What's In A Name?

Hello Friends,

One of the first questions people ask me is "How did you name your business Winnow & Spruce Organizing?" As with all important decisions, it was a process and it took the better part of a month.
My naming criteria was:

1.  It had to be original - no other companies in the US could have its name.
2.  It had to be descriptive.
3.  It had to sound clever.
4.  The url.com had to be available.
5.  The name would lend itself to a symbol/logo.

I started my process with writing all the words down that are synonyms for organizing, decluttering, sorting etc. I love using a handy webpage called Visual Thesaurus and in my search came across the word "winnow".  

My favorite definition of winnowing means separating the wheat from the chaff, an ancient harvesting process which was done using baskets and air.  After the process was completed, the wheat remained as that's what nourishes us; the things we keep and love and the chaff; the excess, the unneeded stuff, blows away in the wind.

I knew right away that "winnow" was going to be in my company name.  It was perfect.

Turns out it is in the bible too.  The word "winnow" is in the bible 8 times and in my favorite book, the book of Isaiah with verse 41:16 being especially meaningful to me.

Basically, get all your stuff in one place, sort it all and toss out what you don't need. Put what you love back so you can find it and you will be happy.  This to me is organizing in a nutshell.

But winnowing is just the first step of organizing, making it beautiful is the second.  Finding just the right storage, placing items where they look the best, can be found easily and make the owner the happiest.  The second part is all about experiencing the joy that our belongings bring.

So I looked up synonyms for beauty and stumbled upon "spruce".  

Besides being a tree, it means neat, elegant, chic.  This is what I hope will be the end result of everything once it's organized; neat at the very least, chic and elegant if that's what the client would like.

I like the play on words that both winnow and spruce bring and because I'm a nature lover and winnow is close to willow and spruce is also a tree, it makes me smile.

I added the word "organizing" to make it clear what I do and my business had a name!

Finding a logo took a bit longer, but when I saw this image of wheat stalk, I knew it was the one.

Have you ever named a business?  How about a child?

What was your process?