heaviest object which is sitting on the bottom, just the object that is most valuable to you or easily broken.