The Best Home Organizers in NYC 2023

Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: Getty

New York at Home, newyorkathome.com

Diane Lowy studied art installation at Bard College and went on to oversee day-to-day office operations at Google and Chanel. Then, while working at Square, she helped employees get their desks in order; when they started asking her to organize their apartments, she realized she had found her calling. She started a proper home-organizing business, New York at Home, in 2016. Lowy begins with a two-hour on-site strategy session (from $975) that results in a highly detailed plan of systems that reflect the client’s lifestyle and priorities, what they do in and outside the home, and how much support they have. For art collector Carla Shen, in addition to organizing all of the miscellany in her basement and multiple closets, Lowy created a dedicated storage area on the top floor for Shen’s hobby of dressing to match her art and devised a system to store her costume clothing and accessories by theme. Talent manager Sekka Scher was pleased with how easy it has been to maintain Lowy’s system. Scher wanted to organize the closets in her new apartment in a way that would prevent clutter. Lowy set up her shoes and wardrobe, including her collection of a dozen Lindsey Thornburg coats, so everything was visible and accessible and classified by color and use. “We moved in 2019, and all the organizational systems are still the same,” Scher says.

Urban Clarity, urbanclarity.net

Over half of Urban Clarity’s clients come for help managing every aspect of putting an apartment on the market and moving neatly into a new home. The company declutters and has a deep Rolodex of vendors to call upon for cleaning, repairs, painting, removing junk, shredding, and all the other tasks that can make a project overwhelming for a client. When Heather Fain Schaefer, the COO of podcasting company Pushkin Industries, needed help clearing out her mother-in-law’s apartment after her passing, two people suggested she call Urban Clarity. Members of its 22-person team not only helped remove decades of accumulated knickknacks but also coordinated with the building and the movers when it was time to properly leave, brought in appraisers who got Schaefer “a fairly significant amount of money” for some of those seemingly insignificant tchotchkes, sold a number of things through the Real Real, and found someone to capably pack “a very fancy chandelier with very specific kinds of lightbulbs.” “They think about the details I never would have thought of,” Schaefer says, such as donating a collection of old towels to animal shelters. 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl hired the company a few years ago to do a simple reorganization of her apartment — afterward, she couldn’t stop inviting friends over to show them her kitchen drawers. “They were masterpieces,” she says. ($150 an hour.)

Organize With Faith, organizewithfaith.com

To actor Peter Hermann, Faith Roberson “is a cross between Yoda and this very hip fairy godmother with super-high-level executive function.” Roberson, the owner of Organize With Faith, “doesn’t prescribe a single method to all her clients,” Hermann says. But most important, “Faith doesn’t mess around. She doesn’t just accept any answer you give her: ‘Oh, you said that’s important to you even though this is the first time you’ve looked at it in five years?’ She pushes back but in a way you can’t argue with.” In addition to her work with home clients, Roberson helps businesses improve their work spaces. Danique Day, daughter of fashion designer Dapper Dan, called Roberson when the tailoring room of Dan’s Harlem atelier needed help; the space was strewn with some 400 bolts of fabrics, thread, sewing accessories, and clothing. The project took a few months. “She observed the workflow of the tailors and helped us think through the systems we used and how we could make the space conducive to a seamless workflow,” Day says. “After Faith and her team completed the work, there was a natural place for everything. All the fabric was on display and accessible, and each workstation had their tools within reach.” (Consultations are $200 onsite, free for virtual.)

SOS, nycsos.com

Jack Bergamino, a 30-year veteran of visual merchandising for brands like Paul Smith and Williams Sonoma, and Brian Maloney, who has a background as an art curator and gallerist, differ from other home organizers in that working as SOS, they bring their personal sense of taste — and strong opinions — to every project. Carson Kressley, who considers himself a “little bit of a high-end hoarder,” first called SOS last year to help clean up his Park Avenue apartment and says not only did they corral things into bins and organize his sweaters by color, but they told him what to get rid of and what to stop buying. For instance: No more platters from HomeGoods. “It paid for itself,” he says. Abby Palanca, a real-estate broker for Serhant, decided to have SOS organize her closet after she saw the duo work with one of her clients. “I started screaming and crying when I opened the door,” Palanca says. The pair had carefully color coordinated her clothes, shoes, and bags in such an artful way that “I now feel like I’m walking into a showroom every time I open the door. I’m finding things and wearing things I haven’t in years,” Palanca says. (From $225 an hour.)