five minutes with
Orange Tam
Adele Brunner talks to Hong Kong’s first Certified Professional Organizer® (CPO®) You assume that expert declutterers are born neat and tidy, with an instinct for what to keep and what to throw away. So it comes as a refreshing surprise to learn that it took certified professional organiser Orange Tam (so nicknamed because she loves the colour) years to clear up and sort out her own space. “I never used to let go of anything,” explains Tam, who has lived in To Kwa Wan all her life. “In 2007, a couple of years after graduating [in economics and finance], I felt overwhelmed by all my stuff but I didn’t know what to do. I bought a book called No More Clutter by British decluttering expert Sue Kaye but even though I read it constantly, I was so attached to my stuff that I couldn’t bring myself to do what she advocated.” Fast forward to 2011 and Tam, who was still trying to get to grips with organising her home, discovered famous Japanese declutterer Hideko Yamashita, who invented the term Dan-Sha-Ri. In a nutshell, it’s the process of letting go of possessions and freeing yourself from your emotional attachment to them, only keeping what you use in the here and now. “Dan” is refusing to buy or accept things you don’t need; “Sha” is throwing away things you already own but don’t need; “Ri” is letting go of your attachment to things. By adopting Yamashita’s methods, Tam managed to tidy her home and from there, she helped friends and family with their spaces. “It was a friend who suggested I turn my tidying up into a career,” she says. “There have been professional declutterers in the US and UK for years but none in Hong Kong. I decided to become Hong Kong’s first one.”
14 | SAI KUNG
6 SK 5min.indd 14
Photo credit: Francesca L. Photography
23/12/2021 3:37 PM
