Unless you're a squirrel or a bear hibernating for the winter, you have no excuse for hoarding things.

But most people are like Fly Entertainment artiste Yeo Yann Yann, 31.

The Malaysian-born actress tends to collect things that she thinks will be useful one day, such as paper bags and boxes, until they form molehills - and even mountains - in her rented room in the Kampong Java area.

When she can no longer find what she's looking for, she grabs a bunch of large trash bags, rolls up her sleeves and starts clearing out her old clothes, paper bags and boxes.

So two or three times a year, the star of Singapore getai movie 881 embarks on the uphill task of clearing out her living space.

In the midst of one such exercise now, she says: 'I like to keep things like a karung guni (rag-and-bone) man until I can't stand the mess anymore. I just chucked out at least 100 paper bags I thought I would use but never did.'

She adds: 'Then I thank the universe that I have the ability to let go.'

Janice Liong, 32, is also spring-cleaning her bedroom in time for Chinese New Year.

'Some people will say they live in an organised mess, but I like to know where my things are. It's very frustrating to not be able to locate things when you need them,' says the general manager of an interior design firm.

So the self-described 'total shopaholic and impulse buyer' clears out her closet every three months. Of the clothes she can no longer wear, she throws away some and donates the rest to the parking attendant at her mother's office.

There are aesthetic benefits to regular spring-cleaning, of course.

It makes your home nice, neat and welcoming to guests.

Interior designer Norman Yeo of One Stop Concept says: 'As a home owner, you will feel proud to come back to a house that is neat and that you can show off to guests.'

Sarah Tham, design director of interior design firm Cube Associate Design, recommends storage options that conceal the mess easily, such as tall cabinets.

'Building upwards maximises storage space. You can put large, bulky items on the top and keep your oft-accessed belongings at the bottom,' she says.

A spokesman for Swedish furniture giant Ikea says mess piles up because 'many of us spend a significant amount of time at the office, followed by dinner with friends'.

She adds: 'Whatever little time we spend at home is usually invested in rest and relaxation rather than in doing housework.'

But people who are unable to control their mess may be guilty of 'hoarding', defined as the acquisition of, and inability to discard, items even though they appear to have no value. This results in the accumulation of junk - usually newspapers, bags of old clothing and documents.

At its extreme, hoarding is a mental illness stemming from obsessive compulsive disorder, and sufferers have symptoms of indecisiveness, procrastination and avoidance.

Excessive clutter and disorganisation are often symptoms of a bigger health problem, a recent New York Times article noted.

While it's not clear how many people suffer from compulsive hoarding, the report said estimates start at about 1.5 million in the United States.

When hoarding strikes the elderly, their homes can become fire hazards.

An elderly woman in Singapore was burnt to death in a Circuit Road three-room flat in 2006 because her roomful of clutter caught fire when she lit some incense.

A messy home can also give others the impression that you don't have the rest of your life in order.

Says Liong: 'Mess is a reflection of how you operate and think. Messy people can be seen as flighty and even unprofessional.'

As Chinese New Year looms, more people are feeling the need to spring-clean.

The custom is believed to have its origins in the Persian new year, which falls on the first day of spring, and is traditionally when time is set aside for cleaning a house from top to bottom.

Furniture stores are reporting a jump in sales of storage units.

Susan Foo, senior manager of furniture buying at Courts Singapore, says the furniture and electronics retailer usually sees more people snapping up storage furniture like coffee tables and storage beds before festive seasons like Chinese New Year and Hari Raya Haji.

'That's when people invite guests to their homes and they want their guests to leave with a good impression of their homes,' she says.

The spokesman for Ikea notes that when people spring-clean for the new year, 'they look out for smaller storage solutions like boxes or smaller cabinets' due to time constraints during the rush of festivities.

You don't want guests to frown upon your domestic chaos when they visit during Chinese New Year, so it's time to clean up your act.

Urban shows how even the messiest of abodes can be whipped into shape and gives you tips on how to get started.

MY COAST IS FINALLY CLEAR

Hi, my name is Michelle and I'm a hoarder.

Make that a lazy hoarder.

Scrap that - I'm a lazy, sentimental and incorrigible hoarder in denial.

For that, part of my bedroom resembles a scene out of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath in New Orleans.

My main problem is that paper bags full of stuff are strewn all over the floor and form what I like to affectionately call organised piles of memorabilia I have collected over the years.

They include towers of fashion magazines that I subscribe to, shopping bags that I'm too tired to put away after a day of overzealous retail therapy and clothes I dally to put away when they come back from the wash.

My effort in keeping the heaps neat consists of kicking them to the side each time I walk by - or I can't walk by - until they are packed tight as sardines up against my bookcase.

I haven't looked at what's inside them in a while, but while sifting through the mess for this article, I found two cardboard boxes labelled "Europe Souvenirs" - from my holiday in, er, 2003 - a loose stack of work documents I no longer need, and the brand new pair of limited-edition shoes I bought from New York speciality shoe retailer Te Casan last May.

I am aware of how quickly molehills become mountains in my room, but I just can't bear to toss everything out. Contrary to what my mother thinks, I don't label things "souvenirs" just because I'm too lazy to sort through them.

So opening up my messy personal space to Adeline Poh, marketing manager of Australian-owned furniture retailer Howards Storage World, took some lion-heartedness on my part.

When she visited last Friday and took a long, hard look around the room, I bit my lip in embarrassment.

"Where shall we start?" she asked gamely. I pointed to the dresser as I thought it looked the neatest and least daunting. Then she broke it to me in the gentlest way.

"It?s good that you've hung all your earrings on a self-made system," she said, referring to my rudimentary loop system fashioned from jewellery wire, "but it's probably wise to invest in a cosmetic caddy to categorise your stuff."

She recommended I sort my earrings, necklaces and creams into different trays. She said she couldn?t see everything on my dresser at one glance, and if she wanted to reach for a cream among my many, many pots and jars, she may risk toppling them all.

She praised me for having a TV caddy atop my television, but observed there was just one remote - for the standing fan - in it. Where did I put my TV remote controls? Oh, there are two next to my bed. Uh, and another one on my computer table.

It was the same story with my closet. Score, she said, for colour-coding my clothes and categorising them into long dresses, tops and bottoms. Not so hot, however, were the piles of paper bags and worn clothes blocking the racks.

"Take out your shopping as soon as you get home and throw your clothes into the wash if they've been lying in a heap for more than a day," she advised.

As for the Rocky Mountains of knick-knacks in front of my bookcase, she had the following to say:

1. Lumping the mess together is not a solution. It may look sort of tidy as one big heap, but you don't know what's within.

2. Contents of paper bags must be emptied and the bags folded and stored, or they will collect dust.

3. Boxes are bulky and aren't the best storage tools. Invest in mobile storage units with castors that can be added according to your storage needs and moved around easily.

4. If there aren't enough existing storage spaces, invest in some more.

5. There's no point being sentimental - if you've forgotten that something has been stored there, it?s as good as having tossed it out. (So toss it out.)

Once we'd cleared the mess - based on the tips above - from in front of my bookcase, my room looked twice as large. In fact, it must have been.

I could finally see what the last two rows of my bookcase contained - an embarrassing number of soft toys from my childhood.

I even found a book I thought I'd lost and a postcard I?d meant to stick on the wall but never did.

Poh said I should feel calmer every morning now that I don?t have to wake up to a mound of mess.

While she's probably right, I think I'd feel calmer every morning knowing that I no longer have to wake up to be greeted by my mother's question: "So, when are you finally going to clean up your room?"