Morgenstern, Julie, Organizing from the Inside Out – The Foolproof System for Organizing Your Home, Your Office, and Your Life, 1998.

You have a clutter problem if your things are disorganized or typically look untidy; if you can’t quickly find what you need; or if you have too much paper or other stuff to neatly stow in the space you have available. Clutter can waste your time, drain your energy, repel your friends and colleagues, and keep you bogged down.

Getting clutter out of your life isn’t just about purging unwanted junk, or making your rooms look tidier. Critical to the process of controlling clutter is organizing your papers and all your stuff so that your office and home work well for you.

Julie Morgenstern defines “organizing” as “the process by which we create environments that enable us to live, work and relax exactly as we want to.”

Morgenstern describes herself as a formerly disorganized person who reached the breaking point, and decided that clutter was driving her crazy. Today she is professional organizer, and in this book she describes many applications for her system, which includes her “SPACE” formula for transforming a messy area:

1. Sort
2. Purge
3. Assign a home
4. Containerize
5. Equalize