Press

Pursuit of Passion

Issa Reyes: Organizing Homes from the Heart

For Professional Organizer and Konmari™ Consultant-in-Training Issa Reyes, making her surroundings neat and beautiful isn’t just an aesthetic but a way of life. By Nikki Cagurangan

For Professional Organizer and Konmari™ Consultant-in-Training Issa Reyes, making her surroundings neat and beautiful wasn’t just an aesthetic. It was always a way of life that sparked a holistic kind of joy that she wanted to share with other people in need of that kind of practical magic in their lives.

This mother of three’s initiative, Neat Obsessions, is an inspiring testament of how personal projects can have that positive ripple effect when they’re done with passion and heart.

A calling realized

Having recognized her natural inclination for organizing and beautifying homes early on, she went on to share her passion and nifty ideas through a blog and an Instagram account that started in March 2018. Family and friends were the initial audiences, but her fanbase naturally grew. Before she knew it, she was being showered with inquiries on whether she was offering her services professionally.

With the loving encouragement of her husband, she sought out certificate courses to equip herself with the technical know-how to steer her passion towards a feasible career path. Now, she holds an International Certification for Professional Organizer (IAPO) certificate from New Jersey and is a certified KonMari™ Consultant-in-Training after having pursued a KonMari™ seminar in New York. She is also currently working on her National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals (NAPO) certifications.

Her confidence in her passion wasn’t always clear-cut, as she had doubts about the sustainability of her career and its feasibility in the Philippines.

“I had to assess and reassess myself if I am really eligible to pursue this as a business, especially because the profession is only known in the US and Canada,” she said. “I needed to ask several people, do a lot of research, and ask myself again and again if this is something I can really do.”

With her determination to make it work and her husband’s unwavering support, her passion has now brought her to many places and opportunities where she could practice her passion for real.

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Press

ABS-CBN Lifestyle

Cheat Sheet: Neat Obsessions’ Issa Reyes Organizing Tips That’ll Help ‘Spark Joy’

by Camille Santiago

Wouldn’t it be nice to never have to look at a messy worktable, a pile of clothes, or stacks of paper ever again? Think it’s way paradisiacal? It can definitely happen—it’s just a matter of where and how to begin, says professional organizer Issa Reyes aka the woman behind the blog Neat Obsesions.

In case you haven’t heard about Neat Obsessions from celebrity “clients” like Chesca Kramer, Rica Peralejo, Mikaela Lagdameo, and Neri Miranda, to name a few, it’s Issa’s passion project since March 2018. “I really just wanted to share my passion for organizing and making things around me orderly and beautiful through a blog and an Instagram account,” Issa tells ABS-CBN Lifestyle. It was when people started to ask her if she was offering organizing services that she thought this could blossom into a business.

But like any businesses, it wasn’t an easy process putting up Neat Obsessions. “I had to assess and reassess myself if I am really eligible to pursue this as a business, especially because the profession is only known in the US and Canada. I needed to ask several people, do a lot of research, and ask myself again and again if this is something I can really do,” she says.

Eventually, everything fell into place—with her husband’s encouragement, she got her IAPO (International Certifications for Professional Organizer) certificate from New Jersey. She then worked on being a certified KonMari Consultant in Training, now working on her NAPO (National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals) certifications. “I always believe that when you are willing to go the extra mile to learn more, that’s when you can say that you are passionate about what you are doing,” she declares.

With the recent Marie Kondo hype, people have been inspired to “KonMari” their spaces, too—decluttering here, piling boxes there, folding clothes here, stacking items there. Some think it’s a daunting task to stay neat, but as Issa reiterates below, anyone can start anytime and anywhere!
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Neat Reflections Press

The Eve’s Drop

Neat Obsessions with Issa Reyes

An episode of The Eve’s Drop

“Women talk. And it gets real. There will be drama. There will be truth. There will be questions. There may be some tears and more laughs. This is what happens when women talk. Hosted by Delamar Arias, Francesca Tobias, and Gelli Victor. Produced by Jude Rocha.”

Listen to Issa Reyes as she guests in an episode of The Eve’s Drop with Delamar Arias, Francesca Tobias, and Gelli Victor

Press

Kapamilya Konek

De-Cluttering Kasama si Neat Obsessions

Hosted by Mommy Jing Castañeda (Ang Inyong Kasambuhay) and Tita Susan Afan (Ang Balikbayan ng Bayan)!

