A photograph of a smiling Ingrid Jansen riding her bike surrounded by greenery
Episode 45 – Ingrid Jansen, the person behind the podcast.

In this podcast, Lesley asks Ingrid about her life leading up to becoming a Professional Organiser. We talk about whether things in Ingrid's childhood, early career and her life since had a bearing on her becoming a Professional Organiser.
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Transcript of this podcast episode
Intro  0:07  
Welcome to today's episode of The Declutter Hub Podcast, your channel for super easy, no nonsense advice on how to declutter and organise your home. Please welcome your host, professional organisers, Ingrid Johnson, and Lesley Spellman.

Lesley  0:26  
Hello, and welcome listeners to Episode 45 of the Declutter Hub Podcast. I'm Lesley and I'm Ingrid. If you have clutter and want to sort it out, then this is a show for you. In today's episode, Ingrid and I are going to chat about what led Ingrid to become a professional organiser. So in we've we've been doing this podcast for a while now and people are always really curious how both both you and I ended up being a professional organiser and where I love the decluttering and organising came from a few episodes ago, the spotlight was on me and you were asking all the questions. And today it's your turn, I'm going to ask you loads of questions about your life and your formative years so we can find out more about your story. So I wanted to talk to you about your sort of early childhood because one of the things that you're always saying in our podcasts is that you credit your mum with your organising skills. So do you want to tell us a little bit more about that?

Ingrid  1:19  
Yeah, absolutely. I think everything I know, are lots of things I know I learned from my mum. She is a very, very organised lady. And I remember so many things. I don't remember a lot of things. But the other things that I remember clearly and one of those things, she just she always did her grocery shopping on a Friday, and she would come home. And she tell us that we had to help her unpack. And always everything would be in the same bag so that the fruit and veg will be together and the meat will be together. And, and it was like and I do the same thing. I do exactly the same thing now. And I'm thinking wow, and after shopping, she would sit down. And she would always do her finances every Friday, she would write down a list of the checks you'd wrote you would balance it against her bank statements. And it was just the way things were done. You know, we had a regular day we polished her shoes, you had a regular day that the car was washed, we had all those things that we had to get to kind of happen. I remember it very clearly. And when we were older, we had to clean our room every Friday. And one Friday, we can do kind of like just wipe around with a cloth a little bit and kind of make it tidy. But the next week, we had to make sure it was done properly, like my mother would say. And we had to get things from the wall and Hoover behind chairs and Hoover under the bed. And so those were things that we were expected to do when we left at home, we had to help. And we had to do that. And I think I learned a lot from that. You know that having times where you would do certain things. I think it's from my childhood from both my mom and my dad, actually, they were very quick on that. They just did it and then never moaned about it. And it was just something that had to be done. And I remember my mom saying, Don't put it down, put it away. Don't put your shoes in the living room when you come in. They have to be in the hallway where you're hanging up your coat. When you go upstairs, and there's something on the stairs, bring it up. It was just all those things that were just ingrained in me, I think.

Lesley  3:28  
Yeah, I think it's really important because we always talk about that, don't we, when we're talking about kids, particularly, you know, modelling organised behaviour for children. And you know, so often we go to homes where people like, Why will my son or daughter not clean the room? And because you're saying to them clean your room and they don't know what that is, you know, they you've not explained it and broken it down step by step in terms of what that looks like. And so I think it is really important and you just learn through rote, I suppose. Don't you do things through routine and you work it out. And we still do so many things that our parents did you know, if our parents folded stuff, we tend to fold things if our parents bought socks in a certain way. We tend to do that. So it's really it's really interesting, isn't it? The kinds of things that you were taught as a child and that still still do today? Yeah, obviously really resonated.

