Houston Profesional Organizer & Concierge // A Day in the Life

Another day in the life of a Houston professional organizer and concierge from some projects we worked on in January 2020. Every week is different, which we LOVE!

Monday, the 20th Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Helped a client in Westbury organize her closet. She is a teacher and had the day off and usually on school holidays and bank holidays I book up quickly because people have limited time off throughout the year. I wish I got a better before, but just imagine basically no place to walk in the closet. It took 2 of us 4.5 hours to do the closet. She did amazing and donated SO much!!

Tuesday, 21st

We helped a client get organized after they just moved to Montrose from Midland. I know I have mentioned this before, but when you work with a concierge / professional organizer we usually have a huge list of resources, well at least I do. Her movers weren’t great and didn’t unpack, so when she contacted me in a panic the day before we were to begin our organizing project I knew just the people to call to help them unpack. We do offer unpacking services, but sometimes it is easier to hire unpackers, so we can get straight to organizing. There were 2 organizers for 9 hours and we got them to a point of functioning. The kitchen, bedrooms, office and playroom area were all set up by the end of day.

Wednesday, 22nd

Today was mostly a day full of regular clients.
Did returns to Neiman Marcus and Kuhl Linscomb.
Updated a guest list for a client whose son is getting married this summer and she is hosting a shower in March.
Schedule various service people for a client in Piney Point.
Head to River Oaks to measure a client’s gunroom for custom shelf liner.
In Montrose to run errands for a regular client.
Then in The Heights to help a regular client I work with monthly and usually several times a month to help them stay organized. Many clients I work with monthly I go to their house while they are at work to maintain big projects that we have done.
Then off to my concierge meeting at Henderson & Kane.

Thursday the 23rd and Friday the 24th and all of the following week of the 27th

We were at Trellis, which is the spa at The Houstonian and they are shutting down while they do some renovations at Trellis. They are opening Solaya in Highland Village. We have been helping them prepare for their move by boxing up various items, organizing inventory, storage items, organizing all spaces at Solaya and the list goes on. You HAVE to go check out the new space, it is GORGEOUS. We had 4 different team members working tirelessly on this project and so happy about how everything turned out. I randomly saw clients in Highland Village because we were there all week and please excuse my deliriousness lol. 

This week was also mixed installing shelf liner and errands for regular clients. 

Saturday, the 25th

In West U helping a client get organized after moving into their new house. We focused on the kitchen, pantry, master bathroom, playroom and living room area (mainly styling the shelves and organizing the cabinets under the bookshelves. It took 2 of us 9 hours to go through and organize all of the spaces. 

Saturday, February 1st

Helping a regular client in The Heights with quarterly decluttering where we go throughout the whole house and purge. Very cathartic and a great way to start off the new year. 

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Made in the USA + Eco: Scotch Flex and Seal

Since we do so many concierge tasks here in Houston we are constantly shipping items for clients. I love this Scotch Flex & Seal because 1. it is made in the USA 2. it saves on boxes and shipping supplies. All you do it lay your product on the shipping roll, measure how much you need, cut, fold and seal. It's super easy and efficient. Have you tried it yet?

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10 Things That Make Me Happy: February 2020

February was a fast and furious month with lots going on and I am so thankful for so much.

1. Going to the Roughnecks XFL games with Bryan and my in laws. 
2. Starting my Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo (HLSR) shifts for the recycling committee and seeing all my committee members. 
3. Going to Rodeo Uncorked for the first time.
4. Going to Grace Potter show at House of Blues. If you have never seen her live you need to.
5. Getting 2 heart shaped pizzas for Valentine's Day. One from Jackpot Pizza and the other from Papa John's.
6. Starting our bathroom remodel project. 
7. Going to acupuncture.
8. Being able to go to a Women Who Give a Damn meeting and donate to a worthy cause.
9. Meeting up with my fellow Houston organizing friends for neighborhood group meetings through NAPO Houston. 
10. Being able to stay home several weekends and be with my husband. 

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Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day!

Photo by sheri silver on Unsplash

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Eco Modern Concierge Featured on the bareMinerals Blog

Eco Modern Concierge was featured on the bareMinerals blog last month. I contributed eco organizing tips for beauty supplies. Since it is earth month I thought this would be the perfect time to share this article. I am always happy to contribute to various publications.

