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" It&amp;#039;s Friday afternoon when my phone rings. Good Housekeeping is looking for a writer for a piece about clutter. Do we have any problems on that front? Can I send photos?  We do, and I can \u2014 once our Internet service is back on. Seems our bill was buried by the drift of paper that covers our dining room buffet like snow on a high mountain, and it never got paid. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m your gal,&amp;quot; I tell the editor. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll e-mail you some pictures on Monday.&amp;quot; Over the weekend, I take snapshots. It&amp;#039;s handy to have three sons to blame for the toys and clothes that roam freely. However, it doesn&amp;#039;t explain the cardboard boxes, stacked two and three deep, in the bedroom, mudroom, and living and dining areas. We&amp;#039;ve been in our house six months and unpacked the necessities, but the leftover boxes are full of photos, memorabilia: things from our past that we aren&amp;#039;t sure belong in our present. Worse, we keep piling on other homeless items \u2014 from old electronics to wall art, sleeping bags, you name it \u2014 that we haven&amp;#039;t found a place for yet. It&amp;#039;s the clutter of indecision.  The editor is convinced by my photos, which is a mixed honor, like being chosen for a makeover. I&amp;#039;m excited about getting to &amp;quot;after&amp;quot; but embarrassed to have qualified for &amp;quot;before.&amp;quot; Here&amp;#039;s how I learned to reclaim my home, and how you can, too. Next: Week One&amp;#039;s Plan  Week One My first task: Check out the online support program clutterdiet.com \u2014 sort of a Weight Watchers for pack rats and disorganized folk. I used diet plans to lose weight after each pregnancy, so I understand the metaphor. I don&amp;#039;t get that worried until I read site founder Lorie Marrero&amp;#039;s bio, which says she bought her first label maker in fourth grade; another staffer used to organize her Barbies&amp;#039; gowns in rainbow order. I still don&amp;#039;t own a label maker; my Barbies were slobs. But Clutter Diet promises I&amp;#039;ll lose the piles of extra stuff, gain time, and reduce stress. Sign me up. Right off, the site warns that a crash approach (purging) won&amp;#039;t work. &amp;quot;Unless you change the habits that got you disorganized in the first place,&amp;quot; it says, &amp;quot;you will soon find the space a mess again.&amp;quot; Good thing GH has asked me for a six-week commitment \u2014 long enough to see some results if I stick with it. The site offers how-to videos, articles, work sheets, and message boards, where, I notice, staffers respond to subscribers&amp;#039; questions. While advice based on a digital photo of a messy room may not be the same as an in-person consultation (for which pro organizers charge anywhere from $50 to $125 an hour), at $15 a month, it&amp;#039;s not a bad substitute.  To get started, a weekly &amp;quot;menu&amp;quot; plan suggests a minimum of one to two hours spent on a &amp;quot;main dish&amp;quot; organizing project, plus a few small &amp;quot;side dishes,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;snack&amp;quot; tasks, and a &amp;quot;dessert&amp;quot; activity to reward yourself. I glance out the window \u2014 it&amp;#039;s a beautiful day. These people are going to make me spend it inside my closet, I just know it. I force myself to poke around the site a bit more, and I run across a stat to which I relate all too well: 23 percent of Americans admit to paying bills late because they can&amp;#039;t find them (I&amp;#039;m not alone!). Oh, and here&amp;#039;s one more: A third of IKEA shoppers surveyed reported more satisfaction from clearing out closets than sex. OK, I can&amp;#039;t go along with that, but dealing with clutter is clearly a cultural obsession. Take the popularity of TV shows like Oprah&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Clean Up Your Messy House Tour,&amp;quot; hosted by organizer Peter Walsh, and Walsh&amp;#039;s now-syndicated TLC program Clean Sweep. On the latter, when one organized bedroom was unveiled, its owner wept as if cured of a fatal illness. &amp;quot;Oh my God! Thank you, thank you!&amp;quot; she cried. Watching her reaction, I&amp;#039;ve got to wonder if she and one-third of IKEA customers know something about a clean closet that I don&amp;#039;t.  After touring the site, I&amp;#039;m ready to dig in. This week&amp;#039;s main dish: Look ahead to events that require advance planning \u2014 and plan them. The purpose is to help me manage my time better, since that&amp;#039;s one thing disorganized people tend to waste (who, me?). I check the calendar. My 39th birthday is in three weeks. I spend an hour creating a guest list, invites, and a menu. Either I just outsmarted this program or failed it spectacularly, but I&amp;#039;m having a party.  