Sorting out overstuffed wardrobes and corners packed with shoe boxes, Hu Yuling's job is to help her troubled customers regain peace and comfort at home.

 

"There are always too many items in urban homes, much more than needed," said Hu.

 

She said she had one customer who was obsessed with clothes -- owning more than 800 pieces -- and another client who was disoriented by their 100 hoodies. She once sorted through dozens of shoes that had been jumbled up and piled in the kitchen.

 

The Beijing-based interior designer has found that her new service as a professional organizer is in booming demand. These two professions, in her view, are interconnected.

 

Her experience as a professional organizer improves her design capability, and her design background allows her to organize with an aesthetic eye. "While organizing, we usually come up with beneficial home design suggestions for our clients," said Hu.

 

Professional organization has become a growing business in first-tier Chinese cities. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security officially added the occupation to the category of housekeeping services in January this year.

 

"Hospitals and government agencies also employ us to carry out professional organization, not just individual households," said Han Yi'en, 32, a professional organizer who founded 1N Reorganization in 2015.

 

The service and training agency has nurtured more than 1,000 individuals over the last six years, turning former kindergarten teachers, homemakers, psychologists and designers into professional organizers.

 

Han said that professional organization now has many new business directions, such as general organization, store organization, community environment organization, and solutions for the disabled and the elderly.

 

She said that the improvement of people's lives has driven up new business.

 

"What professional organization does is to balance the relationship between people, items and space," she said. "People who feel frustrated when organizing their items are likely to suffer from interpersonal problems."

 

Han remembers once helping a senior couple organize a 12.5-square-meter room in downtown Shanghai. It took 21 of her staff seven days to sort out the items in the messy room and create a little more living space for the elderly couple.

 

For professional organizer Piao Jinhua, 37, the most challenging part of the job is communicating with clients and guiding them to discard their old items.

 

The professional organization sector in China is still in its infancy and has not yet established a complete training and industry supervision system. Professional organizers are looking forward to the healthy and sustainable development of this new business.