Having just read “Homer & Langley,” E. L. Doctorow’s novel about the Collyer brothers, who were found dead in a Harlem brownstone under more than 100 tons of stuff they had accumulated, I finally vowed to tackle my lifelong tendency to accumulate too much of nearly everything and my seeming inability to throw out anything that I considered potentially useful to me or someone else sometime in the future.

Living in a three-story house with full basement made it far too easy to pursue this habit. I had plenty of storage space (and had filled every nook and cranny of it), but often couldn’t find things when I needed them, including clothes, books, articles, even frozen food I knew I had stored somewhere. Last year I found eight unopened jars of cocktail sauce in the back of my fridge; I had forgotten I had any and kept buying more.

When a product I liked at the moment was on sale (graham crackers, lipstick, shampoo, detergent, cereal, supplements), I often bought as many as I could and added them to already overflowing stashes. I’m often afraid I won’t be able to get more when I need it, a concern occasionally validated when a manufacturer discontinues something I like. But more often, I tire of these items and move on to others long before I’ve used up the old purchases.

Steps to Declutter

Recently, as if by fate, an advance copy of a book arrived in the mail that is without doubt the most helpful tome for anyone with a cluttering tendency. It’s called “The Hoarder in You: How to Live a Happier, Healthier, Uncluttered Life” (published Tuesday by Rodale Books). It was written by Robin Zasio, a clinical psychologist, a star of the show “Hoarders” and director of the Anxiety Treatment Center in Sacramento.

I would say that Dr. Zasio’s book is about the best self-help work I’ve read in my 46 years as a health and science writer. She seems to know all the excuses and impediments to coping effectively with a cluttering problem, and she offers practical, clinically proven antidotes to them.