“Dara Zycherman is a joy to work with; she has worked with me through several projects both big and small. She is a wonderful combination of knowledgeable, proactive, and thoughtful.  Dara knew just when to push me to get rid of things I didn't need and how to help me make sense of the things that were important for me to keep.  I love that I can find the things I need now when I look for them, and that I have better systems in place for what to keep.” - Amelia M., Washington, DC

"Dara is wonderful!  She has helped me do what I considered impossible—organize my incredibly disordered study for our move from a house to to a smaller apartment with less storage space.  I have worked with other organizers, but never with anyone like Dara.  She is bright, intuitive, quick, extremely hard-working, and very motivating.  Plus she is funny and makes the time pass painlessly when we are working together.  She knows what she is doing and explains why she is doing it, so I learn from her.  I am seeing amazing changes in my work space and with my attitude toward pulling it together." - Heddy Reid, Washington, DC

"Overwhelmed by almost 40 yrs of accumulating mostly worthless junk in our 3000 sq ft attic, I hired Dara to help me both weed out the things I no longer needed and organize the nostalgic things I decided to keep. It was a daunting task and one I had been putting off for years and years. It's so easy to accumulate "things" - easy to say " I might need this some day" or " One of my grown children might want this some day " and even easier to throw it up in your attic as in ' out of sight and out of mind ". But then comes the day when you know these "things" don't define you or your legacy and most likely the majority of these items can in fact be either thrown out or donated to someone who might really have a use for them. But still, one can become almost paralyzed and not even know where to begin. That was me - completely overwhelmed by the thought of downsizing and stuck as to what to do first.

Dara was invaluable in coming in and first assessing the situation and then helping me separate the " must haves" from the " can easily do withouts " - and she did it in such a calm, patient and loving way that the task which I thought I'd never be able to do turned out to be very do-able indeed. She made lists, made categories, found containers to store the ' must haves' in and left me with a sense of peace about the whole experience and not one regret about what I chose to throw out or donate. She works efficiently yet I never once felt hurried or pressured to make a decision as to what to keep or not.

I simply cannot recommend Dara enough for the work she does and most importantly, the sensitivity she has in approaching the whole process which she knows can really be an emotional one if you let it get the best of you. Dara made sure that never happened . " - Debby Arem, Gaithersburg, MD

“Not only was I drowning in 'stuff' … I was drowning in an endless sea of important life issues such as writing a will, closing out an old business, dealing with the paper dragon of finances, medical papers, Social Security issues, photographs, old family slides (who has a slide projector anymore?) etc. etc. etc.  Then there were goals such as house renovations longed for but no time for.  After just 5 months with Dara, the 'stuff' is greatly reduced, the paper dragon is tamed, family photos and memorabilia organized and some of the house renovations underway.  I’m enjoying my house and my remaining ’stuff’.  Dara is methodical and creative.  She is fun to work with — we argue a little and laugh a lot.”  - Ann Zabaldo, Washington, DC

“Dara worked with us, helping to organize our move from our home of 33 years; it was very full of decades of accumulated things from large to small, including many hundreds of books, academic files, and thousands of large and small photographs, many framed.

We had spent years unsuccessfully trying to imagine how we could ever organize and execute a move, recognizing that much would have to be donated, sold, or discarded.

Dara was instrumental in organizing activities and catagories and breaking them down into more or less managable pieces, many of which had several steps. She was helpful in identifying donation sites for some items (a doll collection, a coin collection, books), arranging for Salvation Army furniture pickup, and in showing us strategies for listing items for sale on CraigsList. She made a useful and detailed online spreadsheet of tasks, dates, each with a current status that we each could refer to and interactively update as needed.

In addition, during late fall she came to our house twice for a few days (staying in the local hotel), to supervise and manage some of the larger tasks and to provide advice on how to approach the weeding processes. She also did a fair amount of physical work in moving things as needed.

Dara was firm in urging us to get rid of more, given that we were to move into a somewhat smaller space; however she was never argumentative or in the least unpleasant. If one of us wanted to keep something, she accepted our final decision. In the end, we did keep too much - we knew it then, and now that we are moved we can see that we still have some work to do - indeed, we knew that before, but were just unable to pull the trigger on some things. But our new place is already livable and there are not TOO many boxes left to unpack.

We moved in December - we were lucky with the weather, but we were even luckier in having Dara to supply so much of her experience, knowledge, and philosophy as well as all of the organizational structure vital to the process. We cannot imagine how we would have executed this move without her! We rate her efforts indispensible to accomplishing our move, and recommend her most highly.” - Jim + Pinky H., Chicago, IL