Next: Week Two&amp;#039;s Plan  Week Two Week two&amp;#039;s objective is to straighten up the guest room. Awesome. We have no guest room. Free play! Not so fast. There&amp;#039;s a note that says the assignments are suggestions only; I should pick whatever project is most urgent. That, without a doubt, is the home office in the corner of our adjoining living and dining rooms. First, I need to pull together a basic organizing tool kit: grocery sacks and trash bags for sorting and discarding; sticky notes, a permanent marker, and a handheld label maker for labeling; a tape measure for determining storage needs; and pen and paper to jot down to-dos. Then I can deploy the diet&amp;#039;s ORDER approach: Outline your plan, Review your items, Decide where things belong, Establish homes and routines, Revisit your system. Organizers, it must be said, are fond of acronyms. I am not.  Outlining my plan (O) means figuring out who uses the space and for what. The kids use it for doing homework. I use it for opening mail, paying bills, and (hypothetically) filing. So in reviewing the items (R), I focus on what relates to these functions, tossing trash and excess. Maybe I don&amp;#039;t need 10 three-ring notebooks, no matter how cheap they were on sale. I keep two and put the rest in the &amp;quot;donate&amp;quot; pile. Within the &amp;quot;keep&amp;quot; pile, I start grouping like objects: mail here, computer cables there. Where things go (I&amp;#039;m up to D) depends on how often they&amp;#039;re used. With a sticky pad and a marker, I label the groups: A for daily use, B for often, C for seldom, D for never. The A&amp;#039;s and B&amp;#039;s get the prime real estate \u2014 but where is that real estate, I wonder, staring at my lettered stuff in front of the buffet. Then I have what I think they call a breakthrough \u2014 the buffet has 12 unused drawers. I grab the label maker and start classifying them: OFFICE SUPPLIES, WORK PROJECTS, STATIONERY. The A and B stacks have a home (that would be the E in ORDER); I move what doesn&amp;#039;t belong to the mudroom to sort it there (I plan to revisit my system \u2014 the final R \u2014 in a month or two). It feels incredible \u2014 like looking down in the shower post-pregnancy and realizing you can see your toes again.  Next: Week Three&amp;#039;s Plan  Week Three By week three, I&amp;#039;m learning to evaluate my clutter as I encounter it. What is this? Whose is it? Why do we have it? Where does it belong? I keep these words from Lorie Marrero in mind: &amp;quot;If you ever hear yourself saying &amp;#039;for now,&amp;#039; you have just delayed a decision or action.&amp;quot; That delay, she cautions in her book, The Clutter Diet, is the root of all disorganization. Some decisions are easier to make than others. I&amp;#039;ve actually started wondering if we&amp;#039;re getting less mail, but no, it&amp;#039;s just that it&amp;#039;s becoming routine to open it and deal with it as it comes in. And the bin in our once-overstuffed hall closet now serves as a donation station for items heading to Goodwill. Yes, chaos and indecision are receding, but there are spots where they remain entrenched \u2014 those lingering boxes in our bedroom, for instance. &amp;quot;I think creative people often have a difficult time with making decisions,&amp;quot; Marrero says, &amp;quot;because they can envision so many possibilities. It&amp;#039;s hard to toss out an old sock when you look at it and see a dust mitt, a puppet, or a dozen other things.&amp;quot;  I&amp;#039;m living proof. In one box, I find unopened sewing patterns, an embroidered pillowcase I&amp;#039;d planned on making into an apron for my niece, and leftover fabric waiting to be turned into pot holders to match a tea cozy I&amp;#039;d sewn years ago. I strike a deal with myself: If I haven&amp;#039;t made the pillowcase into an apron in six months, I&amp;#039;ll let it go. And into the donate pile with the rest: one less box of &amp;quot;someday,&amp;quot; more room for today. Next: Week Four&amp;#039;s Plan  Week Four My diet is getting a metabolic boost from the party I planned in week one. Knowing that 30 people are coming over is a powerful motivator to clear the dining/family area. While out looking for a file cabinet for the home office in this same open room, I spot a vintage desk. It&amp;#039;s $200 and in great shape \u2014 with a deep drawer for filing and a much broader surface than the small desk on which the family computer currently teeters. I pull out the pocket-size tape measure I now carry with me. It&amp;#039;s a perfect fit. After years of writing at the dining table or in bed with a laptop on my knees, I&amp;#039;ll have a place to claim as my own. I&amp;#039;m not just figuring out where stuff belongs; I&amp;#039;m figuring out where I belong.  Until now, I&amp;#039;ve skeptically regarded celebrity organizers who promise personal transformation and use words like &amp;quot;catalyst&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;clarity.&amp;quot; Oh, come on, I&amp;#039;d think. It&amp;#039;s just a bunch of stuff. How deep can it be? Pretty deep. &amp;quot;Stuff has power,&amp;quot; says Oprah&amp;#039;s organizing guy Peter Walsh when I interview him. &amp;quot;Exploring it touches who you are, how you live, and what you value.&amp;quot; But looking beyond all that, he sees the rise of his industry as nothing more than a &amp;quot;return to good old common sense.&amp;quot; Specifically: &amp;quot;Pick up after yourself.