by Robin Edgar   .   photos by Brent Fleury

Are you a hoarder, surrounded by stacks of to-be-read magazines, mail and bills on every surface? Perhaps you cling to any potentially useful item, from T-shirts you wore in the 1960s to old records too scratched up to play anymore. And you don’t even own a record player.

Even if you aren’t a hoarder or a pack rat, busy women simply don’t do as much spring cleaning as they used to. In 1976, women did about 26 hours of housework a week, according to the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. In 2005, they did 17. Not a terrible trend, to be sure. But our houses seem to have suffered. For further proof that we’re approaching a 21st century clutter pandemic, look no further than The Learning Channel (TLC), where one show, Clean Sweep, features a team of heroic organizers and cleaners swooping in to save people from their heaps of junk. Another show, Hoarders, on A&E, is about collectors so compulsive they ruin marriages and other relationships and must be removed from their messy houses through kitchen windows.

Getting organized can be daunting. But there’s hope for slobs everywhere (and those of us who must cohabitate with them). There are professional organizers—called “declutterers” in Europe—kind folks whose main function is to help people deal with their stuff. Many of them, like Adriel McIntyre, Asheville’s very own self-described “intrepid declutterer,” belong to the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO). According to NAPO’s Jill Qualls, the number of registered members has jumped from 1,000 to 4,100 since 2005.

“I don’t know about the others, but I was born like this,” says McIntyre, 31, whose mother would lend her out to friends when she was young to help them get organized (and so that she would stop rearranging the kitchen). To prepare for her career as a declutterer, McIntyre apprenticed with a professional organizer in South Carolina. Then she read books on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), attention deficit disorder (ADD) and hoarding. She founded The Intrepid Declutterer, in Greenville, South Carolina, in 2005 and recently moved to Asheville to be near her parents.

Organizing for others is not for the faint-hearted. After almost ten years of helping clutter victims, finding everything from a lunch bag filing system to horses’ teeth, McIntyre says she’s earned the right to say she’s seen it all. One client, at a home in South Carolina, called her in tears. Her husband staged a naked sit-in in the living room so that McIntyre would not come to their house to throw away his T-shirt collection.

Another Asheville organizer, Julia Gunnels of Simply Change, has also hit deep wells of emotion when talking with clients about the most unlikely objects and areas. “We have tissues ready in case the client needs to cry about memories, situations, relationships that they remember or relive,” she says. Gunnels brings a fishing tackle box to every job, one that includes tools, a labeler, paper, pencils and pens, tape of all sizes, a flashlight, a box knife, tissues and snacks. Confidentiality is key. “As organizers, we are let directly into the most intimate details of people’s lives—from their financial statements to their bathrooms,” she says.

Another trick of the trade: have a truck ready to carry away unabated items before clients have second thoughts. Arlene VanDyke, an East Asheville artist who admits to being attached to various materials in her studio (as well as a hefty record collection), recently hired McIntyre to help her get organized. McIntyre’s most important job was to help her be shrewd about what to keep. “At the end of the day, she took everything away so there was no back-tracking,” VanDyke says.

Ready to start 2010 clutter free? The National Association of Professional Organizers’ website includes helpful tips, as well as a searchable database of member organizers in your area. Or, scary as it may sound, you can tackle those piles of junk all on your own.

Tips for whipping your space into shape, from Asheville’s Adriel McIntyre, aka the “Intrepid Declutterer”:

• Take baby steps and give yourself a time limit: set a timer and do at least 15 minutes of de-cluttering or organizing a day.

• Set a space limit: don’t wander all over the house. Organize one shelf, one drawer or one section of the closet and then relocate pieces to their new home once you are done.

• Reduce junk mail, paper pile-up: go to
  www.dmachoice.org. It’s a service of the Direct Marketing Association that helps reduce junk mail (but may not block everything entirely).

• Phone a friend: decluttering can be boring all by yourself. Besides, you might need a second opinion on that dress from 1983.

• Don’t go backwards. Or at least don’t worry about digging through and reorganizing your whole life just yet (unless you are being audited). Start your new system today and move forward.

• Just do it. Walk in the door and turn left. If you don’t know where to begin, working in a clockwise motion from the entryway gives you a starting point.

• Donate. Stop cluttering up your life with things that could help a needy person.

• Recycle. No need to fill up landfills with clutter, either.

• Think of your children! You want to leave your family with happy memories, not your junk.

• Get help. When all else fails, hire a pro. A professional organizer is a qualified neutral party who can help you make difficult decisions and point you toward a junk-free future.

For more information about organizing and professional organizers, visit the National Association of Professional Organizers at www.napo.net.