Ingrid  4:16  
Yeah. And also, I remember us doing a spring clean every spring, we would have like a week or two weeks holiday in the in the spring, and one of those weeks would be used to spring clean our house and me and my sister both had to help my mum and we started at the top of the house in my room and we would clear everything out I mean the beds would come from the sides the mattresses for Hoover. The cupboards were taken from the wall, the skirting boards, the boards were done behind the cupboards, everything was emptied. Everything was gone through everything. When was decluttered I remember me standing I loved my books and I'm at a book collection. And I remember standing at the window with the window open having to flap the books together. get all the dust out. And every spring and we did the whole house with the three of us. And it was just, we did it. And we did quite a bit of pocket money for it. And at the end of the week, my mother always used to take us out for a really nice day out if we'd done you know, if we had a good week working. But you were talking about cleaning out cupboards in the kitchen with the Tupperware I remember that vividly. We did that as well. We just did that once a year. And we all work together as a team.

Lesley  5:28  
I think we used to get roped in a little bit of a feel as if we used to get roped in a little bit more as kids in those days in the kind of you know, you and I grew up saying in a sort of 70s and 80s. And I think we were asked to do more perhaps than our kids are these days, and it was just expected and we didn't really have, you know, if I said to my kids, I'll give you a fiver to clean the house. They'd look at me as if I had two heads and be like, No, don't do that for five or 50 quid maybe it was just not sure that they would quite play ball. But for us it was just like you have to do it, you have to help, things like that. And there wasn't as much readily available, you know, the cleaning stuff that we've got now on the Hoover's, that we've gotten all that kind of stuff and the microfiber cloth, they're much easier to work with than what we had back in the day, as they say, Yeah, that's really important. Because I know you're always talking about your mom. And so it's, it's important for us to realise it, and it really does resonate. And so you really do have to model that behaviour with your kids now if you want them to learn from you.

Ingrid  6:25  
Yeah, I think so too. And I remember you know, my dad explaining me how to wash the car, and I didn't do it properly. And he's like, if you're going to own this fibre, today, you're gonna I'm going to show you how to do it. And next time you need to do it properly if you want to own this fibre for washing the car. And I remember I remember all of those lessons that they taught me and my when we used to go in my teens when we used to go like on a day trip with my friends. My friends, I remember my friend saying, Oh, we forgot something. Oh, asking which you will have it in our bank. You know, I would be the one who had the sun cream on a cloudy day and suddenly the sun would come out and people go she will have some cream or plasters or an extra snack or I just don't know, I just have always been like that. But I think it all comes from how I was raised and I just and like you I was a hard worker I started with a paper paper around I ended up cleaning rooms in a motel every Saturday you know to in a team 20 rooms you know nine o'clock star till five o'clock AM oh my gosh, it was hard work. And I think that's where I learned a lot of my my hard work and get it done and the way you have to clean a hotel room. And of course from that on I became a waitress as a job and I worked it on the terrace and I worked behind the bar and that's kind of how I think how I ended up being going to hotel Hotel School Hotel Management school in Hollands and

Lesley  7:59  
Saturday jobs and things and holiday jobs that you had in your sort of mid teens were the things that led you to go to you always call it Hotel School, don't you? Yes, that sounds good one. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm what age were you when you went there?

Ingrid  8:13  
I was. I was 18. And I actually also did a job that's kind of funny as well. We have a live in a dam which is very famous for cheese. And next to the dam is very famous tangled Volendam and it has a lovely harbour and, and it's a dike, we call it the dike in Holland, where you've got like loads of souvenir shops, we had lots of tours, and I worked in souvenir shops. And I remember folding T shirts and putting all the souvenirs out and putting the new stuff in at the back and kind of have the circulation of first in first out. I mean, that's what you've learned in retail as well. And yeah, and when I was 17 years old, I actually decided that I really wanted to go a year to America. And I did an exchange programme when I was still in secondary school. And I went and lived a year in America

Lesley  9:04  
because he was 17 at the time, so that was really young to go away for a year. So it must have been really brave to let you go.

