The understory is the layer beneath the canopy — shaded, unphotographed, and where most of the living happens.
Most home systems are built for a version of you that doesn't exist on hard days.
I design household systems the way engineers design systems that have to survive failure — for how your brain actually works, on the days you have the least to give. Portland, and online.
Who this is forPeople with ADHD, autism, trauma histories, chronic illness, a new baby, or a life that recently stopped fitting its old shape. No judgment, no before-and-afters, and no system you have to become a different person to maintain.
Conventional organizing optimizes for the day the organizer leaves.
That's the equivalent of testing a system only on the days nothing goes wrong. It looks like success, and then the first disruption — an illness, a deadline, a bad week — takes the whole thing down, and you're left believing the failure was yours.
My background is in business continuity and incident response: designing systems that keep working when conditions get bad. Those ideas have straightforward household versions, and almost nobody applies them to homes.
The engineering is in service of something much simpler. Most people I work with have spent years being told they just need more discipline. I would like them to stop believing the problem is them.
- A recovery path
- What to do when it falls apart — written into the system before it does, so falling off is a step in the process rather than a failure.
- Graceful degradation
- What this looks like running at thirty percent, and whether thirty percent is still useful. Most systems only have an on and an off.
- Honest capacity
- Built for the energy you actually have, at the hours you actually have it — not the energy you think you ought to have at 9pm.
- Known failure modes
- What size of disruption breaks your systems, measured from your own history, so the next one has enough slack built in to survive.
I design and coach. You do the sorting, at your own pace.
Having someone come in and do it for you teaches you nothing and reliably regresses. What lasts is a system built around you, plus someone in your corner while you run it in.
Discovery
Two sessions at your place, a week or two apart. The first is broad: how you move through your day, what's been tried, where things pile up, what makes a space feel right to you. Then I go away and think. The second is specific — I come back with ideas and we test them against the actual rooms. Please don't tidy first, either time.
Two 90-minute visits, 7–14 days apart
Your blueprint
A written plan: sequenced tasks with honest time estimates, the rhythms that hold them together, and the recovery path for when life interrupts. Nothing in it should surprise you — we'll have talked it through by then.
Within a week of the second visit
Check-ins
Every couple of weeks by video, while you work through it. Encouragement, troubleshooting, and tuning the system where reality disagrees with the plan. This is the part conventional organizing skips, and it's why people succeed.
Half an hour, biweekly
Adjustment
Systems get revised, not graded. When something isn't holding, we change the system rather than asking you to try harder at it.
For as long as it's useful
You will not be judged in your own home. Here's what that means in practice.
Letting someone into a house you're not proud of takes real nerve. These are the things I can promise before you've spent a cent, and they hold for every visit after.
- I don't react to anyone's houseNot with a face, not with a pause. I've seen my own at its worst, and I am not keeping score of yours.
- You can close a doorSkip a room, stop a session, change your mind. No explanation needed, and I won't ask for one or quietly circle back to it later.
- Nothing is photographed without your say-soNo before-and-afters, ever. Your home is not my marketing material.
- Nothing gets thrown away by meI don't touch, move, or decide about your things. Every choice about what stays is yours alone.
- There's no homework you get graded onIf something didn't happen, that tells me the system was wrong. It tells me nothing about you.
- You set the paceIf this month turns out not to be the month, we pause and pick it back up when it is. That's a normal thing that happens.
Hi, I'm Amy.
I work in systems engineering — my day job is keeping critical systems running through failures. I also have a brain that the standard productivity advice has never once worked for, and two small children who made that extremely obvious.
So I built my own systems, the way I'd build them at work: designed for the bad day, tested against real disruption, revised when they broke. They held. This is that approach, offered to other people whose homes stopped fitting them.
I'm not a therapist, and I don't work on hoarding situations — both need training I don't have. What I am is someone who will arrive without judgment, take your actual life seriously, and build something that fits it. I like this work enormously, and I like the people who ask for it.
Worth knowing before you write.
This tends to fit people who have tried organizing before and watched it unravel, who are coming out of a diagnosis or a hard season, who are managing a home alongside something heavy, or who have been told their whole lives that they just need more discipline.
This isn't a fit for:
- Hoarding disorder, which needs a specialist with clinical training.
- Therapy or mental health treatment. I'm glad to work alongside yours, and I'll refer out when something is outside my scope.
- Anyone who mainly wants someone to come in and do it for them — I design and coach, and the hands-on work stays yours.
- A photo-ready home by next weekend. This works at the pace your life allows.
Please don't clean up before I come. I've seen my own house at its worst.
I mean this literally, and I say it to everyone. Whatever state your home is in is simply the starting information — it is never the thing I'm reacting to.
Single-room sprint
One space that's defeating you — the entryway, the kitchen counter, the room with the door kept shut. One discovery session, a blueprint for that room, and one check-in.
Whole-home foundation
Two discovery sessions a week or two apart, a blueprint for the home, and four check-ins across two months while you work through it.
Ongoing support
Two check-ins a month plus questions between, for people who want someone alongside them long-term.
Remote consultation
Outside Portland. An hour by video with written notes afterward, using photos and a walkthrough you record.
Founding-client rates and trade arrangements are available while I'm building my practice — say so when you write and we'll work something out. Cost should not be the reason you don't ask.
Tell me a little, or tell me a lot.
There's no wrong amount of detail and nothing you need to have figured out first. One line is a completely fine way to start, and so is a long message you've been drafting in your head for a while. I reply within a couple of days, warmly and without a sales pitch.