The beginning of a new year often coincides with new goals, clean starts, and a renewed purpose. Whether it’s a new exercise regimen, healthier diet, or better study routines, January is a month to recalibrate and reevaluate in the hopes that lifestyle improvements become a habit. And for many, setting that tone at home is key.
Enter the co-owners of Happy Lark Home Organizing, a family-owned business with a growing clientele. Sisters Kara Huffmyer and Niki Denmead and cousin Amber Hollenbach founded Happy Lark in 2021 after their shared passion for keeping their homes, offices, and schedules organized became an increasingly frequent topic of conversation, especially as COVID threw their previous routines into a tailspin.
“Starting a business during a global pandemic was never our plan, but it just became the right time,” said Niki. “Our homes – everyone’s homes – became the center of our worlds, and they needed to function smoothly in order to maintain our sanity during a chaotic time.”
Happy Lark helps its clients evaluate spaces in their homes and implement organizing systems based on the individual person or family to optimize the home’s functionality. They’ve tackled projects in garages, home offices, kitchens, playrooms, mud rooms, closets, pantries, and more.
Happy Lark will do it all for you, from helping you make those tough decisions on what to purge or keep, to creating a more functional space. In recent months, they’ve also helped clients prepare for home relocations in order to make the move-in process smoother and less stressful.
“There’s no better time to focus on purging than directly before or after the holidays when you’re inundated with new toys, clothes, and gadgets. Don’t just push items to the back of the closet or to a corner of your toy room – repurpose it or get rid of it but don’t let it consume precious space,” noted Kara.
In order to keep its clients on the right path throughout the year, Happy Lark offers a Refresh Service. At strategic points in the year, spaces are revisited in an effort to preserve functionality and organizing practices that may have been inadvertently abandoned are reinstated. The Refresh Service could occur when the seasons change or prior to or following a big milestone, such as home renovations, a job change, or the end of the school year.
Happy Lark features many of its go-to products and organizing hacks on Instagram (@happylarkhomeorganizing) and Facebook via short, relatable Reels they create and post themselves.
“Reels has been a great platform for us to showcase how we work, what we’ve learned, and how we approach clients’ spaces,” added Amber. “Social media has allowed us to capture a market that may not have otherwise known about us. In fact, some of our very first clients were through referrals we received via Facebook.”
Happy Lark’s growth through social media, as well as word-of-mouth referrals from existing clients, has created new business and marketing opportunities for Amber, Kara, and Niki. Happy Lark has made multiple appearances on KDKA’s Pittsburgh Today Live throughout the past year. Their first PTL segment detailed their efforts to reorganize PTL Host Heather Abraham’s daughter’s bedroom, which kicked off a series of segments around home office organization, sporting goods organization, and more.
In the fall of 2022, Happy Lark developed a partnership with The Container Store to be one of the store’s in-house organizers, giving them and their clients access to the newest products, promotions, and exclusive events.
“It’s been a whirlwind 18 months for us, and we’re so fortunate to take what is a passion for the 3 of us and grow a business that is opening doors we couldn’t have imagined,” added Kara.
