I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.

One of my favorite things to do in the world is to go to my sister Elizabeth's house and

help her clear clutter.

It's a lot more fun for me than it is for her.

The thing about Elizabeth is she has made great progress in her life.

She used to be extremely messy and she's a lot better now, but she's still pretty messy.

But she used to be extremely messy.

And at the time when she was very messy, years ago she was getting ready to move from one

apartment to another apartment in Los Angeles.

And I flew out for an emergency visit to help her pack.

So we were going through her stuff and we were just packing things.

We were throwing things away.

We were taking things in the car to the Salvation Army.

We were recycling and we were just working frantically.

And one problem that she had was that she had a ton of old papers.

She had mail, some of which was not even opened and some opened mail.

She had paperwork forms, brochures, printout, everywhere.

And this is a big problem for everyone, stealing with paper clutter.

And so we were sorting it out and trying to figure out what was there.

And she was looking at a big pile of statements that she'd received regularly from the writer's

guild.

And she was beginning to describe for me how she was going to get the pile together and

...