Ingrid  9:10  
Well, I think it's the same I think looking back now I'm like, wow, I was really brave. Go again, but and I was 16 I turned 17 A month after I was there. I live with a fantastic ghost family in a little town called Woodstock about an hour above Atlanta and Georgia. And I went to high school and it was still it was just one of those things. You know, you talk about wonderful things that happen to you in your life. You know, it's one of those years that I look back upon and think of how wonderful that my mom and dad let me go but how brave was I as well going to somewhere where I didn't know anybody and gosh, you know, it was a big thing. The more the older I get the more I think wow. At the time was like yeah, I'm going and so and then I came back finish my secondary school Here in the Netherlands at the time, and then went to hotel school. And I learned everything about managing hotels, running kitchens running, and I specialised in hotel cleaning to be specifically. So I actually worked in hotels as a head of housekeeping. So I had to make sure that a hotel with 215 bedrooms was cleaned on a daily basis, I had a team of Gosh, 2530 people. I was of course, I was cleaning lady first and then became a supervisor. And then I became head of housekeeping. And

Lesley  10:38  
you can you became head of housekeeping really, when you were really young. Did you had a lot of responsibility quite early on?

Ingrid  10:44  
Yeah, yeah, too young looking back. Now, I think it was too quick for me too fast. And I couldn't I couldn't keep it up. It was it was too much responsibility for somebody who's just out of school. So that's why I kind of decided to make a bit of a change in my career. And I ended up in a lettings agency. And I actually started showing properties, student rooms, houses furnished, and unfurnished to people who wanted to lead a house and love doing that. And then I actually was asked to become the trainer for the company and show people who work because the company was growing quite fast at that time. And I had to train the new staff in in how to talk to customers and use the computer system and have the structures in place and what you do from the moment you book a view and to actually the signing of the paperwork, what needs to be done, what forms need to be filled in. It's all about structures and organisation and processes and making things work seamlessly. And I really enjoyed it. And I ended up becoming the facilities manager for that company. And absolutely loved that I think of that I did a couple of different jobs within that company. But that was the main thing that I actually loved. And I did it for four years. And I was responsible for the 20 offices to 20 lettings agency offices in the Netherlands and one in Germany. And yeah, was responsible 45 company cars, the headquarters, that's where I was myself with a team I had two people in my team. So we were answering the phones, making sure that was coffees and teas and supplies responsible for the stock room but also for all those 14th of August 20 offices. And I think I did about 20 refurbs in about four years time. So yeah, yeah, so did a lot of so as somebody who did the bills or the building of the or the refurb of the business somebody else was responsible for it but the moment the carpet went in I was kind of carpet and up so I was responsible for the furniture for to make sure that there were plans and that there was lettering on the outside so people know that what that we were lettings agency that the kitchen was stocked so that the staff could make a sandwich and make themselves coffee, that office supplies were there. So I did that for all those company have offices and I apps I love that absolutely loved it. So I learned a lot by running doing paper and I changed a lot I changed a lot because a lot of it was not run efficiently and I changed a lot.

Lesley  13:27  
I think it would be wrong of me to know that you were in hotel housekeeping, not to ask you. What's the most interesting thing that you ever saw when you were cleaning a hotel? This one's just like an actual question because you must have seen it or did you typically see

Ingrid  13:50  
oh my gosh, is I think before because I worked in four and five star hotels and I think before I went into this I always thought that people who go to foreign fashion hotels sleep everything really nice neat, but it's not true of course because I worked in motels when I was 15 so you kind of expect because people don't pay a lot of money you kind of expect them to leave it a bit messy so I'm going to afford flash hotel now. They must it must be they're so beautiful those rooms it must be oh my god people leave the same kind of mess. I tell you. If I am if I share one thing with you, Leslie I know I find that people who work as cleaners in hotels are the most undervalued people in the world because they're absolutely amazing. And it's just unbelievable what they have to deal with. And I really do not expect people to make their bed when they leave a room but please, you don't need to leave our tell us a tip on your leak. Somebody's got to clean that up. You know

Lesley  14:52  
you're not spilling the beans or you're not spilling the beans but exactly like what goes on in hotel. Housekeeping stays in hotel housekeeping. And, well, you're not going public to the world and this podcast about what's the worst thing that you ever saw in a hotel room? Anyway, so I

Ingrid  15:09  
think the listeners want to know honestly.

Lesley  15:13  
Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Okay, so So you've gone through your sort of early career then. And obviously, you've been a little bit international by this point. You know, you've been to Belgium, you've been to Germany, you've been to the US by this point. And then at some point, you moved over in this direction, didn't you?

