We hold onto stuff because it reminds us we belong, that we are/were loved.
Our modern times may have arrived at a place where our stuff affords us our identity. But it’s our stuff that is suffocating the Earth, clogging the ocean and slowly but surely destroying what beauty we have left. Is there a way out and a way forward? That’s a giant question that can basically paralyze us from doing anything at all.
But what if you had someone who has dedicated the last decade++ to boots on the ground rehoming and sustainable living?
That’s me and this is what I do. I share zero waste practices to us help navigate the overburdened world that our societal systems have created. I provide step-by-step solutions to rehoming and how you can do it in your life to maximize your space and better your community. Along with that, this is a space for conversations, rants and explorations into how we can preserve what we have left for generations to come.
We can create organized and peaceful environments while resisting over-consumption. And when we give things to the next highest good we impact our present and our future.
Your chief expert organizer and author-in-the-making.
After three decades of various career paths, including Music Video Producer, Marketing Executive at a Fortune 500 company and Non-Profit Executive Director, I fully understand the power of a well-organized space for mental clarity as well as productivity.
In 2016 I began my entrepreneurial journey by founding Next Highest Good, a professional organizing company in the San Francisco Bay Area dedicated to compassionate client support, zero waste rehoming and creating sustainable systems. Partnering with clients, both virtually and in-person, my goal is to help people create spaces that maximize healthy, sustainable living and productivity, with a focus on zero waste, ensuring every item goes to its highest and best use or as we like to call it: its next highest good.
The past eight years have both refined and solidified my experience, skills and natural organizing gifts and now it’s time for me to share my expertise and inside knowledge in long-form writing that I intend to turn into my first book.
I’m here to cultivate a meaningful conversation about how and why it matters what we do with all our stuff when we no longer have a need, want or use for it.
With the rate of modern-day production, we will be quite literally buried in stuff in no time at all, some parts of the world already are. And there are things we do about that. Right now, today, there are places to take the things that you no longer want but still have value for someone else. And I know those places! So. Many. Resources.
I work every day through robust and impactful community partnerships to make sure our clients’ stuff is rehomed, donated, upcycled, reused and, yes, not tossed in another landfill.
Let’s learn how to have a different relationship with our stuff.
Through this newsletter, I’ll be sharing resources and tangible ways to make zero waste living a reality. Like how to recycle used paint, what to do with the 2nd generation iPod you can’t turn on, or what exactly you can do instead of turning your junk drawer upside down into the trash.
I love a deadline and I love getting things done. But when it comes to this Substack, I’m going to counter that narrative just a bit. There is no set publishing schedule or content calendar here.
I’ll post articles from my expert perspective on sustainability, rehoming, and zero waste organization. As the chapters from my forthcoming book come together, I’ll be intentionally sharing those too. And because the occasional unhinged, yet fully informed, rant is fun, I’ll throw a few of those in here as well. Like how much I love Sports Basement, a privately held sporting goods store chain here in the Bay Area that has a Pre-Loved program, or what I’m discovering about waste disposal as I keep finding abandoned medical equipment on the streets of San Francisco.
We’ve only got one Earth and she needs all of us to chill out and nourish her.
There are many resources for rehoming your stuff and ways to embody a new way of thinking about everything inside your humble abode. Together, we can get creative about who or what organization may want damn near anything you no longer want, need, or use. I’m looking forward to sharing all of this with you and creating a dialogue that inspires action and change.
Thank you for being here. For being willing to think differently in service to our gorgeous planet that we have been smothering for far too long. And for being empowered to do something about it.
Here’s to rehoming all the stuff in your life to make literal and figurative space for *your* next highest good.
