Why are our homes so cluttered?

We’re lazy. We procrastinate. We don’t prioritize.

It is so much more than that, though, according to celebrity interior designer Christopher Lowell.

It’s about fear.

“We are afraid to examine our lives,” Lowell said. “Everywhere around us are clues to who we were, who we think we want to be, who we thought we were but really aren’t. All of that is buried in the stuff that we have around us.”

Now, however, is the perfect time to make a change.

One: You’re stuck inside, trying to stay warm and dry.

Two: You won’t be alone.

Sales of Lowell’s 2005 book, “Seven Layers of Organization,” have increased in the slumping economy as homeowners wait out the housing downturn and gaze inward, aghast, Lowell said.

“People are beginning to look at their homes with their rose-colored glasses off,” Lowell said. “There is a huge movement now to live less conspicuously. It’s time to take the stuff that we no longer connect with, stuff that no longer tells our story accurately today, and get it out of our houses and give it to people who can really use it.”

It’s time to fall back in love with your home and, as Lowell puts it, “pay forward” your junk.

Lowell’s book urges people to develop an intense distaste for clutter through his seven steps, starting with a major purging of unloved, unused items.

His secret is to emotionally detach from old magazines and papers, techno junk, mismatched linens, beauty products, family heirlooms you feel obligated to keep, unwanted gifts, odd-size clothes and obscure kitchen gadgets.

With clutter and fear out of the way, good design is so much easier, Lowell said.

Getting rid of a dining table you never use, for example, could give your home new life.

“Start really living in these rooms that you’ve been walking past because you’ve been saving them for company,” Lowell said. “Turn that room into a multipurpose library.

“This is a great time to be attacking your home. Get your home ready for the future.”

Sarah Jackson: 425-339-3037, sjackson@heraldnet.com