The Chaos Clinic (five): 'I HATE clutter and clutter hates me," declared Meg Connell, who runs a clinic for the chronically disorganised. I hate copycat programmes like this which clutter the schedules on every channel.

The show's chief merit is that, if you remove the commercial breaks, it lasts a mere 22 minutes. Even that is stretching the idea further than advisable.

Connell is a brash American, which will revive memories of Ann Maurice (whose shows are currently being repeated endlessly and needlessly, also on five) as she tells homeowners to declutter in order to sell their homes.

This week's episode of The Chaos Clinic was not happening for that reason. The simple fact was that Linda couldn't get into two rooms of her five room house in Brighton as they were piled high with furniture and other household items.

How anyone can live like this is beyond me, but even sinners don't deserve to have to attend one of Connell's meetings, which she conducts with religious zeal and makes people chant "Who's your friend? Who's your enemy?".

This "star of lifestyle turnaround" has a six-step plan to "cleanse the chronically cluttered, save the stashers and heal the hoarders". She also has a fixation with alliteration.

She wasn't impressed in the least on viewing Linda's place. "This house by the sea looks like a shipwreck has been washed ashore," she pronounced on seeing the mayhem and mess.

The first step in her cure is to confess the mess (rhyming as well as alliteration, you notice). Faced with a room crammed with unwanted stuff, she put on a caver's helmet and lamp to crawl on all fours among the stacks of furniture. Linda, silly girl, followed her into the dark and dingy corners of the room. Happily, she remembered to put her baby down first.

The pair emerged in an upstairs bedroom. Again, Meg wasn't impressed. "This looks like the downstairs room only worse," she said.

On to step two: stop hoarding, start living. Take four boxes labelled Happy, Sad, Good, Bad and assign your belongings to a box. Once sorted, throw out the contents of the good and bad boxes. You can keep the happy and sad ones because they represent memories.

Step three, find a buddy. What are friends for if it's not to hear you and some mad American muttering about decluttering?.

Between steps four (order out of disorder) and six (together we will conquer chaos) came the one valuable piece of information in step five - when you're on a roll, take control.

This gibberish means sell all that furniture and other items that you don't need. Learn to let go and grab the handfuls of cash your unwanted bits and pieces can earn.

Linda made nearly £2,500. I'm not sure that's nearly enough reward for letting Meg Connell into your house. The only hope is that she won't be able to because unwanted furniture is blocking the entrance hall.

Published: 29/07/2005