Board games and puzzles teeter over the hamster's cage. A green metal desk spills toys and papers like a jackknifed truck in what should be the dining room. Upstairs, a computer shoots wires like kudzu around her bedroom.

Lowe's home convulses with clutter. The chaotic accumulation of stuff is more than a quirk in her otherwise orderly life as a software engineer.

Most friends have never visited her apartment, and she lives in fear someone might drop by. Worse yet, her daughter Elphey, 12, is developing the same unkempt habits.

To many observers, clutter reflects the mind-set of the modern household - overburdened, disorganized and compulsive. To others, clutter is a broader symbol of a ravenous culture dependent on easy credit, piling up debt and consuming a lion's share of the world's resources without considering the consequences.

"People's homes are a reflection of their lives," says Los Angeles psychologist and organizational consultant Peter Walsh. "It is no accident that people have a huge weight problem in this country, and clutter is the same thing. Homes are an orgy of consumption."

The obesity analogy isn't a joke. While personal spending drives much of the U.S. economy, the resulting clutter from all that shopping is so pervasive that some researchers wonder whether it might have a deeper, biological component, similar to overeating.

Modern humans developed more than 100,000 years ago as hunters and gatherers living in fundamentally harsher circumstances. Today, we are surrounded by abundance, but our bodies have remained genetically programmed to eat everything in sight and store calories to survive winter, drought and famine. To some nutrition experts, it's a primary reason two-thirds of Americans are overweight.

Similarly, our forebears saved anything that could be materially useful because they had to make everything from scratch, whether it was flaking a sharp edge on a stone tool, or chasing down animals for meat and hides. So to want more and to keep it is fundamentally human.

Clues to how simply most people lived as recently as 150 years ago can be found in wills and other archived documents, says Philadelphia design critic Thomas Hine.

Clutter emerged alongside industrial specialization and mass production in the 19th century, and it was then that the biological need to save everything morphed into a desire to acquire.

And the opportunities to acquire have only skyrocketed. The old corner store once stocked fewer than 1,000 items. Today, a Wal-Mart Supercenter covers a quarter-million square feet - that's nearly six acres - and carries 130,000 products.

If you can't make it to the store, merchandisers will bring clutter to your threshold. Online, 49 million people order $7 billion in merchandise annually from Amazon.com. EBay auctioned possessions worth $34.2 billion last year.

Yet scientists have difficulty quantifying clutter. It is a private problem that most people - like Lowe - sweep under the bed and shove behind closed doors.

So they indirectly examine it through other indicators. It's the scientific equivalent of peering through your neighbor's windows - shadowy, but tantalizing.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average household size has declined to 2.61 persons, while the average dwelling has doubled since the 1950s to 2,250 square feet.

On cable television, at least three reality shows are devoted to clutter management. On the Learning Channel, "Clean Sweep" employs psychologist Walsh; it has filmed more than 200 episodes unloading people's junk.

"We have this deep desire to have stuff," Hine says. "The whole industrial system is geared to help us acquire it. But it has never really addressed the issue of letting go once we're tired of it."

"Clutter keeps people from living in the present," Walsh says. "They hold onto stuff like their kids' old clothing as a way of holding onto the past. Or they keep things they think they might need someday as a way to control the future."

"When somebody calls an organizer, they are at their wits' end," says Sheila Delson, a professional organizer in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and president of the national study group on disorganization. "They have to face the entanglement of what this stuff means to them and why they are keeping it."

"I describe our decorating style as ‘recently ransacked,' " Lowe tells her. "I'd be appalled if someone were to ring the doorbell.

"I'd like to get organized and decorate with new furniture. But what I really want is to get rid of these shame feelings," she says, referring to the embarrassment of her household clutter that prevents her from entertaining more often.

"But she doesn't remember a time when she was neat. She says her mother is this way and now her daughter is this way. So there is a cycle that we need to break."

LaFrance and assistant Kymberly Raw arrive at Lowe's apartment bearing a document shredder, garbage bags, empty boxes and files. The purge will require three consecutive August weekends with Lowe doing "homework" on closets and junk piles during the week.

They discuss clutter "hot spots" that Lowe would attack on her own - especially her bedroom closet that is so overstuffed that the door won't close.

"I can't wear a lot of what's in there," Lowe says. "But I could be a size 6 again with fewer desserts and more exercise. I paid money for those clothes."

An entire afternoon is reserved for Elphey's room. At 12, her Lil' Bratz dolls mingle with teenage hip-hugger fashions that cascade in knee-deep waves from her bunk bed across the floor.

"OK, here's what stays," Elphey says with a flip of her blonde hair. "Anything new. Anything with monkeys. Anything Winnie the Pooh. And the desk stays, no matter what."

She has plastered the monster desk with stickers supplied by her father, who lives out-of-state. LaFrance offers to move it upstairs from the dining area and she even measures a corner of the bedroom. But it's obvious the room is too small. The desk is ticketed for the trash bin.

Elphey retreats to her top bunk and pulls a leopard-print blanket over her head. Her mother stands on the bottom bunk and, resting her chin on the top mattress, speaks quietly to the curled shape.

After several minutes, Lowe starts back downstairs. Elphey slams her bedroom door with such force that the bannister shivers. Her mother winces.

The chief culprit: Easy money. Americans use 1.2 billion credit cards and carry an average total of $8,562 in consumer debt. Fifteen percent of households have home equity loans and credit lines, too.

LaFrance counsels Lowe and other clients that paying cash makes purchases more meaningful. "With plastic, you don't feel like you're spending," she says. "It has changed our idea of what is essential."

A surprising villain: Technology. Just consider how the entertainment industry has lurched from record players to 8-tracks, cassette tapes, CDs, VCRs, DVDs and now digital downloads.

One area where technology should reduce clutter is documents, but the paperless office has not materialized. Lowe and LaFrance agree to combine file boxes and digital storage, and they banish the file cabinet along with the desk.

Lowe is more willing to chuck the ingredients of bygone relationships - wine, tea and tequila - to make room for Asian foods she shares with her new love, Gregg, who is of Japanese descent.

By September, Lowe's apartment is ready for company. Elphey has donated three huge trash bags of clothing. Together, she and her mother have hauled out dozens of bags and boxes. Changing their lifestyle will take longer.

"TV shows like ‘Clean Sweep' make organizing look like a quick and fairly easy process," LaFrance says. "But if Karen doesn't learn new skills, it will be this way again within a year."

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