If you were asked to guess what I do for a living on the basis of the messages I get on my answering machine, you might think I am a plumber, a locksmith, a doctor, or some other sort of emergency care worker.

"My husband is in trouble, please call me as soon as you get in."

"I just lost my job. Can you come over this afternoon?"

"I was just booted out of my office space and moved my business home. Now what do I do?"

"Hi, I'm calling from Boston, but my daughter just graduated from college in New York. She needs your help, and I'm willing to pay. Please call."

"I'm standing on the corner of Sixty-eighth Street and Second Avenue and I can't get into my apartment. It's urgent. Here's my number."

But clutter knows no boundaries, and clutter is my specialty. I am a clutter consultant, a profession I stumbled upon, but one to which I seem to have been called. My journey through life has been guided by a thirst to examine what I wanted my experience of being alive to be and by exploring ways to manifest it in the world. I became a serious student--working with many great teachers on issues of humanity, relationship, business, and spirituality--in my quest to have my inner and outer worlds be one.

Every time I took a quantum leap in my growth, I noticed that I would clean physical clutter. Every time I clarified my thoughts and emotions or specified my desires, I would find myself creating filing systems and a wardrobe that corresponded to my interests and goals. I thought it was curious that I responded in this way to personal expansion, so I decided at one point to conduct an experiment to see whether if I reversed the process and cleaned clutter first as a way to foster growth if it would work. It did! And, it was fun. I began to make a game of exploring the relationship among oneness with myself, harmony in the world, and my physical environment.

In the early 1990s, I was winding down a twenty-year career as a public relations consultant, turning forty, and traumatized by the sudden loss of my father and the unexpected death of brother all within six months. In the midst of my upheaval, two friends independently called to ask me to help them with theirs. They asked me to help them clean their clutter to facilitate moving to new homes. This became an opportunity to share with them all that I had learned about clutter. I helped one friend clean closets on Monday, another friend clean up her clutter on Saturday, and by Thursday I started my business Lighten Up! Free Yourself from Clutter.

 Since that time, all kinds of people have called. They were from many geographic territories, educational backgrounds, economic levels, professions, and circumstances and of all ages. They were men, women, and even children. They had a single-minded quest in common: They wanted to know how to clean up all those papers, clothes, and other paraphernalia heaped all over their living rooms, bedrooms, basements, attics, bathrooms, and offices. They seemed to have had a moment of awakening when all their stuff had reached such monumental proportions that they were thrown into a panic and their need to do something about it could not wait a minute longer. I taught them what I had learned: The future is bright without clutter in the way.

As I continued to share my outlook about clutter in private consultations and seminars in my hometown of New York City (the place I affectionately call The Clutter Capital of the World) and throughout the country, what I discovered to be effective in cleaning clutter grew and my understanding about the mysteries of the physical universe deepened. My approach focuses on getting rid of the most basic forms of clutter in the physical environment as a path toward cleaning whatever is in the way of fulfillment anywhere.

If what you are looking for is a method to file papers, a way to get your closets in better shape, and suggestions on other rooms, various kinds of clutter, and situations in which clutter can be found, you will find it here. You'll also find practical suggestions about what to do with the daily mail, nagging catalogs, an avalanche of books, and a garage that is an embarrassment to the neighborhood. I also give you information on managing time and keeping a date book so you have less stress in a day, and more.

I do not provide a set of quick fixes or easy answers, however. I have not found that quick fixes work to give people what they really want from cleaning clutter--a lasting change in their relationship to their physical environment that leads to greater effectiveness, productivity, spontaneity, creativity, fulfillment, and peace of mind in their lives. I offer a way you can transform your ways with clutter so your environment can nurture and support you on an ongoing basis. Any kind of transformation takes work, but it is an investment that leads to an enriched experience of being alive, so it is worth it. It can make a difference in your life, the lives of those around you, and ultimately in the world.

To help you define and achieve your objectives, I borrow goal-setting, strategy-building and planning techniques from business to help you structure your clutter-cleaning endeavors so that things actually get done and you can see results. This approach is as practical as it is motivating. I suggest that you put yourself on a clutter-cleaning "diet" of sorts. In other words, I recommend that you specify a time in which you will work on a designated area of clutter and use the techniques that I suggest to clean it. Doing so will give you practice with the principles of cleaning clutter that I outline.

As most of us have come to learn, however, diets don't work. If you want to be healthy and stay in shape, you eventually have to find a way of eating and exercising that uniquely works for you and that you can integrate into your lifestyle. Likewise, once you have read this book and the clutter-cleaning diet is over, I urge you not to feel forced to follow the Lighten Up! Free Yourself from Clutter approach as if it is a set of rules. Instead, pull from it whatever you have found from your experience works and incorporate it into your own clutter-cleaning program.

You should not think that you need to make your clutter-cleaning effort a rush to the finish either because, as you will soon learn, there is no end to clutter anyway. Staying committed and working steadily over time have proved more effective. Try to make a conscious choice to bring enthusiasm to each step of the task and to realize that any forward movement is as important a part of the process as is the end result. For example, if you were writing the great American novel but first needed to learn to use the computer, learning the computer would be as much a part of the process as sitting down with words spewing forth from your infinite imagination. It could be as thrilling to learn the computer as it is to write, if you take this perspective. Both are all part of the process of completing the novel.

Part of what can make the process of cleaning fun is to become aware of the points of interest you can find on your travels through all your clutter.

The highlights of the trip are that clutter cleaning is a way to discover who you really are and what you want in life, which I will show you how to do.

This discovery can help your communication and relationships with other people, because if you can speak and act consistently with who you are, you will open the space in your life for more love to abound. Finally, you can discover how you can harness the power of physical and spiritual energy in the process. I will point out how clutter cleaning unleashes this power to produce results and bring magic and miracles into your life. Whatever route through your clutter you take, I promise one miracle for each bag that you fill with what you no longer want or use and magic as a way of life if you fill it with what nurtures and supports you.

The most important thing is to get started. So let's begin. You may want to browse through the book from start to finish first. Then revisit it as you clean, reading chapters that are particularly pertinent to whatever you are working on at the time. Review the At-a-Glance sections when you need a pick-me-up. And, just for the fun of it, turn to any page in the book each time before you clean for some inspiration. Rest assured that as you work, you won't be alone. Although I may not be there physically, I will be there in spirit cheering you on. Enjoy!

Copyright ©1998 Michelle Passoff

LIGHTEN UP! Free Yourself From Clutter has its origins in a personal interest by its author to simply lead a fulfilling life, a prospect challenged by a chaotic world. Nonetheless after years of examining issues of being human, relationship, business, and spirituality, she concluded that without clutter in the way the future was bright for all of mankind. Given that clutter in the physical environment is the easiest to get your hands on, Michelle started experimenting with how cleaning it there could foster personal growth and greater aliveness in all aspects of life including the less tangible emotional, spiritual, and psychological parts. It is on this basis that her consultations, classes and book are built.

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