Clutter busters ready to help

LOS ANGELES — While traveling around the country to tape the new A&E Network series "$100 Makeover," interior designer Leslie Segrete made some astonishing discoveries in people's homes.

She saw beds hidden under large piles of clothing, coat closets doubling as pantries, and rooms overflowing with random Craigslist freebies.

"Oh good Lord," Segrete says at the recollection. "For the most part all of the homes have had just a ton of stuff in them."

All that "stuff" proves no match for the trio behind "$100 Makeover."

The weekly half-hour series, designed to inspire viewers to de-clutter, organize and redesign their homes — all for only $100 a room — is just the latest in an industry booming thanks to the country's obsession with too much stuff.

"America is a nation of clutter," says Mark Brunetz, co-host of The Style Network's "Clean House" and co-author of the just-released book "Take the U Out of Clutter" (Berkley Trade), which offers an inside-out approach to the problem. "I can sit here and give you strategies and tips ... but unless the transformation occurs within a person, any change in the room is not likely to be long-lived.

"Because what we've found is that people are attached not only to their stuff, but they're attached to their attachment," he says. "It's that deep."

Granted, delving into a homeowner's psyche may be too lofty an undertaking for the world of half-hour television.

So "$100 Makeover" focuses its energy on design.

Each week, Segrete and her cohorts Rib Hillis and Robbie Laughlin converge on a house where they tackle several rooms within a period of three days. The whirlwind makeover always begins with finding out where it all went awry.

Then the de-cluttering begins.

"Basically, you have to stay on top of clutter before it becomes a major issue," says Laughlin, the show's professional organizer. "With your kitchen you need to check dates. If something has expired, don't keep it in the cupboards and keep adding more stuff around it.

"You need to pull that stuff out and throw it away," he says.

Clothing, children's toys, unwanted furniture is all given away to 1-800-GOT-JUNK? The company sifts through the items to determine where they'll go from there, be it a charity or recycling center.