When Vicki Norris was a little girl, her friends wanted to play with Barbies.

Norris wanted to straighten up their closets.

“They had all those outfits and those tiny little shoes,” said Norris, 31. “I’ve always loved to organize — always.”

It wasn’t that Norris had obsessive-compulsive tendencies as a child. Her gift for leadership and the notion that order helps people make sense of the world just showed up early.

Today Norris is a professional organizer. Her Sherwood-based company, Restoring Order, has helped hundreds of folks get out from under piles of clutter they’ve been drowning in for years.

Specializing in executive, home office and personal organization, Norris and her staff get to the heart of their clients’ needs and hang around long enough to put more than a Band-Aid on the problem.

They come into homes and businesses, offering makeovers that run the gamut from a cleaner closet to an office space that’s so efficient it practically runs itself.

They create filing systems, throw out extraneous junk and move furniture to fit the individual’s lifestyle and goals.

From busy mothers to harried CEOs, Norris and her team handle it all.

The company motto, “Reclaim Your Life!,” is very real, Norris said.

“There’s a tremendous amount of pain associated with people who are disorganized because they’re frustrated and depressed,” she said. “People are feeling and living out of control.

“What I do is empower people to identify their priorities and organize their life to accommodate those priorities.”

Norris promises no quick fix. It takes time to become disorganized, she points out, and it takes at least that much time to change old habits and begin new, healthier ones.

But it’s all worth the effort.

“Some people feel as if their whole life is out of control, and others need help only in certain areas,” Norris noted. “The payoff for setting up systems and getting organized is exponential.

“It’s all about quality of life. You get to make it to your kid’s soccer game.”

Getting a handle on the calendar is a natural place to start, said Norris, who charges about $85 an hour for her services.

“People are running crazy, scheduling appointments and making commitments they can’t possibly keep up with,” she pointed out. “So one of the first things we do is talk about their typical day or week.”

What she often finds out is that clients never learned how to become organized in the first place.

“When in grade school or high school did we ever take a class in managing our lives?,” asked Norris, who originally planned to work in advertising.

She took a short detour into real estate, getting her license before launching Restoring Order in 2000.

“I really sat and thought long and hard about something I could do with my eyes closed,” said Norris. “I was determined to have a sense of purpose along with a sense of calm in my life.”

A communications major in college, Norris decided to put her passion for putting things in order and her knack for connecting with people into practice.

“My mom gave me an article on executive organizers — I’d never heard of that before,” Norris recalled. She joined the Portland chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers, took out a business license in May 1999 and went to work building her company.

It never crossed her mind she’d be anything but wildly successful.

“I just figured things out,” Norris said simply. “I did my research, reading and looking on the Web.

“The difference between whether you’ll succeed in business or whether you’ll fail is to be self-actualized. No one else is going to do it for you — I really believe that.”

One of only 2,500 professional organizers in the nation, Norris has made a name for herself in Oregon and beyond.

She criss-crosses the country for speaking engagements and hosts an organizing segment once a month on the KATU-2 television morning show “AM Northwest.”

Most recently, Norris signed on to the cast of “Mission: Organization,” a Philadelphia-based cable TV program.

Aired on Home & Garden Television, it’s one of a number of organization-themed shows that have cropped up over the last several years.

The show recently filmed a segment in Sherwood, with Norris organizing the home office of Mike and Annie Normandeau.

“It’s the next television phenomenon,” Norris predicted, right up there with reality TV.

What’s causing all the ruckus?

“People are tired of living with stacks and stacks of paper,” Norris said. “They’re tired of missing appointments and being so blocked in they can’t find time for themselves or their families.”

She’s happy her work provides relief to people whose finances, self esteem and creativity are suffering under the weight of disorganization.

“It’s incredible to see what can happen,” she said. “We’re not just selling a service — we’re changing peoples’ lives.”