I’m not much of one for buying fancy systems and gadgets that promise to help me get organized or to clean my house faster, better and more efficiently. Oh, sure, I bought Fly Lady’s book, and it’s not only helping me recognize self-defeating cleaning patterns, but motivating me to look at de-cluttering and chores in a whole new, happier light.

Still, sometimes I can’t resist buying something that seems to perfectly suited to an organizational or cleaning dilemma. This week, I bought not one but two such items. Already, I feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth (and them some) and I wonder how on earth I lived without them so long.

Since I’ve been working on cleaning my walk-in closet, which was so cluttered it was no longer really a walk-in, and so disorganized it shouldn’t have been called a closet. The biggest problem, besides having too many clothes? Having too many shoes! (Hey, I’m a woman. But, in all honesty, not all of the shoes were mine.) We didn’t have a good place to put shoes, and so — if they made it back to the closet at all — they mostly wound up in a heap on the floor. Well, no more!

For a mere $19.99 I picked up a commercial-grade chrome 3-rack shoe tree that holds a whopping 18 pairs of shoes… including my husband’s size 13E boats! This baby takes up all of 2 feet on the floor, which means I’ve not only got more room in my closet, but since the thing spins I can see all of my shoes without having to rummage around. It’s heavily weighted, so tipping’s not a problem, and it took less than 5 minutes to assemble.

I may just have to buy a second one — the price is so good and the value is immeasurable!

The other big problem is, well, really a little problem: my kitten Pippin. As you may have read here, Pippin seldom strays more than 3 feet from me. At night he used to “do his business” in a corner of my bedroom. Then I got smart and put in a litter box which, naturally, has turned into an eyesore, not to mention it’s meant having litter strewn all over my bedroom floor.

So I needed a different litter box and, being the lazy kind of cat owner that I am, I wanted one that made cleaning the thing less of a disgusting chore. I really wanted one of those fancy self-cleaning litter boxes, but they’re so expensive and usually have so-so product reviews.

Then I ran across one which, although not entirely self-cleaning, makes scooping litter as easy as rolling a ball. Literally. You turn this litter box over, it sifts the litter and removes the clumps, then you set the thing right-side up again. (It’s ingeniously designed so that litter does not go spilling everywhere.) What happens to the poop? Well, it gets deposited in a nice little drawer that you pull out and dump. That’s all there is to it.

I’ve got to say, strange as it sounds, the first time I spun the thing and pulled out a drawer full of cat litter, you’d have thought it was Christmas. I was so excited — who knew cleaning a litter box could be so easy? And at $32.99, it, too, is well worth it. I may very well replace the other two litter boxes in our house with this now that I know what a wonder it is!

Now, naturally, since I’ve spent money and brought in more clutter I need to make money and get rid of some clutter. So I boxed up some of my old paperbacks and listed them on eBay as a Lot of 59 Paperback fiction books. If you’re looking to stock your library shelves, be sure to check out my auction. Because, after all, you can’t spend all of your time reading my blog.