Products that help you get organized - or do they?

While walking through Times Square this past February, organizing guru Cynthia Townley Ewer looked up and saw something that surprised her. Mixed in with the ads for electronics and entertainment was a billboard for the Container Store.

"It just seemed so out of place," she says of the ad featuring brightly colored plastic organizers. "But then I realized, No, this really is a symbol of what's going on right now with the marketing of these so-called solutions to our clutter problem."

Ms. Ewer, who runs OrganizedHome.com, isn't completely opposed to the use of products for storing things. But she argues they shouldn't come first. "Getting organized does not involve buying things," she says. "It involves making decisions and changing behavior."

But changing behavior can be hard, and in the meantime, Americans need help to help corral all the "stuff" - mail, remote controls, T-shirts, and ballcaps - that fills their homes.

Their counterparts in the mid-20th century had to make do with cutout cereal boxes to store their magazines, but today, thanks to manufacturers offering a wide choice of options, people have numerous stylish ways to house everything from DVDs and CDs to photographs and kitchen tools.

"There is just a huge need out there for people who want to get organized," says Donna Smallin, author of "The One-Minute Organizer Plain & Simple." "I think that we all are dealing with a lot more stuff than we need to have."

The number of organizing products has grown in the past two to three years, says Ewer, catching up with recent societal changes. Homes are bigger, for example, offering Americans plenty of places to stash things. And advances in entertainment technology ensure that where once a family maybe had one remote control, now at least three or four areon the coffee table.

People are frequently tied to their possessions emotionally - keeping them for sentimental reasons - or they get hung up on the question, "What if I need this someday?" The popularity of all the plastic containers and ottomans with hidden storage suggests to some observers that people think the products themselves will solve their inability to sort through the junk mail or part with old baby clothes.

"The reality is that a lot of people are having a tremendous amount of trouble throwing [things] away," says Stephanie Winston, a long-time organizer whose latest book is "Organized for Success."

Even though people have been told for years about the need to streamline and organize their lives, "these products would not be popular the way they are if people were in fact following the advice to throw away," she says.

As unlikely as it sounds, watching TV may be helping fuel the public's desire to visit a Bed, Bath, & Beyond or Hold Everything store. Multiple shows now take on people's clutter, including "Clean Sweep" on the Learning Channel, "Mission: Organization" on Home & Garden Television, and "Clean House" on the Style Network.

Ewer notes that people aren't in and out of one another's homes in the same casual way as they once were. "You come at an invitation," she says, "and your hostess has shoved the dirty clothes into the oven, and she's pushed the dishes under the sink. And you go into her home and you say, 'Gosh, nobody lives like I do.' "

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