For more updates: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/kapamilyakonek Kapamilya Konek airs on DZMM 630 and DZMM Teleradyo every Sunday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Hindi porke’t mayaman ka ay ikaw lang ang may kapasidad na maging malinis. Ito ang pahayag ni Ms. Issa Reyes ng Neat Obsessions.

Press

Cosmopolitan PH

This Professional Organizer Is A Pinay Marie Kondo

by Camille Dumaraog

Feb 16, 2019

Issa Reyes is the woman behind Neat Obsessions
Issa Reyes definitely sparks joy in all her clients through her work. With the love for things being orderly and beautiful around her, she shares this through her Neat Obsessions blog which launched in April 2018. Starting with a passion for being neat and organized, she turned it around and made a business out of it! She offers home and office organizing, decluttering, and storage layout/requirements assistance.
A BS Psychology graduate, Issa started out as an HR practitioner for five years. Aside from being a professional organizer and blogger, she also currently works as a financial advisor. Talk about being a multitasker! Aside from her blog, she also started vlogging in January 2019. Now her clients include celebrities and other famous personalities.

Below, she shares with us how it all began, and some insights (or NeaTip and Neat Reflections as she calls them) on how tidying up ultimately improves one’s overall well-being.

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Press

NOLISOLI

Neat Obsessions doesn’t call herself a local Marie Kondo, but she’s close

by Zofiya Acosta

January 24, 2019

If you’re a fan of home improvement-type shows, then you know the basic format. A pair of mildly attractive hosts (they only come in groups or pairs, home makeover shows don’t have huge personalities like nightmare chef Gordon Ramsay or Oprah’s messenger angel Iyanla Vanzant) visit a person or family in distress (often out of their own doing, but many tears are mined if the reason is beyond their control). They talk, see what’s been going on, maybe give someone a haircut, and by the end of the show Queer Eye’s Bobby Berk has rebuilt the entire home from scratch (the division of labor on that program is insane). Many more money-earning tears are shed, and the hosts bid farewell. And if you’re like me, you take a glance at the pile of mess that’s scattered on your floor just a week after you’ve had your place cleaned and wonder, “But what happens after the hosts leave?”

This is why Marie Kondo’s new show Tidying Up with Marie Kondo has been so refreshing. She comes into a home and instead of renovating it, she teaches its residents the simple magic of cleaning up, staying for as long as a month. She doesn’t clean it. You do. And, unlike what a lot of people think, Kondo doesn’t force you to throw things out. It’s all up to you. For the persons she helps, the joy at the end doesn’t come from having a home renovated, but from actually taking the time to sort out your life and seeing it all pay off, and you can tell that they plan on keeping at it.

It’s such a novel thing that, when a coworker told me about “a real life Marie Kondo” (which says a lot more about Kondo’s larger-than-life-ness than my coworker’s spatial awareness) living in the Philippines, I jumped at the chance to see her.

That’s how I met Issa Reyes, the woman behind Neat Obsessions. Calling herself a “professional organizer,” she explains that the job is “in between a interior designer and a professional cleaner.” Interior designers design your place and see which things would best suit it, “but they won’t help you move in,” she elaborates. Meanwhile, professional cleaners will do the heavy work of cleaning (scrubbing floors, disinfecting sinks, polishing windows, the whole shebang), but they’re not going to change the layout of your space, nor care about your aesthetic preferences. “My job is to check if all items are in place, [making] sure that everything has a specific place for everything.”

To do this, she comes in to a home and teaches the owners how to efficiently use their space. She has cleaners in tow, too, to clean while she organizes. If you doubt her credibility, check it: she’s a member of the International Organization of Professional Organizers, and she’s had online interactions with Marie Kondo herself.

Her job sounds simple enough, almost to the point of being unnecessary, until you think of all the people whose homes, after their interior designers or professional cleaners leave, quickly devolve into chaos (guilty as charged). A quick glance at her blog, where she goes in depth about organizing projects (you can easily tell it apart from her other blog posts—the ones about her clients all follow a “The One” naming convention in the title, kind of like in Friends), shows how much work she puts into helping people.
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