Emerging From Chaos—When Disorganization Calls for Professional Intervention

Hoarding—the compulsion to accumulate and store large quantities of non-essential things—is currently the subject of two reality programs and Larchmont resident Leslie Josel is involved with both.  

An aftercare consultant for A&E’s Hoarders, Josel was tapped by the producers of TLC’s Hoarding: Buried Alive to work with a Milford, Connecticut man whose home is so stuffed with his collections of memorabilia that he is limited to only six feet of livable space. 

Josel is the founder of Order Out of Chaos, a consulting firm providing services to the chronically disorganized as well as to individuals and small businesses with organizing challenges.  The disorganization dysfunction, commonly known as hoarding, now represents 60 percent of her business.

Some therapists, which Josel very firmly advises she is not, say hoarders have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), anxiety disorders and even dementia.   On the spectrum of disorganization dysfunction, extreme hoarding, the subjects of both television programs, are on the far end and Josel will only work with hoarding clients who are also working with professional therapists.

While Josel’s work with hoarders gets much of the attention these days, the Larchmont resident, businesswoman and mother’s second career as a professional organizer began when her son Eli, then in kindergarten, was diagnosed with ADD and other learning disabilities.  A gifted student, Eli’s executive functioning issues and learning differences required her intervention.

 “I needed to untangle his tangled world,” she said.

When her success working with Eli led to other parents calling on her for advice and assistance with their own children, a business was born.  For her professional training Josel, a former HR professional and graduate of Cornell University with a Bachelor of Science in Human Development and Family Studies, started with a course on learning modalities because, as she told me, “How you think is how you organize.”

A key element in creating organization strategies for students is working on time management. 

“Today’s kids don’t see time as multi-dimensional.  They just don’t get time passing and a key to their success is helping them figure it out.”

Josel recommends that kids have an analog clock or timer to better visualize the passage of time and recommends all students use a teacher’s planner.  She instructs them to do time mapping and to keep a log documenting how they spend their time. 

“Most parents ask the question ‘Do you have any homework’ but the questions they should be asking are ‘How much homework do you have?’ and ‘When are you planning to get it done?'"

While time management and problem solving are important for all kids and adults, for children with ADD and other learning issues it is even more complicated.

“For kids with ADD their energy output is five times the normal and that’s just to keep up.  It’s like asking you to suck in your stomach and hold it for eight hours.  Children with learning modality issues don’t get to relax.”

Organizational systems, time management processes and even yoga classes are all part of the holistic and personal approach Josel brings to her clients.  She explains that she has her hands in everything from personally handling every consult to the evaluation, assessment and action plans.

“With those tools, you can do anything,” said Josel.  Her first “client", her son Eli, now 12 and a Hommocks middle-schooler would concur.  Said Josel, “He has come a long way since our journey together started.  He’s fantastic” 

A member of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) and its New York Chapter (NAPO-NY), Josel has received its Golden Circle distinction. She holds a Chronically Disorganized Specialist certificate as well as a Certificate of Study in Hoarding Issues from the Institute for Challenging Disorganization (ICD). Josel lives in Larchmont village with her husband, daughter and son.

New episodes of Hoarding: Buried Alive air on cable network TLC Wednesdays at 10 p.m. EST.