Professional Organizer Has A Clear Conscience was written by Michael Kissinger and was originally published in The Vancouver Courier.

Linda Chu is one well-organized woman. How organized? For starters, she has a box in her fastidiously tidy Granville Street office that’s labelled “Broken Picture Frames” – whereas most people, like me, would toss such things in the garbage or under a bed or in a drawer so they can gather dust, fester, and eventually become a point of contention and endless source of arguments with their significant other.

Chu also finds time in her hectic schedule to chair the B.C. chapter of the equally well-organized Professional Organizers in Canada. On top of that, she runs Out of Chaos, offering hands-on, “personalized coaching for organized living.” In other words, she helps people get their crap together-sifting through piles of stuff and developing a system to maintain it.

“I always say that stuff is stuff,” Chu says in a vaguely Zen-like way. “Whether it’s the mom looking for the soother for her kid or the CEO of a company looking for his board report because he’s got his annual general meeting and he’s tearing his hair out-people, regardless of who they are and what circumstances they have, just need to find their stuff.”

According to Chu, materialism run amok, our accelerated culture and corporate downsizing (which eliminated personal assistants for many managers) have turned us into a society of collectors, amassers, hoarders and packrats-unable to let go of what we don’t need, unable to find what we do.

“Who was it that said the age of the computer would make us a paperless society?” says Chu. “Have we found this person? He’s probably buried in paper somewhere.”

Five years ago, Chu left a 20-year career in the hotel industry and after some research embarked on a new path as a professional organizer. At the time, there were only 100 or so professional organizers in Canada. That number has grown to over 500 thanks in part to the success of television makeover shows like Clean Sweep, Clean House, Neat and Mission Organization.

Parents, executives, post office workers, even librarians have come to Chu for assistance, which, as we all know, is the first step towards recovery.

“The individual already needs to have made the first step of wanting help,” Chu says. “It starts from what I call the ‘mess threshold.’ An individual has to reach a threshold of pain, of mess, to the point where there’s embarrassment, loss of time, staying at work late, taking work home, whatever, to where there’s a loss of balance in one’s life.”

Once that mess threshold has been crossed and the beleaguered client admits they have a problem, Chu helps them create an organizational system based on a five-step process known as S.P.A.C.E.*: Sort and weed through your possessions. Purge all unnecessary items. Assign items into categories and like piles. Contain your items into storage options. Evaluate your physical layout for function and form.

Chu says it’s common for disorganized schlepps to focus on containment first, thinking all they need are shelves and a few good plastic tubs and all will be well. “That’s ass backwards,” says Chu, who stresses the need to development a system. “You can keep everything you have, but the key is can you find it? If you can’t find it at a moment’s notice, what’s the point? What’s the point of keeping it, if you’re not using it?”

Chu is also quick to point out that organizers clear-they don’t clean. “You know you’re in trouble when the door opens and the first thing that hits you is the smell of a kitty litter box.”

Lest anyone think Chu’s own household is free of clutter, she admits to being a bit of a clotheshorse, which is why she regularly gets her impartial friends to help her separate the good from the bad and the ugly.

That said, five-step organizational programs aren’t for everyone, says Chu, especially if shoving your junk-broken picture frames and all-into the nearest closet, cupboard or trashcan does the trick.

“It’s not about living your life like on the pages of a magazine. If your system works for you, then leave it. Let’s not fix what isn’t broken. But the moment it doesn’t work for you, then people need to look at different ways.”

If you’d like a clear conscience, contact  Out Of Chaos to help clear your clutter.

*The S.P.A.C.E. principle was originally developed by Julie Morgenstern in her book Organizing from the Inside Out.