I was having a conversation with a new friend who was curious to know more about HALO. “How do you know whether someone’s home is cluttered, whether they’re just a great collector or an actual hoarder?” she asked. What a great question, I thought to myself, hoarding vs clutter. Let’s break it down. Every now…

At HALO we are constantly contacted by family members and friends of people with hoarding disorder. Each story is filled with an overwhelming sense of urgency, sprinkled with worry and almost always expresses intense concern for the health and wellbeing of the person they’re contacting us about. Although this blog has a focus on dealing…

In HALO’s journey of working with people first before their messes or estates or traumas – we oftenencounter clients who are not proud of their situation. They are ashamed of the house that they haveturned into a “hoarder’s house” or the home they’ve lived in for 35 years without throwing anythingaway. For our clients, many…

Hi! I’m Melanie Bergsma – Owner of HALO. I wanted to introduce myself and tell you a little more about HALO’s hoarding cleanup process and they way we’re helping our amazing clients. Clients with hoarding disorder tell us that reaching out to HALO is both a great and hard decision. They are often ashamed and…

There’s plenty of reasons to declutter your home. Some of them might be obvious, but there’s a few you probably never thought of. Let’s start from the beginning. When you look around your home, what do you see? Maybe you have too many kitchen gadgets, or your kids’ toys are strewn around their rooms, down…

Struggling with a mental health issue at times can be a dark and lonely place. Motivation is lost and the ability to meet the day to day tasks of taking care of a home can begin to pile up. Often times, people struggling with mental health or addiction issues do so in silence. They may…

When a family member passes, it can be an incredibly painful and difficult time. The loss of a loved one, the memories of the life they shared with the family, the feelings of loss and at times frustration associated with their passing can be difficult. It can become almost overwhelming alone, not to mention, the…

Approaching home care for clients that are struggling with a mental health or addiction disorder requires a certain level of empathy and understanding about people in general. It takes a combination of love and compassion. Understanding and patience is involved, along with the subtle art of listening with care. While providing cleaning services for the…

In the age of COVID-19, never has deep cleaning our homes & workspaces been more important. Specializing in trauma and other speciality clean up’s, we here at Home and Life Organizers (HALO) have had the chance to help in our community. Locally here in Waterloo Region, part of our regular cleaning routine now includes disinfecting…

How Home And Life Organizers works with special circumstances. Across the nation and in local communities, on the street and inside individual homes, you will find someone’s parent, sibling or child, struggling with a substance dependency to a narcotic. Occasionally, a substance dependency will develop into a full-blown addiction, taking its toll on the individual…