If you were told that it’s time to follow your dreams, where would you start?
Nikki Boyd’s dream began with a lamp made from teacups. A lifelong creative, Nikki caught inspiration one day to make the unique lighting element, and filmed herself doing the craft project at home while she did a DIY tutorial. At the time, she was not all too familiar with YouTube or how the website worked, and she certainly didn’t expect too many people to watch her video, but with encouragement from friends and family, she followed their advice and uploaded the video to the social media platform. For weeks, her teacup video had just one viewer: her mother. But despite the abysmal view count, just creating and sharing the video sparked a certain flame inside of Nikki, and she soon discovered that filming videos of her doing her normal routines around the house brought her a level of happiness she hadn’t experienced before. Whether it be cleaning, organizing, decorating, or simply filling out a calendar for the month ahead, the joy she gathered from recording her daily tasks turned into a full-blown passion. She had found her dream.
Before the (now legendary) teacup lamp, Nikki and her family traveled the world through her husband’s position as an active member of the Air Force, moving every time he was assigned new orders. When it finally came time for her husband’s retirement, they decided to settle on one of their favorite places that he had been stationed at in the past: Charleston. Once settled in their new home, Mr. Boyd encouraged his wife to follow her own dreams after a lifetime of supporting his. Nikki wasn’t sure what to do with this new opportunity.
“I thought to myself, ‘Do I really want to stay at home and eat bonbons and Snickers for the rest of my life?’ No way!” she recalls, laughing. She wanted a project and something to call her own, and thus began the era of “At Home with Nikki.”
Being married to a military man, routine and preparedness are key elements to sanity. When her family was moving from station to station, Nikki learned that having a system was better than approaching each move without one. She began to keep her family’s important paperwork in binders, and she found a better way to transport her family’s belongings. Rather than constantly having to pack and unpack, just to have to repeat the process again in a few months, she learned that keeping their belongings in organized bins or baskets that could easily be transported was the way to go. The hectic, ever-changing lifestyle of a military family is what helped her establish her own style of organizing. It was important for her to make each house they moved into look and feel like a beautiful home, a place they would want to come home to at the end of day where her whole family would feel happy, safe, and secure. At each station, her organization and preparedness paid off, allowing her family to settle in to their new home with comfort.
In her new life in Charleston, Nikki called on the lessons she learned over her lifetime as a military spouse. Prepared with the organizational knowledge many people crave, Nikki continued to create and post more content, regardless of the amount of followers she had on her YouTube channel. For some time, her loyal viewers consisted of her own mother and just a few others, staying small for nearly three years before she gained some serious traction. Once she had a sizable following on YouTube, she began getting requests from her followers to help them organize their own homes. She took those requests and turned them into a business of her own, helping to teach others the lessons she learned throughout her adult life.
Nikki has plenty of clients that are completely overwhelmed with their home space and don’t know where to begin. It all begins with Nikki. The client will take her on a tour of their house, showing her their problem areas. They work together for weeks, checking in once (if not multiple times) a week to assess the mess and come up with solutions together to fit each family’s needs. Nikki makes a conscious effort to reassure her clients that, in her words, “This is nothing! You can do this. Let’s just take this step-by-step.”
Her “step-by-step” method is to go room by room, and then to break each room into quarters. Nikki and her client will spend one week on just one fourth of the room, which helps make sure her clients do not feel overwhelmed. If Nikki picks up on her clients’ anxiety, she will calmly tell them, “the rest of the room is invisible, don’t even worry about that right now.” Nikki and her clients create an individual process for each situation, which then turns into an organizational system. All the while they are laughing and having coffee together, making Nikki’s services feel more like an activity with a friend rather than a chore. She emphasizes the importance of working as a team, not just between her and her clients, but strongly encouraging families to sit down together and have regular family meetings about how they will commit to the organization.
“You can clean and organize your home, but it will be back to how it used to be in no time if your family members are not all on the same page,” says Nikki.
For those clients who have no organizational knowledge and believe they can never be an organized person, Nikki has one piece of advice that sticks out among the rest: stop overthinking. The majority of her clients take a look at their living space and get overwhelmed with the project ahead of them. Nikki’s method is to take one step at a time, helping her clients find a method that works for them, without it being too much to handle for all involved.
Nikki is a force that can’t (and shouldn’t) be stopped. Aside from being named “Organizer of the year” by Real Simple magazine, she has written multiple books, has three channels on YouTube—including a pet-related channel, featuring guest appearances from her adorable Yorkshire Terriers. Though many would be content at the level of success Nikki has found, the powerhouse has big plans for the future. Due to her following on social media, she has gained the attention of celebrities, television stations, and publishers that have transformed her early days of DIY into a full-blown career. Despite her rise to fame, meeting Nikki is like meeting an old friend, with her services feeling more like a partnership than an enormous task you have to endure on your own. Nikki is now living her dreams, and with the passion and dedication of someone full of knowledge, confidence, and determination, she is a continually rising star.
If you are interested in getting your life a little more organized, Nikki offers a variety of services. From home to office organization, Nikki Boyd has your back. She offers in-person and virtual services, making it easy to access her skills from anywhere in the world. AM
For more information or to access her YouTube channel (@AtHomeWithNikki) visit http://www.athomewithnikki.com/
by Jessy Devereaux Mitcham
