Experts offer advice for cleaning clutter

Spring is in the air and in your home. This is the perfect time to clean up winter's clutter and start fresh.

But some people need a little extra help sprucing up their home. Across the country and here in the Twin Cities, professional organizers are helping people dig through the mess and clutter.

There was once a time when serving breakfast in the Walters? kitchen in Plymouth meant navigating through piles of paper on the counter to find your pancakes.

"The kids come in the house and I just feel like I'm drowning in a sea of papers," says Lisa Walter.

Today, all that paper is neatly stacked in one pile. It?s considered the in-box, a simple idea that cleared Lisa Walters' counter of clutter and the first step to helping Lisa get organized.

"It makes me feel defeated. It makes me feel like I have a big kitchen. I should be able to use the space better,? says Lisa.

Lisa admits she needed help. "I work as a professional organizer and that basically means helping people maximize their space," says Diana Allard. She runs Efficient Spaces, a company dedicated to helping people sort, purge, and re-arrange the clutter in their lives.

"More and more people are busy with their work lives, their family lives and their social lives and find that the last thing that gets taken care of is the maintenance of the daily household," says Allard.

Diana is helping Lisa Walter make her home clutter-free. The next project in the kitchen is the pantry.

"It's just a mess. I need help organizing what makes sense there, what makes sense over here," says Lisa.

On all the shelves you can see boxes, cans, paper and writing utensils. It?s all mixed together in no particular order. Lisa says it?s difficult to find what she needs.

"The pantry drives me nuts just because it's a catch-all for everything."

But with a few ideas from Diana and a couple days of hard work, Lisa Walters transformed her pantry into a well-oiled machine. She moved some foods into the main kitchen, bought containers to help sort and got rid of a lot of stuff.

"We took a lot of things out and took out a lot of things that just didn't need to be in there," says Lisa.

To learn more about professional organizing and efficient spaces, click here

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