Calm down Decluttering doesn’t have to be overwhelming By: AV Kitching Posted: 5:50 PM CST Monday, Jan. 19, 2026

Your to-be-read pile is teetering over the edge of the bedside table, there’s a container labelled oats in the pantry housing an assortment of pasta and the basement floor is covered in toys that haven’t been played with in years.

If you planned to whittle down your to-do list just before the new year but have yet to mark even one task off, don’t despair.

Enter Mandy Berndsen, 47, saviour of the overwhelmed, the overtired and the overstimulated.

The owner of Calm the Chaos Assistant is a declutter and organizer extraordinaire who promises to help get your home, and perhaps even your life, back on track.

Whether it’s sorting books to be donated, putting up shelves or folding laundry, Berndsen and her team of super sorters will swoop in when you just can’t do it alone anymore.

The only thing she doesn’t do is clean.

“We can take care of all the things on your list, tackle small house projects you’ve been putting off, but we don’t actually do house cleaning,” Berndsen says.

Not that your home has to be spotless before she arrives — cleaning comes after clearing, not before.

“There’s an order to this. First you declutter, then organize and then clean. Often you will be cleaning as you organize. The order of the last two things aren’t as important. Always declutter first, otherwise all you’re doing is organizing and cleaning your clutter,” she says.

“Your home is your safe haven. It’s so important to have spaces that don’t create more chaos in your life.”

Hers is a judgment-free service with one aim: to lessen the load of those of us so overwhelmed we don’t even know where to start.

As Berndsen puts it she’s “an extra pair of hands, and an extra brain” when life starts piling up.

“Do you know who my main clients are? Busy moms who have multiple children in sports. They’re trying to be present at work, they’re trying to run a household, they’re trying to do all the things and they don’t have the time to do anything else” she says.

When confronted with many different piles of mess and incapable of starting somewhere, anywhere, Berndsen will take the burden away and make those decisions for you. She’ll guide you along and keep you on task and accountable with her friendly ways.

Berndsen started Calm the Chaos Assistant in March 2024 after a random conversation with a friend. Newly divorced, the single mother had been her own boss for more 13 years. She didn’t relish the idea of working for someone else. Not wanting to lose the skills she’d gained in her previous role as an events planner, she launched a virtual assistant service — that’s where the assistant aspect of Calm the Chaos comes in — but that side of things never really got going.

“Ten days in and I got my first client who was a mom. She said, ‘You need to organize my entire house, you need to declutter it.’ I thought, perfect, so I did it. And then she talked to someone else, who told someone else and before I knew it, I had clients through word-of-mouth alone. And you know what, I never got one virtual assistant client, not a single one,” she laughs.

These days most of her clients are repeat customers who book three or six hour blocks of time where she or someone from her team will visit and tackle everything on the list.

There are clients she sees monthly to take care of a set list of tasks, others she sees twice a year for seasonal resets and some for whom her visits are a regular weekly occurrence.

The keys to her success are her individualized functional systems, which are unique to each family’s lifestyle and needs, as well as her “body doubling” sessions, where she works alongside the clients.

“A lot of the time there is decision fatigue, especially when the decluttering area is so big that it then becomes such a mental load for you to think about doing by yourself. We are beside you, we are that extra set of hands, that extra person helping you declutter and because we are not emotionally attached to your items so we can help make those decisions,” she says.

“I love her. I’ve been working with her for two years now.”

Berndsen’s Instagram account shows what her clients think of her with posts filled with comments from people thanking her for changing their lives, for liberating them from mess and for easing their workloads.

“I love her. I’ve been working with her for two years now,” says Christine Thiessen, who heard about Berndsen from a colleague.

“At first she was coming in weekly just to fold and put it away. I have two little children and it just helped to free up time because that’s what I used to do at the weekends. Nowadays, Mandy helps with general house organization, party prep and also seasonal changeover between decor and clothing. It’s really freed up the mental load and allowed me to be present in a different way,” Thiessen says.

Seasonal resets are a big thing for Berndsen. What she refers to as “prime real estate” spaces such as hallways closets and bathroom shelves should only be allocated to items that are currently in use right now or will be in use in the very near future.

So does she ask her clients to get rid of things that don’t “spark joy” similar to the KonMari method of organization?

Berndsen laughs.

“Well I’m the one sparking joy. That is my middle name. Joy. I’m Mandy Joy Berndsen. I think you have to do a deep dive to ask yourself why you need as much stuff as you have because the reason we get clutter is because of stuff. It really comes down to stuff. That’s it. Clutter happens because we have too much stuff,” she says.

“And once we go into that it can become easier, right? You have to ask yourself why you’re emotionally attached to the item. What are you keeping that doesn’t serve you? What are you keeping that is not letting new things into your life?”

“If it’s July, you should not see a scarf or mitt in sight because your prime real estate should now be beach towels and sunglasses. And in the winter you have to change things over, so right now all that you should see are mitts, tuques and scarves. You’ve got to think about it like that. What are you using daily? What is the season? And everything else should be in storage. If you don’t need it, hide it,” she says.

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