Reader of the Week – Anna Sicalides

Reader of the Week – Anna Sicalides
The Suburban and Wayne Times
By Jason F. Smith
September 13, 2007

Anna Sicalides of Berwyn has a disposition contrary to not staying busy. In fact, she’s become so focused on organizing that she will organize your disorder for you – she’s made it her business.

As founder of The Organizing Consultant, which she established in 2002, Sicalides has brought order to environments ranging from cramped closets and disorderly desks to skewed spaces cluttered form wall to wall.

The Berwyn resident first got the idea for her business after organizing her domicile on Leopard Road and has since become the president of the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO).

“Basically, what I do is go to people’s homes and small businesses and help them resolve the issues that they have with clutter and disorganization,” explained Sicalides. “I help them to determine what they need to keep and what they can get rid of. I help them to determine how to best store what they want to keep.

“It all started when I was talking with a good friend of mine, who is a therapist, about straightening up our home and she inquired of me during one of our walks in the village of Berwyn, ‘You seem to be enjoying this. Why don’t you do this as a business?’ and I thought, ‘Why not?’”

Sicalides mentioned that she does have assistants that she brings with her to help with some jobs.

I am always looking for people to assist me with some clients when I am very busy,” elaborated Sicalides. “When I get a call from somebody who is trying to move who says that there is about 30-years-worth of clutter in their house, I think, ‘Whoa! I already have these other jobs lined up to do!’”

Sicalides said that people interested in working on organizing through her business should either call her at 610-647-3407 or email her at info@annaorganizesu.com.

Between graduating from Drexel University with a Design and Merchandising degree and starting her own business, Sicalides said that she had been working in retail. “I couldn’t bear the idea of going through another Christmas doing retail work.”

Sicalides has found organizing business opportunities as far as Philadelphia, New Jersey, Delaware, and “wherever is reasonable but I pretty much try to stick to within an hour of Berwyn.”

Keeping in the spirit of organizing what goes where, Sicalides set her sights on mapping out Easttown Township’s historic resources with other local volunteers whom collectively formed the Easttown Township Historical Commission, which was approved of by the township’s supervisors on August 20, 2007.

Sicalides said she had felt that “it was about time the township had a group working towards identifying and preserving the township’s historical resources,” and she mentioned that the home she shares with her husband, Peter, is 210 years old, except for some modifications and extensions.

“Although we live in the village of Berwyn, some houses are away from the traffic enough to have a slightly rural feel, like our home,” smiled Sicalides. “That’s what I wanted, and it’s great to be able to walk through Berwyn and be able to get coffee or dinner.

“I never lived near a town-like atmosphere before, so it’s nice to be able to walk to places to do things instead of always having to drive. I grew up in Wynnewood, and my sister lives in Wayne and my mom in Bryn Mawr now, so it’s nice to be so close to them.”

Reorganizing the topic of conversation back to the township’s historic resources, Sicalides noted, “When we bought the house we live in now, I had questions that lead me to realize that we had no historical society or commission.

“When I found out that there is a county office as the hub for historical preservation based in West Chester, the woman I got in touch with was enthusiastic about my interest and she said, ‘You need a historical commission! You can’t keep losing historic assets in your township!’”

Sicalides said that she then wrote a letter to Ray Hoffman at the “Berwyn Banter” and several of the people that are on the newly-formed historical commission got in touch with her after reading what he published.

“I also called George Wilman, a historical architect, and [C.] Herb Fry, because he is a local historical legend, and they have were great acting as consultants while we were forming the Easttown Township Historical Commission.

Historical commissions countywide congregated at the Hilltop House located next to Easttown Township’s municipality building on June 27 in recognition of the Chester County Preservation Network’s efforts to create a countywide map of historical assets.

Why Easttown for the countywide-historical-oriented-individuals’
celebration? Partly in acknowledgement of Sicalides-and-other-voluntary-
crewmembers’ strides taken to bring about the formation of their township’s historical commission, somewhat that the Hilltop House is – according to all of the guests asked by “The Suburban” that night – an excellent place to have a formal party, and most-certainly-to-some-extent because the-powers-that-be in the township were very accommodating in allowing the event to be held there.