Hidden Gems: Meet Tracy McCubbin of dClutterfly

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tracy McCubbin.

Hi Tracy, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I own a professional decluttering business called dClutterfly that I started 16 years ago. Funnily enough, it wasn’t a career that I had expected to go into. I had a bunch of odd jobs throughout my life, none of which ever really stuck. Before starting my company, I spent ten years as a personal assistant to a director in Hollywood who would lend me out to his friends to help them organize their stuff. It started with one person asking me to help them out with organizing, which led to everyone asking me to help them out. During that time, I realized I really had a knack for it! I finally found something that was interesting to me and was exciting every day. On top of that, I am the child of a hoarder. I grew up watching my father deal with a true disorder, which gave me a lot of empathy going into it. I saw firsthand the chokehold that someone’s stuff can have on them. I was always trying to make order out of chaos. I didn’t go into the business of decluttering because of this, but it is part of what makes me so good. I was able to take my biggest psychological wound and fix it; I couldn’t help my father but now I can help so many other people. All of this together gave me a deep insight into people’s relationship with their stuff, and that decluttering is much more than just throwing it away.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
For the most part, it has been a smooth trajectory. The biggest struggle was realizing that I am an entrepreneur and I didn’t even know it! When I started my business, I did not even know it was a business. I went into it thinking that I wanted to help people who struggle with clutter, not that I wanted to create a company. The conversation around clutter at the time I was starting was that everything needed to be labeled and “perfect,” and that’s not what I wanted to do. Your home doesn’t have to be picture-perfect, it just has to work for you. I wanted to separate myself from the organizers who were creating the pretty Pinterest pictures by taking into account how each person actually lives their life. Additionally, I noticed that no one was talking about the upstream cause of our clutter and the acquisition cycle. Decluttering is a constant process, and getting down to the root of the problem can be tough to crack. For this reason, I took it upon myself to write my second book, Make Space for Happiness, in order to help people truly understand how their clutter starts.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about dClutterfly?
dClutterfly has been decluttering and helping clients for 16 years! What makes us different from other organizing companies is that we believe in order to really get to the bottom of all that clutter, we need to address not just what is there, but why it’s there. The why is the emotional underpinning, which at dClutterfly, we call the Clutter Block. We specialize in senior downsizing and offer services after a loved one passes away. We also make sure that everything that we dClutter goes to the right home!

Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
By far, the most important characteristic to my success is empathy. I have often joked to clients that I am a therapist on top of being an organizer, but there is quite a bit of truth in that! Clutter is heavily tied to emotions, and indelicately throwing things away can open emotional wounds. Having grown up with a father with hoarding disorder, I have a deep understanding of people’s attachment to stuff. Decluttering is much more than getting rid of stuff; it’s helping people work through their emotions and attachments. It is a prickly process that you have to work through with kindness and sensitivity. I always want people to know that not being organized doesn’t make them a bad person and that they are not alone in this. Being kind to yourself along the way is the most important step of the process.

Pricing:

• We offer a free consultation!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.dclutterfly.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracy_mccubbin/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thisistracymccubbin/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@tracymccubbin