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When I was a girl, there was no clutter in the three-room apartment my parents rented. My mother was "Mrs. Clean." She kept the apartment orderly and spotless. My space consisted of a toy chest where my few possessions were kept.

When I got married, I lived in a studio apartment. All we had was a sleep sofa, a table and chairs, a few dishes and pots, some clothes and college textbooks. What was there to mess up?

Fast-forward a few years to the birth of our first child. By that time, we had graduated to a neat three-room apartment. The diaper and formula situation changed everything. We had a washing machine but no dryer or diaper service. Consequently, racks of drying diapers and baby clothes stood in every room and in the bathtub. Closet space was tight.

We wanted to put things away, but after a while we gave up trying to find places to stow everything. If a visitor arrived unexpectedly, we'd often stuff things under the bed.

By the time we had three kids and a house, clutter was in full bloom. Toys, clothing, utensils, papers and magazines, groceries, baby bottles, and sneakers were everywhere. Somebody was always looking for something amid piles of stuff that belonged to everyone else. A typical day might go something like this:

"Where's my hat?"

"I can't find my homework."

"Can't find the car keys." (They're in my pocket.)

"There's no toothpaste."

"Isn't it in the pantry?"

You find it in the refrigerator.

The phone is dead. The bill never got paid because it's buried somewhere on my desk in a mountain of mail.

Nobody gets around to folding the laundry. At 6 in the morning, my husband might be rummaging in the laundry basket, looking for two socks that match. In the children's rooms, clothing is strewn on the floor. How do you tell the clean items from the dirty ones? If you ask the kid, he says, "It's easy. Just pick the thing up and smell it."

After a vacation trip, for which packing was a nightmare, nobody unpacks fully for two weeks. In the meantime, everybody runs to the suitcases and pokes around until they find what they need.

Eventually, the clutter situation got completely out of hand. I couldn't find anything and junk was everywhere. Even the garage was an obstacle course of bikes, lawn care gadgets, tools, suitcases, books, and unlabeled cartons.

One day, I finally blew my cork. I couldn't stand it anymore. I had a fit of sanitation and decided that things must change. I couldn't spend the rest of my life looking for things, sometimes even buying the same thing twice because I didn't remember that I already had one. I realized that clutter expands to fill the space available.

The only way to handle it was to assign places to things the way my mother used to do. However, this only works if the assigned place is logical, and if people put stuff in the assigned place.

Thus, toothpaste should be in a bathroom, not the kitchen. Twinkies do not go in a dresser drawer, but in the refrigerator. Sneakers go in the bottom of a closet -- hopefully yours -- not in the garage. The sandwich you didn't finish doesn't belong on the side of the tub, even if you were taking a bath at the time you deposited it there. Screwdrivers and pliers don't belong in the silverware drawer. Keys go on a hook on the kitchen wall. At the end of the day, toys get put in cabinets and stuffed animals go in a hammock in the corner of the playroom.

The situation changed for the better.

Then the kids grew up and left. We moved to a smaller house with no basement. We got rid of a lot of junk. Why should the clutter problem resurface?

Little by little, the house was a mess -- again. Every time we walked in, we'd drop whatever we held on the dining room table. Later, or another day, we'd put it away.

Bookeeping, once begun, remained on the desk until we got around to finishing it. Fold the laundry? Later. Empty the dishwasher? Tomorrow. Pens and eyeglasses were always missing.

Most of the time, nobody was in the house but us, so we didn't have to keep reins on the clutter. Nobody cared. Exempt now from parental duty, we simply relaxed and hadn't realized what was happening.

The day I lost my wedding ring was a pivotal day. (It turned up in an unlikely place a year later.) After that, we realized that our present way would not do at all. It was inefficient, time wasting, and irritating.

We went back to putting everything in an assigned place that is selected logically. No dropping stuff on the dining room table any more. It's covered with a pretty tablecloth and has a flowered centerpiece.

No more stepping out of the shower to find that all the towels are in the living room in a laundry basket. The whole house looks nicer.

Now, in the dark, I could probably lay my hands on almost anything. We've learned that the war on clutter is never over, even after the kids leave home. Now, when the kids come to visit, they look around and call me "Mrs. Clean." They ask how we can live in a sterile museum.

Toby Rosenstrauch, an award-winning columnist, lives in Boynton Beach, Fla.