&amp;quot; Next: Week Five&amp;#039;s Plan  Week Five Now that I&amp;#039;ve been on the Clutter Diet for over a month, I&amp;#039;ve officially abandoned the menu plans, but I am still applying the techniques. My priority this week: school backpacks \u2014 we need a place to stow their contents and a place to keep the packs themselves. For a few days I study how my boys come and go, noting where the delays are in getting them out the door and where things land when they come home. The FAA should observe arrival and departure patterns this closely.  What I come up with is an in/out tray for each boy near the counter where I make their lunches and snacks, where work sheets and permission slips can be managed. Then, we create a new inbound/outbound flight path between that spot and the coat and bag hooks I&amp;#039;ve put up in the mudroom. Within days, they&amp;#039;ve got the drill down. No, it doesn&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;solve&amp;quot; the empty juice boxes the kids still leave on the coffee table, but at least I don&amp;#039;t have to step over backpacks and jackets to get to them. I&amp;#039;ve also been circling the issue of what to do with our hundreds, maybe thousands, of disorganized family photos. They&amp;#039;ve become what organizer Julie Morgenstern, in her book SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life, calls a &amp;quot;stagnant&amp;quot; area. Yet she says it&amp;#039;s crucial not to just junk it. &amp;quot;If you don&amp;#039;t ask, &amp;#039;What is the attachment?&amp;#039; you lose the opportunity for insight and transformation,&amp;quot; says Morgenstern. She suggests a test for sorting my pics: &amp;quot;Is it the best reminder I have of that person or experience?&amp;quot; Once I pull out the prints that meet this criteria, I get frames, mats, and some photo-safe boxes that take the guilt out of the sorting process \u2014 I don&amp;#039;t feel bad about not hanging my nephew&amp;#039;s school portrait when it&amp;#039;s filed in a pretty box. When a few favorite photographs are hung on the dining room walls, they spark questions from our boys. &amp;quot;Is that baby you, Mom? Is that Aunt Emily?&amp;quot; We tell stories over dinner about long-ago celebrations, far-flung cousins, departed grandparents. It dawns on me that de-cluttering isn&amp;#039;t about having less. It&amp;#039;s about being able to appreciate more.  Next: Week Six&amp;#039;s Plan  Week Six  &amp;quot;Wait, I don&amp;#039;t have my keys.&amp;quot; My editor has arranged an in-home visit from Clutter Diet&amp;#039;s Marrero. We&amp;#039;d decided to go grab a bite and strategize \u2014 until I come to a halt. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re going to get used to this,&amp;quot; I tell her, as I begin the familiar hunt. &amp;quot;Where do you normally put them?&amp;quot; she asks helpfully. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s the problem \u2014 there isn&amp;#039;t anywhere I normally put them.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Hmm,&amp;quot; says Marrero. &amp;quot;Maybe we can work on that.&amp;quot; The focus of Marrero&amp;#039;s visit is my two older sons&amp;#039; bedroom. Their twin beds are rafts on a river of clutter, with the headwaters originating in their closets. Somebody reaches for a tee, and the stack tumbles down, along with anything stashed on the shelf beside it: awards, toys, rocks. The stuff that boys are made of. Lorie&amp;#039;s first suggestion: Replace the shallow, freestanding shelves with custom-fit wire shelving, which ends up being less than $175 total at the hardware store. She then looks quizzically at the two beds, one high off the floor, one low. &amp;quot;Were these bunk beds at some point?&amp;quot; she asks. I had forgotten that they were, and neither my husband, Patrick, nor I can remember why they aren&amp;#039;t. We reassemble them, and in 15 minutes, we&amp;#039;ve doubled the available floor space. Marrero notices that the shelves we&amp;#039;re pulling from the closets will fit under the mudroom windows if cut down. We&amp;#039;ll gain 30 square feet of new storage space \u2014 for free. Lorie Marrero has superpowers. Later that day, we pick up a key hook for me and decide where my purse, coat, and keys go. If I can keep it up for a few days, says Marrero, it will become habit. When Marrero leaves, I stand in the relative calm of my bedroom and look at the last of the unpacked boxes. I think of the end of winter in the northern town where I grew up, when the giant banks of snow have diminished to hard-packed cores of ice. There&amp;#039;s always a sunny Saturday when the townsfolk decide that the ice has worn out its welcome, and they come out with hoses and pickaxes to get rid of the last remnants. I feel a surge of energy. I can get through these boxes and vow to strap on my tool belt and tackle the much-dwindled stack tomorrow. Instead of feeling bad about what&amp;#039;s left frozen and buried inside, I&amp;#039;m excited about what&amp;#039;s coming: new experiences, new ideas, new growth. Spring. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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