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16 Tips I Learned From Having My Email Hacked

As many of my clients, colleagues, family and friends know, many of you got a ton of unsolicited spammy emails from me earlier this week. I got hacked and it WAS NOT FUN & BEYOND STRESSFUL!! In fact, it was such a major nightmare / hell where I had mini meltdowns in between being on the phone with tech support and answering the calls, emails and texts I was getting from clients and colleagues at least every 10 minutes from 12:30pm - 11pm and then again the next morning. Also, besides me being on the phone with tech support off & on from 1pm - midnight and then again the next morning.

I first learned that I got hacked when colleagues started emailing and texting me. Of course I immediately changed my password and got on the phone with tech support. GoDaddy is who hosts my website and email and they were very helpful, but everyone I talked to knew something completely different. This was a major help to me to speak to an actual person and I was oh so thankful for that. They think the hackers ran bots to get into my account. Basically they hacked other sights, took my email and used various passwords until they figured it out. They also told me they didn't think that they were actually "in" my email they were using spoofing and aliases emails and somehow got the information. Honestly, that is the part I still don't understand because how can you not be "in" my email, but responding to old correspondence with people?

The tech people gave me a couple of different options and I didn't like any of them.

I could:

• Upgrade my email from GoDaddy and migrate to a new server through GoDaddy, which I did. It cost extra yearly, but I didn't care and honestly I would only by paying $70 and in my eyes that was 100% worth it to hopefully not deal with this nightmare again. Honestly, I was willing to do almost anything to make it go away at the moment. 
• Shut down my email completely to make sure it would go away immediately, but then I would not be able to access incoming or outgoing emails for 24 - 72 hours. I chose not to do this.
• Change my password and let things run their course for up to 24 hours. With the server they were currently using for my website email address it could take up to 24 hours to "kick" the hackers out.  I chose to do this. 

Why did I choose to let things run their course vs shutting my email completely down? I am still corresponding / communicating with clients via email, I have projects & articles I am contributing to, certifications & classes I am taking, and I have have applied for so many different grants & loans I really did not want to miss anything during this time. I wanted to get an email out to clients warning them that it was happening and would not be able to do that and answers questions / concerns if I shut my email completely down. I think once it was all said and done the spamming actually lasted about 12 hours. Believe me I was STRESSED OUT completely that whole time. My fear was annoying clients and potential clients and possibly loosing them or having them not want to interact me. That is the last thing I wanted to do. I don't exchange a lot of sensitive things through email, but I was still worried on that front as well.

Here are some things I learned from the various tech experts I have talked to the last several days:

1. It can happen to anyone. Literally anyone, anywhere can get hacked and it sucks.
2. It is not your fault. There was very little that I had actual control over once I was being hacked.
3. Calm down. This is WAAAYYYY easier said than done, but in reality I got to a point that there was nothing else I could physically do to stop the situation and just had to weigh my options and what I could control was anger, stress and emotions. So my husband made me go for a walk and get some fresh air thank goodness.
4. Hackers are in full force right now during this pandemic. Several tech experts said hackers are bored and are preying on a lot of people right now, so be careful.
5. Change your password. This seems like an obvious thing, but you may forget about it. Several tech experts suggest changing passwords every 3-6 months.
6. Make sure you are using the latest email version if you use a host site. GoDaddy informed me I was not using their most up to date email service, so I promptly paid for that upgraded version and security for the Microsoft Office 365 version. They then migrated my information. After going around and around with them they finally did an emergency migration. Typically migration takes several days and you can still access email on the old server, but they did an emergency migration for me where most things got migrated in a 24 hour period with the final migration step happening tomorrow. They did this to hopefully get the hackers out quicker. 
7. Make sure to have your email list up to date and let your contact list know. This is especially important if you have a business. I am thankful I had all my clients in an updated email list already, so it was easy for me to send them an email from myself informing them that I got hacked. I did get emails, texts and calls from some people I don't ever remember corresponding with from 3-5 years ago, vendors, etc. I do not have a list of all the vendors, inquiries I have gotten through the years, etc. because I don't have a need to use it currently, but may start a list of those people now. I also decided to post on social media to inform clients that I knew it was happening, I was working on it and I was VERY VERY SORRY!!
8. Use 2 factor authorization. If you have not been doing this you need to. You can do it for many things like your email, bank accounts, social media sites, various apps, etc. I have this on almost all my important stuff like email, accounts, etc., but it is not foolproof. For example, I had it on for my Starbucks app and someone hacked into it days before all this started. Thankfully Starbucks gave me back all the money the hackers took off of it. *If you saw my Instagram story recently on how to add money to a Starbucks card, no it did not happen because of that post because I had already transferred the gift card amount to a new account before I posted that video. 
9. Always make sure you know the sender by seeing the actual email address it was sent from. The hackers were using my name to reply to old email correspondence, but they were sending it from a different email address trying to "spoof" people into clicking the links. This is why I was not able to see any of the messages as sent from my sent inbox. It is so weird and annoying because I have no idea who all got emailed besides the people who actually contacted me. 
10. Don't click any random links that are sent you. Evaluate the correspondence and see if it even seems like the senders "voice & tone". If it doesn't sound like the person report the spam, contact the "sender" who got hacked and don't click links.
11. If you click links, get out of it right away and change your email password. Although nothing may happen, it doesn't hurt to err on the side of caution.
12. Do not have your host email being redirected to another email account like GMAIL, Outlook, etc. I had my work emails from the GoDaddy server redirected into my Gmail account because it was easier to have everything come into one account. Every technology person said that this is just another security "risk" you are taking because it is being redirected to a whole other server. Even though I have 2 factor authorization on my Gmail account and Gmail is probably not how they hacked me. You just don't want to make it that much easier for hackers.
13. Use Chrome. They said it is one of the safer web browsers.
14. Use different passwords for different sites. I think we are all guilty of not doing this all the time, but I do have different passwords for all of my email accounts. All the tech support people I talked to said how important it was to have a different password for different websites in order to make it harder for hackers to hack into your various accounts.
15. Check your computer for Malware. There are various things you can use to make sure nothing threatening was put on onto your computer. 
16. Make sure your email settings were not changed. Make sure the hackers did not go in and change a bunch of your email settings and have things being redirected to them. 

