Get it straight: Donna McMillan helps clients win the constant conflict with clutter. Her job is to organize--not unions, but mail, moves and more.

WHEN Gina Markchisio started up her hotel reservations service, she figured she could manage the eight-person firm one problem at a time.

Instead, she found herself mixing personal documents with business files, throwing unattended papers into random piles and being late returning calls.

Enter Donna McMillan, a woman who has built a business out of organizing people's lives--from desks and files to closets and even magazine subscriptions.

McMillan, owner and sole employee of McMillan & Co. Professional Organizing, handles about five clients a week--one of thousands of professional organizers nationwide.

"She would stop me and say, 'What were you thinking just now?' or 'Why would you put it over here?'" remembered Markchisio, who hired McMillan to organize her desk. "She would get in my thought process. I would group things all by the category of what they are--shows, financials, personnel, development--but they were general categories. It wasn't always obvious."

Self starter

A native of a small Kansas farm town, McMillan made her way west 30 years ago. Newly divorced and offered the opportunity to transfer to Los Angeles by her employer, an insurance agency, she opted for the fresh start.

She'd had stints back home managing offices for a mobile home seller, a truck body factory, a retailer and a claims adjuster. In L.A., she worked for the insurance operation before taking a job as a receptionist for a parking lot management company.

On the side, McMillan became a Mary Kay consultant. "I learned a great deal about being a business owner, about marketing, how to treat customers," she said of her Mary Kay experience.

After losing the job at the parking lot firm in 1984, she plunged headlong into her new business. At first, she billed herself as a secretarial service, Typing Etc. She had business cards printed and landed her first client, a home-based flower delivery service owner, after leaving a dozen cards at the print shop.

That first client needed her to answer phones and type invoices, but after she saw McMillan's filing system, she asked, "I have a four-drawer cabinet loaded with (descriptions of) floral arrangements. Can you fix it?"