JANUARY 2 0 1 8 I BOROMAG.COM 47
Photos courtesy of Drea Montali
is one of Montali’s biggest tips. In a closet,
you should keep pants together, shirts together
and dresses together, for example, so
that you’re not wasting your time searching
through your closet for the item you want.
Same goes for desks and pantry spaces.
Montali’s clients live all over Queens, Brooklyn
and Manhattan, but a large portion of
those clients are in Astoria and Long Island
City. This area is special to her, she said, and
she’s lived in several Astoria apartments herself,
so she understands the specific challenges
locals face: small closets, and often sharing
a space with roommates, which means that
you have to fit “all your life stuff in one room.”
And working with couples is always interesting
for Montali since there has to be compromise
with storage space, and she helps
couples use their space the best.
“Also, in older Queens apartments — this
goes for Jackson Heights, too — a long time
ago, closets weren’t really a thing. Everyone
wanted armoires, and furniture was what you
would use, so not all these older buildings
have actual closets in them. Now, with new
construction, people care about closets, so
they’re getting bigger, but if you’re living in
anything pre-war, you don’t have much closet
space.”
Closets are close to Montali’s heart: before
starting Dream Organization, she designed
custom closet units for California
Closets. That position would lead to organization
jobs for Montali since once the
closets were built, people would ask if she
could put it back together, too.
Now, when her clients lack closet space,
she helps them use wall space instead, or
she’ll refer people to California Closets.
Some people ask her to design them a
closet, so she will measure the space, draw
a closet design on graph paper, and then
sell that design to a contractor to build it.
Montali said that one thing that sets her
apart from other organizers is that she tries
to be as eco-friendly as possible. She said
that fashion is the second-most polluting
industry, and with so many people buying
throwaway clothes, what to do with old
fabric has been a huge conversation. She’s
noticed that a lot of her clients are sick of
buying fast fashion that they’ll soon dispose
of; instead, they’re ready to invest in more
classic, quality pieces.
As we wrapped up the process, I asked
Montali if she ended up getting close to her
clients, since she would inevitably learn so
much about them by going through their
things. After all, we’d sorted through handwritten
letters from friends, medical receipts,
artwork I’d bought but hadn’t yet framed, internet
bills and old photos. She told me that
people tend to open up to her easily and let
her into their lives once the organizing process
starts, perhaps because going through
someone’s belongings is an intimate process.
And it was true: during our short, 3.5-hour session,
Montali and I ended up talking about the
book I was reading, dating in the age of apps,
and how she met her husband.
The result of Montali’s desk organization
astounded me: not only was my desk
usable again, but it was in a better shape
than ever. My files are neat, organized and
alphabetized; my pens are all in one mason
jar; and my desktop looks fun and welcoming,
with some photos on display and all of
my old copies of BORO standing up in a
cute basket (in publication order, no less).
As I looked around my room, other areas
— areas I’d thought weren’t all that bad —
now looked messy.
“It’s addicting after a while, once you
start,” Montali said. Her clients often hire
her to organize one area, and then keep
rehiring her to organize the other areas of
their apartments. One man who made fun
of his wife for bringing in a professional
ended up hiring Montali himself once he’d
seen the results of her work.
I could understand why. When you hand
over your space to a professional, you feel
safe knowing that you’re in good hands. And
seeing your desk, long bogged down by
piles of junk you never wanted to deal with,
finally clear and tidy? It’s incredibly freeing.
For more information, visit dreamontali.com.
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