Realign started in January 2018 with one employee and a dream. Now, we are a team of three employees, who dovetail with other specialist companies to get the best and easiest outcome for our clients. We are now a multi-service company, meeting the different needs of our clients. Currently, our services include:
- Decluttering: We help individuals, families and businesses go through everything they own and decide if they need it, use it or just love it. .
- Downscaling: A service helping seniors downscale large family homes to make the jump to a smaller space easier.
- Docs-in-a-Row: An administration assistance service for individuals and small businesses. We help you move paper documents to the cloud, organise documents, and create organised systems for long-term success.
- Deceased Estates: Help with cleaning out a home after someone passes, donating items and readying a property for sale.
Gabrielle Bernstein
“Getting organised
is a sign of self-respect”
Realign is there to help you do the work you feel you just can’t do, either because of lack of time, grief, being despondent, lack of space or just lack of knowledge. We make it easy for you to see that being organised makes you thrive.
Frequently Asked Questions
I have a system for old paperwork, but new paper keeps piling up. What do I do?
If you already have a working filing system, you’re most of the way there, just apply the same categories to incoming paper as you use for what’s already filed (by subject, by family member, whatever fits). Any container works: crates, drawers, even repurposed boxes.
Set aside a short block each morning to file new paper by category before starting anything else, and split your time daily between clearing the backlog and keeping up with new arrivals, tackling only one of the two leaves you feeling like you’re never getting ahead.
Where do you shop for organising supplies?
It comes down to budget, there’s no shame in spending nothing at all; scrap paper labels and repurposed boxes work fine as a starting system. Once there’s budget, go-to spots are PNA (files, sleeves, stationery) and Mambos (containers, drawers, pull-out units, generally the best value).
Is professional organising a real profession, or self-titled?
There’s no formal qualification for it in South Africa yet, though dedicated courses exist abroad covering things like the psychology of clutter and neurodiverse approaches to organising. Locally, most organisers come from teaching, admin, or design backgrounds.
The field covers far more than tidying, deceased estate clearance, project management, virtual PA work, and neurodiverse support all fall under it. The title may be self-designated for now, but the skillset is genuine.
I have no system for email, photos, or my desktop. Where do I start digitally?
Mirror your physical filing system digitally. Use the same labels, same categories, across email, cloud storage, and paper files. For email, set up labels matching your main life categories (medical, utilities, etc.); messages auto-date-stamp, so the archive organises itself over time.
In Google Drive, mirror those labels as top-level folders with year-based subfolders, going one level deeper for complex categories like medical records.
For existing backlog, dump everything into one “Backlog” folder and chip away at it an hour a day, prioritising new items first.
What's the biggest lever for organising photos? Are there any hard don'ts??
Start with four broad categories rather than sorting by date: People (subdivided by name, grouped in 5-year bands if there are many), Trips (named by the trip, not the date), Milestones (birthdays, graduations, etc.), and Random/Uncategorised.
Add Pets, Work, or Sport as a fifth if relevant. When categories overlap, just pick one and stay consistent. There’s no single right answer, only the system you’ll actually keep up.
How do you keep a shared space organised for a household or team?
Labelling is the single biggest win. It doesn’t need to be polished, just clear enough that anyone sharing the space can put things back without asking. The second piece is patiently teaching the system to whoever shares it with you, one room at a time, over about a month per room, gently correcting small misses as they happen.
Full adoption across a home usually takes six months to a year, a modest investment against a much longer payoff.