Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Lila Lamanna runs a home organization facilitating business called Peace of Home. Lamanna charges $35 an hour to help clients organize and maximize space in their homes.

You know you’re a pack rat when…

• 1. Your drawers are full of receipts — from 1973.
• 2. You have a box of college textbooks that don’t include the Watergate scandal.
• 3. Two words: leisure suit.
• 4. You sort through the trash to make sure family members haven’t thrown “anything good” away.
• 5. You open your bathroom cabinet and can’t remember which toothbrush is the most recent.
• 6. Two words: electric curlers.
• 7. You can’t walk through your room without navigating around at least five things you haven’t put away.
• 8. You have 10,762 buttons — just in case you lose one someday and need a match.
• 9. You have a CD player with a 200-disc changer, a cassette player with an AM/FM tuner, an eight-track cartridge stereo, a Betamax … and a Victrola.
• 10. Two words: Pac Man.

An organization for organizers

You’ve heard of NATO, of course. But what about NAPO? The National Association of Professional Organizers, a group of nearly 4,000 people with the mission of “educating the public on organizing solutions and the resulting benefits,” was founded by five women in 1985. The group now has dozens of chapters in the United States. NAPO suggests asking 10 questions when considering hiring a professional organizer:

• 1. What kinds of organizing projects do you do?
• 2. Who is your typical client?
• 3. What are your specialty areas?
• 4. Do you have any training or hold any certifications in organizing or related areas?
• 5. Can you describe your organizing process/approach?
• 6. How long have you been in the organizing business?
• 7. What is your fee structure?
• 8. What is your cancellation policy?
• 9. Can you provide references?
• 10. I have tried to get organized before. How will this be different?

BLACKSBURG -- Lindsay Coleman has Lila Lamanna's business card in his wallet. It's a good bet he won't toss it.

Coleman, an avid collector who has owned Blacksburg's popular Maxwell's restaurant for decades, doesn't toss things lightly.

Coleman's extensive jazz collection with its records, instruments, autographs, books and memorabilia is just the tip of the iceberg. He also has artwork, tools and magazines dating to his college years.

Not that he's a pack rat. He doesn't like that term, preferring to think of himself as a connoisseur.

"I've got so many collections of different stuff, it amazes even me," he said. But he's been contemplating giving Lamanna a call.

"I'm certainly thinking about it. I need help getting organized."

Lamanna is just 26, a slight woman with freckles dotting the bridge of her nose.

But she is Montgomery County's first professional home organization facilitator. Pulaski County has two listed with the National Association of Professional Organizers.

Lamanna, a New Jersey native who had lived in Blacksburg for a time when her sister, Lucy, attended Virginia Tech, decided last spring to make the town her permanent home.

"About nine months ago, I realized how much I love it here," she said, explaining that when she made the decision to move she also made the decision to move her new business, Peace of Home.

Lamanna, a member of the NAPO, joined the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce and went to work.

"I don't have any competition," she said, noting that there are a handful of professional organizers in the Roanoke area. "If there were organizers here, I don't necessarily feel it would be competition." When it comes to organizing, she noted, the field is wide open.

Like doctors, experts in home organization often pursue a specialty.

Lamanna's is a particularly challenging one: teenagers and their bedrooms.

"Get them while they're young" is her first proverb.

Lamanna, who spent her teen years at Pennsylvania's Westtown Boarding School, said she learned the importance of downsizing and organizing there.

She remembers "white glove" drills when students were required to remove all possessions from their room, wipe it down and return everything to its proper place.

She wasn't always so coordinated.

The baby of her family's four children, "I was pretty messy," she admitted. "I remember letting a huge pile develop in my room. It was so overwhelming to tackle it."

Anna Pittman, a mother of two teenage girls who owns a yoga studio in Longshop, said Lamanna's service was "invaluable" in her home.

Her daughters, 15-year-old Mara and 13-year-old Mia Bertelli, weren't messy. "They just didn't know how to let go of things," Pittman said.

Mia even had two casts under her bed from the two separate times she broke the same arm.

"She wanted to save the signatures," Pittman explained.

Lamanna, Pittman said, was able to reach her daughters in a way she couldn't.

"Lila had a great way of interacting with them. She had a great way of reasoning and at the same time creating values, not just throwing things away. ... I trusted Lila. I was not part of the process at all, and that really made it easier for the girls."

The casts, Pittman believes, are no longer under Mia's bed.

"I think she threw them away. Thank goodness."

A teenager's bedroom, Lamanna believes, should be a haven. She insists that her young clients do their own decorating. Her purpose is to help them create space and get organized.

"You sleep better at night when you don't have a mess around you," she explained. "Basically, what I do is get a rundown of the room and the lifestyle of the client. Once I come to an understanding of what they need, my main goal is to maximize the space within a room. I never go in and say, 'Let's get rid of this and this and this.' "

Lamanna said she has three loves in her life: shelves, bins and labels.

"Clothing and memorabilia are two of the biggest things that come up with organizing," she said. "You don't want to get rid of them. I completely understand. I had to get to a point with myself where I had to be realistic about my own clothes."

Part of what she does is find inventive ways for people to utilize possessions they can't seem to part with. An old shirt that holds special memories, for instance, can go in a memory box or be cut into cloth scraps for a quilt.

"It's just a matter of getting creative," she said. "Not everybody can think like that."

So far, Lamanna has found business through word of mouth. She said she hopes to work with moving and relocation soon and wants to help her established clients develop maintenance programs to keep them organized once they get there.

Without putting herself out of business, she has some tips for people who want to make their homes more organized:

"Remember that no job is too big. Do a little bit at a time. Don't burn yourself out. Think outside the box."

This spring, Lamanna said she plans to take a certification course with the National Association of Professional Organizers. She will also attend organizational conventions.

"It's a great association. You start to make a lot of friends in the industry and they make referrals," she said.

Best of all, Lamanna said she's found a job that she loves.

Sorting, grouping, purging and arranging have always appealed to her.

When she found out there was actually an association devoted to those things, she said she just couldn't contain her excitement.

"My heart started racing."