If you have a mess, Suzie Carvalho will help you get rid of it.

The dresses hanging at the back of your closet that are sizes too small, the piles of boxes that keep you from parking in your garage — she’ll make you bin them, or organise as necessary.

“I’m sure I am a pain in the neck to a lot of people,” said Ms Carvalho, who started her home and office decluttering business three years ago.

“When I take on clients I warn them up front, I’m pretty tough.”

One of her clients was a teenager going off to college who needed to reduce her enormous collection of stuffed animals.

“You have to remember this is not my stuff and I am not attached to it,” she said. “It is easy for me to say to you, ‘Look at it. Do you really need it? No’. I had two small plastic bins that would fit under the bed. I said what she could fit in those bins she could keep. The rest she needed to get rid of.”

It’s a part-time gig for Ms Carvalho, a busy office manager during the week.

She offers her services on the weekends in two-hour spurts, advising when people should give or throw items away, or host a garage sale. The advice comes at $35 an hour.

Many of her clients are overwhelmed by items they’ve inherited from dead relatives.

“Realistically, they’re not here, so they shouldn’t have a say in whether you let it go or not,” she said. “Photograph it, put it in an album or put it on a USB stick. You will always have it that way, but it doesn’t take up space.”

She started the business after someone asked her about her passions.

“I said I love colour and redecorating, and I love decluttering. I was also looking for a way to earn a little extra money.”

She got interested in decluttering after her father died 30 years ago. Over a period of three days, she and her sister threw out seven truckloads of junk — from old nails and tins, to surveying equipment to rotting furniture.

“He used to put things in the cellar under the house,” Ms Carvalho said. The cellar was about 28ft long. At one point we joked that we were going to find the Ark.

“As we got to the end, there was the rib of a boat poking out of the dirt floor. We kept very little.

“I promised myself I would never ever do this to my children.”

She lives by a simple mantra — don’t keep what you don’t need — but admits being a bit weak when it comes to shoes.

“What I can’t fit in the closet I don’t have,” she said. “I am a shoe-oholic if you wish. I do have some I don’t wear, but they are not on the floor. They are on a shoe rack in my closet and in shoe bags.”

Ms Carvalho practises reiki, a stress reduction technique based on the idea that unseen “life force energy” flows through us.

She believes that too much junk in the home blocks the flow of positive energy.

“It is very heavy energy to hold on to things,” she said. “It not only takes up space in your house, it takes up space in your brain, because you keep thinking about it. You keep thinking I should do something about that. If you want to feel better, throw some stuff out.”

At the end of the job, most clients “usually say they feel released”, she added.

“I get joy out of helping people. It is really good to heal yourself and release blocked energy inside you. It helps you move forward. That is why I like to do it, not because I like to throw things out.”

• Contact her on 537-4838 or suziecarv@gmail.com.