Ingrid  15:30  
Yes, yes. I so yeah. So yeah, I was in America, I was in Belgium for my internship. So at the hotel school, in the last year, we do a year of internship and I went to Antwerp, in Belgium, and I actually worked in the Antwerp Hilton for a year. And part of that time, I was the PA to the food and beverage manager. And for about three months, I had to make sure that diary was short it and everything was neat and tidy, and working with computers and customer relations management systems on all of those things. So you pick up on you learn things along the way. I think it's it's Yeah, was a really, really nice time. But funnily enough, that's where I always look at lighting. I don't know if you've noticed this, Leslie, but I always look at lights. I can tell you, if I'm anywhere, the first thing I've noticed is there's light bulbs broken, because the food and beverage manager in the end repels and at the time, always looks at the lights. And I don't know, I swear to God, I would have everything would be working. He would walk in and go why satellite ball broken. It was working five minutes ago, I'm telling you this. But I now I think it must have been ingrained in my in my memory. Because now everywhere I go, I'm like, There's a light bulb broken there.

Lesley  16:45  
There's always looking at but I have noticed that you pick up cobwebs quite regularly when we go out for dinner, and tell the restaurant owners that there are cobwebs as well, which is always highly embarrassing.

Ingrid  16:55  
I'm sorry, you know, it's my I think it's my hotel hotel base, you know, I would make a great secret hotel guests out, you know, in the especially in the beginning, I would actually you know, feel the top of the carpeting gonna go Is it clean here. Because it's I did that for so many years checking hotel rooms, working in hotels, you just have to feel that everything is clean, and that the cleaning ladies have done a good job because if they didn't, they had to go back because we pay a lot of money to stay in rooms. It has to be clean. But it's so much work. I tell you this. Definitely. But anyway, so yes. So that's how I ended up in Belgium. And that's how I ended up working in hotels in Holland. And my husband, like you said is also a Dutch. He also did Hotel School, and it's where we met. It's a bit of love story. Oh, but anyway, so he always worked in Holland. And he didn't have that for experience abroad. And at one point, he said to me, Ingrid, I would really love to work in a hotel abroad, I would love to get that experience. And that's how we ended up in Dublin. Okay, Ireland. So we actually, I quit my job as facilities manager, and kind of said, Okay, I'll go with you kind of thing. And we were supposed to go to Ireland about two or three years to kind of check it out, do him go to work there. And we ended up staying nearly four years. So and for a batting still felt like oh, it's just just across the border. It's not really a low there's really abroad, Antwerp, Belgium is really different than Holland. But it was still I think, on the continent, this time, we had to kind of actually pack up the whole house and have it put in a truck and the truck had to go over two pots of water and all of those things, you know, it kind of felt like an international move. And that's how we ended up in Ireland. And both of my children were born in Ireland, which is also interesting, because it's a completely different culture again, and then we were in Ireland for nearly four years. And then I started to think, Okay, what do I want to do? Do I want to go back into hotels? Do I want to find a facilities job, but the kids were still very, very little, my husband was working a lot. So I started asking my friends and family and I said, What do you think I should do? Kind of you'll kind of start to ask those questions. And they actually and somebody said to me at some point, you know what, Ingrid, you should do something that and help other people get organised. And I went, what, what? And they were like, You are such an organised person. And it always makes me laugh because one of my friends our system, Ingrid, you came out of the womb organised you were you were doing organised from the day you were you were born. So people when people said to me, you are so organised, you should help other people. I wouldn't. Oh, I hadn't. It hadn't crossed my mind because I came from a business background. So in a business it makes sense, but it never occurred to me that I could actually help people in their home. So That's kind of how the ball started rolling. And then we decided to move here to the UK. With the idea, let's go for two or three years to London. Yay. And that was nearly 11 years ago. So I kind of ended up here much longer than I expected, but absolutely loving it. And here, I really decided, okay, am I going to give this organising a go? And I haven't looked back really ever since. That's how I started my company. And