Silver linings:

• I was able to talk to actual tech support with GoDaddy.
• I was able to handle it for 12 hours straight because of quarantine. Normally I definitely would not be able to do this and I would have been so much more stressed out trying to juggle work and this. I had just gotten off of a virtual session at noon right before I knew all of this was happening.
• One of the spam emails went to my clients technology guy they use and he was so very helpful in talking me through it and basically saying calm down, there is nothing you can do about it at the very moment, this to shall pass and then take extra measures when it is all over. He was also beyond generous to send me some verbiage to send to clients in an email because he knew I couldn't think straight. If you want his info I am happy to pass it along. He is located in Houston in the River Oaks area.
• Some of my clients along with the various technology people reported the spam emails to their IT departments and websites who track hackers.
• No one was down right hateful to me that they were getting spammed and most of them understood the stress I was under.

Although I did most of the right things based on the tips from the technology experts and support teams, there was still some things I could improve on. It is freaking scary and I don't wish this upon anyone. 

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Photo by Corinne Kutz on Unsplash

Houston Professional Organizer & Concierge // A Day in the Life

This is a day in the life of a Houston concierge and professional organizer from some things we were doing back in January. Every week is completely different and we LOVE it. 

Monday

Interview potential new candidates to join the EMC team.

Headed to Hermann Park area to help a client I have worked with for many year shred paperwork, file, change lightbulbs in their closet, and other little things while the painter was at the house because they needed someone to be there and lock up after.

Then I helped read over contracts, invoicing, email management, etc for another client I do various business tasks for.

Did a consultation at night.

Tuesday

Took down Christmas in for a business in Garden Oaks. 

Headed to City Center to pick up donations, dry cleaning and various other errands.

Back to Hermann Park to let the A/C guy in to do a repair.

In the Heights to help a client pack up some items to prepare for painting their house before they put it on the market. 

Wednesday

Delivered a book locally for a client who has an online store. 

In Piney Point for a client I work with on a weekly basis. I ordered some items online, put up Christmas, did returns, etc. 

Interview more potential candidates. 

Thursday

In the Galleria area where we helped a business pack up inventory and prep for a big move they are doing at the end of the month. Met with movers, went to ikea to get desks to be assembled and delivered. 

In River Oaks helping a client put up Christmas. 

In River Oaks for a consult.

In Southampton to help a client inventory and send items off to The Real Real.

Friday

Before

After

measured for shelf liner

measured for shelf liner

In Alvin organizing a storage / holiday closet.

In Galleria to help a business inventory / pack up items for a move. 

In River Oaks to measure for shelf liner before the client moves into their new place. 

Saturday 

In Montrose to help organize an office and go through paperwork. 

In Montrose to help clients declutter before baby arrives.

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