By John Flood

Joe hu/Town Crier Eve D’Onofrio is the owner of Organized Tranquility. She helps people organize their homes and home office spaces and provides lifestyle organizational coaching in the package.

Eve D’Onofrio is right at home in a messy house.

D’Onofrio, a Los Altos-based professional organizer, helps people straighten out their cluttered rooms, gives emotional support to those who have trouble parting with objects of sentimental value and provides techniques for staying organized.

By the time some people call her, they are desperate, she said. Their living spaces are in such disarray that they are immobilized by the task of improving them.

From what she described, a world of chaos reigns inside some of the most attractive homes.

“You learn quickly not to be shocked,” D’Onofrio said. “I pull up to a beautiful house on the outside and it’s frightening on the inside.”

Some people live in rooms with 3-foot-high stacks of papers and magazines. Others compulsively leave voicemails for themselves, a kind of auditory to-do list. Some people work in home offices filled with dozens of Post-It notes pasted to everything. Others avoid rooms altogether because they’ve become junk rooms, she said.

“I work with people’s sentimental attachments, their emotional and psychological challenges, and I provide coaching for people (to stay organized) after I leave,” D’Onofrio said. “Sometimes I take my clients through a purging process … to part with things. I try to guide, support and help get their life moving forward.”

A professional organizer “helps individuals and businesses take control of their surroundings, their time, their paper, and their systems for life,” according to the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO), an organization with 4,000 members.

D’Onofrio formed her business in August and named it Organized Tranquility, which neatly summarizes what she does. Since then her projects have included organizing home offices, three-bedroom homes and working one-on-one with clients in lifestyle organizational coaching.

One client wasn’t able to part with her deceased dog’s things four years after the canine died.

“She had boxes with toys and photos (of the dog),” D’Onofrio said. “She kept them in boxes in the kitchen cupboards … We had to work on gathering them, celebrating her pet (and letting him go).”

Or she deals with psychological traumas like grief, when a widow can’t part with her deceased husband’s things.

Some clients have other problems, like being financially disorganized because they didn’t open their mail for eight years, she said.

“PG&E would show up telling them they are going to shut off their power (if they didn’t pay their bill),” D’Onofrio said. “They had a mental block with (opening) the mail because of (the stress associated) with legal documents for a trial.”

D’Onofrio characterizes many of her clients as “chronically disorganized … people who have been disorganized their entire lives.

“Some of my clients suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention deficit disorder, others have grief or senility issues,” D’Onofrio said. “I’m not a therapist, but I diagnose situations.”

To create the best possibility for lasting change in her clients, D’Onofrio spends time discovering how her clients function, think and learn, and how they want to use their space, she said.

They don’t have to create new habits, she said. “I try to provide them systems that reflect their lifestyle and their ways of thinking … and it’s automatic. They maintain it in the long term.”

D’Onofrio has tips for people who suffer from stress during the holiday season.

“Focus on organizing key rooms that the guests will access,” she said. “The dining room, the living room, the kitchen and the bathroom.

“Don’t be afraid to delegate. There’s no reason to do the Super Mom act. It involves the whole family. And this is a good way to develop good habits for the kids. Be realistic about what you can accomplish. Prioritize for peace of mind for the holidays.”

For people who aren’t sure if they are chronically disorganized, D’Onofrio will ask, “Are you embarrassed by your house? Do you avoid having people over?”

Perhaps a professional organizer can help.

For more information, call 291-8063 or visit www.organizedtranquility.com.