Liz Maffucci, The Clutter Warrior. is one of the really neat people may husband Alan & I have as a client of Neat Web Solutions, our web design company for small businesses. In the process of creating her Organizing & Coaching website, we got to know a lot about her and especially about her unique medical organizing service.
So we asked her to be the first in a series of interviews we are doing with Professional Organizers around the country! Our intention is to bring to our readers a wide diversity of tips from organizers specializing in different areas and highlight the diversity in the Professional Organizing industry as well. For folks who may be putting off the decision to get the help you need, I hope this might help inspire you to reach out for the support you need to transform your life!
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Q: What motivated you to start your Organizing business?
A: Most of my work life had been spent in government. I decided to leave that work and be a paralegal. I worked as a paralegal in a lawyers office that did closings. In working there I soon found out that it just wasn’t my cup of tea, so I made the decision after a year to leave and open up my own business. I knew I had excellent organizing and people skills so I decided to start my own professional organizing business and The Clutter Warrior was born.
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Q: What got you into coaching?
A: Now ten years later, I am still a successful, busy organizer, but I also do a lot of life coaching. I found that many of my clients needed to talk about other things while we were organizing their homes and businesses. So I saw the need to offer life coaching as a separate service for people who needed to try and fulfill their lifelong dreams and aspirations.
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Q: What do you enjoy most about your organizing / coaching work?
A: When I see positive changes in an environment like a home or office and how these changes affect my clients it makes me really enjoy what I do. The same can be said for coaching. In coaching clients that are very motivated to make positive changes in their lives and I get to see the progress each week with my clients it makes coaching very rewarding for me. To make clients see their own potential is magical to me.
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Q: You offer Medical Organizing, can you share a few of your favorite organizing tips for people to organize medical paperwork?
A: There are a few things that are very important when dealing with medical paperwork. Health insurance companies are becoming much stricter with the amount of time you have to submit claims. Many now allow only 3 months for submission of claims. The key is to have an organized system for your medical claims.
Create separate folders called;
- Pending Medical – After you submit a completed claim, a copy of the statement gets put into this folder with the date noted as to when it was submitted
- Completed Medical – Once you receive payment on a claim, it gets filed in this folder along with any related EOB’s from the insurance company.
- Forms and labels - A form should be done separately for each member of the family, which makes it much easier to submit a claim. Simply staple the claim to your doctor’s statement and send it directly to the insurance company. Make sure you make a copy of the doctor’s statement and put it in your pending file with the date you submitted it. Creating pre-printed labels with the insurance company’s address on your computer which will make it easy and simple to get your claims out in the mail.
- Medical Correspondence – Any letters you write to your insurance company and any correspondence that you receive from them goes in this file.
- Medical History – Each member of the family needs a medical history file.
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Q: Describe one or 2 of your best client success stories.
A: Let me give you one from organizing and one from coaching.
I have an organizing client that was so overwhelmed by her paper that she had to sleep on her couch because even her bed was covered by it. We worked over a period of a few weeks and by the time we were finished, she was very motivated to keep it that way. She became a different person, no longer were the shades closed, she was able to sleep in her bed at night and she felt comfortable having company over to her house. She has maintained it to this day and that was two years ago. She realized how depressed she felt being surrounded by all the clutter.
A coaching client of mine had a very bad car accident, and did not allow her to dance which was her favorite hobby and kept her in severe pain. When her car insurance company told her that they would not pay for the accident due to some sort of paperwork mix up, she did not feel she had the strength to fight them. And when she looked at the ominous stack of papers she had to deal with she leaned towards not pursuing the insurance company legally.
We spoke over a period of three months about this and she came to the conclusion through her weekly coaching sessions that she needed to fight for what was right and that the accident had so changed her life and she had spent so much of her own money on doctors, specialists, chiropractors etc that she pushed ahead to bring about justice. She did not want to feel defeated by the insurance company and when she was finally able to weed through the papers and get an attorney she felt a great weight lifted off of her. And she persevered and actually won a settlement from the insurance company and came to the realization that she could do whatever she put her mind to and overcome any obstacle in her way!
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What a great story! How often do we feel overwhelmed by the idea of a confrontation and so we just back down and let it pass and feel defeated? How often do we feel guilty or inadequate about reaching out to get the support we need to get through an ordeal that is making us miserable? This is a great example of how getting the support you need and facing your challenges empowers you and affects all aspects of your life.
Thanks for sharing Liz!
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