Baskets Will Save You

At the end of the day is your house/apartment/palatial pad as much of a train wreck as those ladies on "The Bachelor"? If so, repeat the mantra... baskets are your friend.

Baskets will save you, girls. Save your sanity... and save your house from looking like it got trashed by a 2 year old or a bunch of frat guys (depending on your life circumstance). Not sure which is more destructive. Does it matter if they're Sigma Nu versus Phi Delt?

But I digress... stash a basket at the foot of your stairs (if you live in a 2 story house) or in a central location. At the end of the day, pick up the basket and race around your house picking up items that need to go upstairs. THEN -- and here's the tough part -- actually walk UPSTAIRS and put everything in its proper place. It takes 5 minutes, but it will change your life. I promise.

For those of you who always take the extra credit option -- you know who you are -- you could even stash a basket in all of your main rooms. Make sure it has a lid. At the end of the day stash all weird items that have accumulated in the room inside this basket. Slam down the lid. Voila! Uncluttered room.

Editor's Note: At some point you do have to remember to open the basket and put the items in their rightful place. Otherwise, 6 months later you'll be in the middle of some souffle action and cursing about where that damn egg timer is. Chances are your 2 year old put it up her nose so it's in the "bathroom basket" where you threw it after the forcible removal that sent your 2 year old into a tantrum and you into the kitchen for some Chardonnay. So it could also be in the "kitchen basket". If, like mine, your memory isn't good enough to be able to recall these incidents, you need to find yourself some discipline and put your lidded basket items away, say, every Sunday.

All this effort will net you a good half hour of free time on the weekend... which you can spend perusing the latest issue of "US Weekly" for the scoop on Bachelor Ben and whose ass he's placed his hands on lately. Did I write "US Weekly"? I meant "US World & News Report", which is sure to be chock full of information on other rascals, like that General Kim Jong-Il.