Lesley  20:29  
it's interesting, isn't it? You know, is it you know that you touched on a couple of things there that people talk to us about all the time, which is, people don't know that this job exists. And people know what the kind of things that they want to do. They know that they've been organised the whole lives, and they know that they want to help people. You know, we see so many organisers on the courses that we run to like, one day, I just Googled something. And it came up that this was a thing about a job that I could do. And obviously, people like Marie Kondo have helped as well, because all of her publicity over the past three or four years, shows that professional organisers do exist. And in this country as well, so no, it's an interesting one. And I think you know, you've got your you've obviously been organised from the start learnt a lot from your mom. And then you've gone into a business that's which is full of routine, haven't you routines, and house cleaning, and Ruth, sorry, hotel room cleaning and things like that. And that's where your structure and order comes in. So you're very meticulous about that kind of things much more meticulous than I am, I mean, I have to leave all of the videos about folding sheets and that kind of thing. Ingrid's remit because I'm just a little bit rubbish at that kind of thing. I'm more of a roll it up in a ball and stuff in a cupboard kind of person. Not that bad, but not as meticulous as my friend Ingrid here. So, you know, everyone comes into it in a different way. Don't man, it's interesting to hear your journey as well.

Ingrid  21:51  
Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's so true, what you're saying, you know, all the jobs that I've have, have had that have given and learn learn things that are that are learned from, but I think it's made the routines and the structures, I think that is really important. And that being organised is so much more helpful. And just to make sure that everything flow so much better, you know, an updated in I worked in Dublin for a couple of months in in a hotel. And just to tell you a little story. And I found out I was actually running the housekeeping department for a couple of months. And somebody said to me, Oh, do I have to do the sixth floor? And I went, Well, yeah, it has to be cleaned. You know, he's like, but there's no trolley on the sixth floor. And it's so annoying, because you have to go to the fourth floor and get a trolley and then wait for the lift. And I'm like, Why is there a trolley on the sixth floor. And she's because there's no place to hold it. And I thought there must be a room where we can put a trolley so actually went on the hunt down in this hotel started opening every door, I could find it found this perfect storage area that was used as a dumping ground. And I actually talked to the manager of the hotel and I went Can I please have helped clearing this out because it's full of stuff that nobody wants, uses or needs. Because I really would like to use a trolley. So it's all about being practical and trying to save time on things that are non essential. Because all that time trying to get a trolley up on the sixth floor was time she couldn't clean rooms and a job is hard enough as it is, you know. So that's I think, efficiency and being productive and being clever about it and not doing stuff four times. You know, I'm that's why I'm so meticulous in how you clean a room or how you clean a bathroom. Because I know that if you do it efficiently, you save tonnes of time.

Lesley  23:40  
Yeah, efficiency is absolutely critical. And that's where you have definitely the hotel staff will have taught you so much. Yeah, not so well. And the rest they say is history led you to become a professional organiser. Yeah, we met very early on in both of our careers didn't we probably within a year of us both setting up I think we were friends right from start and worked together a lot since there's a whole load of stuff that we learned in the last 10 years since we started our business as well. But we won't bore you with that because we talked about that all the time on the podcast. Thank you so much Ingrid for sharing your journey. I think it's really important for for our listeners to kind of know, We're normal people too that did normal things. And you know, we've not always been these organised Well, maybe you have been actually an organised machine or your life has not done that much. Yeah, you did sound quite organised, actually. And but yeah, these things can be learned as well, can't they but there's just little things that happen that so a little seed along the way down here where your journey takes you. And we were lucky enough for our journey to take us to professional organising which I'm talking about.

Ingrid  24:49  
Definitely. I mean, I am so lucky. I find gosh I just love I love my job. I love decluttering I love organising I love everything. about it. I feel so lucky and privileged to help other people become more organised and more decluttered and see the benefits of that. So thank you for letting me share my story today on the podcast. Leslie. It's been lovely been down memory lane.

Lesley  25:18  
Oh, thank you for sharing it. So listeners I think that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen today. If you'd like to get more tips and advice, please follow us on social media. We're on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as declutter hub. And we have a fabulous Facebook group called the declutter hub community where we chat all things clutter, we would absolutely love to see you that we do so much fab stuff and challenges you don't want to miss out. And if you don't want to miss out on the next weekly episode of The declutter podcast, subscribe to us on Apple podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher and it will pop into your notifications each Friday. See you next time.

Outro  25:57  
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