The Drawer War : One strategy in the battle against paperwork clutter is to get professional advice.

Life has taught you that household clutter and ingrown toenails are a lot alike--in either case, you’ll do something about it when it gets painful enough.

And there’s nothing like the end of the calendar year to drive home the importance of maintaining good records and a filing system. That and buying a house. Then, despite an absurdly chaotic work schedule, you are expected to produce vital documents that you are not even sure you possess.

One day, in the midst of both crises, you get a call from the bank and reach your Waterloo.

You rush home during lunch hour to conduct a frenzied search of your spreadsheets. But your system, being more literal than that favored by accountants, involves spreading the dusty contents of several drawers across the floor. There you sift, with silverfish fleeing on every side.

At last you reach some of the papers you want--and a conclusion that you need help.

You call Messies Anonymous in Florida and raise the white flag of defeat. You request the support group’s free introductory newsletter.

Next you phone Packrats International in Garden Grove for more literature.

Then you round out this series of liberating actions by calling the headquarters of the National Organization of Professional Organizers in Illinois.

Armed with a list of professional organizers in Ventura County, you engage the services of Kathy Lemmon, owner of Organizing & Space Planning in Westlake Village. Lemmon recommends that you read Barbara Hemphill’s book, “Taming the Paper Tiger: Organizing the Paper in Your Life,” especially the section called “Fear of Filing.”

Your war on clutter has been declared. You resolve that your remains will not, as one friend hinted, be one day discovered among 15 cats in a house full of egg cartons. You don’t even like cats.

Lemmon arrives to dole out hands-on advice on a Saturday morning, and immediately you know that you are in good hands.

“Piles of papers,” she pronounces, quoting Hemphill, “are decisions deferred.”

Sympathetically, Lemmon acknowledges how difficult it can be for people to seek organizing help. Her role, she says, “is to make non-judgmental suggestions to help you develop a paper management system that works for you.”

You are encouraged by her implied philosophy-- there are no bad people, only bad papers --and you’re hoping that Lemmon will see promise in your collection of wire baskets, color-coded files and office gewgaws. No such luck.

“Your choice of containers or labels doesn’t matter,” she says. “The test is if you can easily find something, use it and easily put it away.” Hmm.

Lemmon makes a few notes on your circumstances and needs, casting her gaze about your two-bedroom apartment. Then she confronts the big question.

“Show me your file cabinets,” she says. As she inspects the 13 letter-size drawers and the huge five-drawer lateral file, you proudly note that many of these drawers are actually used for their intended purpose. Others, however, contain bags of family photos, Cub Scout paraphernalia and so on.

Lemmon claims optimism because the drawers can still be easily closed. Then she sinks to the living room floor and sets you to gathering and sorting. Soon, large mounds are reduced to orderly piles and dotted with Post-it notes. But Lemmon doesn’t throw anything away. That, she says, will be your job.

The culling continues. Coat hangers are extricated, bills and unfolded laundry are separated, discoveries are made.

“Savers,” Lemmon says euphemistically, “are often emotionally linked to their possessions.”

To ease free of those links, she suggests gradual strategies: photographing your 11-year-old son’s kindergarten drawings before you discard them, for instance. Then she offers a few rules of “organizing ecology.”

One is: Reduce your sources to avoid bringing as much in through the door. When you do bring documents or objects in, send one out to compensate. Or, in your case, she suggests, send four out. She must have seen the closet.

Another rule: Designate a single place to process paper . Lemmon sets up a filing system for records and important papers you need to function daily. For things to be read someday, she establishes a library reference file.

By the time your professional organizer is ready to leave, you can see the floor for what seems like the first time in months. You have an “in” basket. You have a customized daily agenda and procedures for using it. And you have a Lucite clipboard, left behind by Lemmon with your homework outlined on the yellow-lined tablet.

In the dumpster lie eight grocery bags full of paper trash.

Seeking finishing touches, you head for the stationery store. But you never expected to find such a variety of organizer notebooks. The choice is intoxicating. And you begin to regress as calendars, formats and To Do lists crowd in on you. Would the clasp notebook be more practical? Or the one with the zipper closure? Both?

A flicker of lights signals the store’s imminent closing and demands an immediate choice. You decide to defer this decision until next week.

* THE PREMISE

There are plenty of things you have never tried. Fun things, dangerous things, character building things. The Reluctant Novice tries them for you and reports the results. After all, the Novice gets paid to do them--and has no choice in the matter. If you want to tell the Novice where to go, please call us at 658-5547. If we use your idea, we’ll send you a present. This week’s reluctant novice is free-lance writer Robyn Loewenthal.