about us
We started Buttoned Up because we needed to get ourselves buttoned up…and couldn’t find what we were looking for!
The initial concept for buttoned up bubbled up as the co-founders grappled with a series of significant life changes. Alicia moved across the country (three times). Sarah got married, bought a house & had children. Susan got divorced after 38 years of marriage. And Nancy became an empty-nester. These events made each one of us realize we needed to step it up big time on the organizational front, particularly where really important information was concerned. But were unable to find products that could help us. The ones we found were usually too complex, too expensive, and honestly too ugly to use (ugly = no inspiration to actually use it!).
So we tried our hand at creating a simple and beautiful system for organizing important information on our own. We called it Life.doc, tested with our families, refined it, and in the summer of 2005, officially launched it — all while keeping our day jobs. Over the next few years our product line grew from 1 item to over 30 and were featured on everything from the Today Show to The Doctors. In that same period, Alicia and Sarah wrote two books on the art of getting (imperfectly) organized, authored a weekly newspaper column, and started the popular GetButtonedUp blog.
Along the way, we have had some incredible folks join our team, like Hollie Sehrt, our “Resident Picasso” and Anne Marie Furie, our “Chief Juggler.”
And we’ve gotten even more passionate (as if that was even possible!) about the issue of organization. To us, getting organized is a means to an end. And that end is presence.
See our manifesto.
sarah
“Chief Dreamer”
Sarah is a working mom with a creative bent and seat-of-the-pants style who sheepishly
admits she’s
a yo-yo
organizer.
Sarah is a working mom with more to do than time to do it all! As Chief Dreamer at Buttoned Up, Sarah leads the charge on, well, pretty much everything. When she’s not dreaming of a new organizational world-order, writing, coaching, putting out tech-related fires, or inventing new organizational products, you can find her playing Hot Wheels (or ice hockey) with her 2 boys & very funny husband — or in the kitchen baking.
anne marie
“Chief Juggler”
Anne Marie is the MacGyver of organization – she can help anyone go from impossibly-disorganized-
mess to totally-together-in 10 seconds flat!
holle
“Resident Picasso”
Hollie is a recent college grad with an impeccable aesthetic, a bent
for organization, and four crazy roommates.
