Top of the Heap : Claremont Man Wins Contest for Messiest Home Office in U.S.

It wasn’t a good day to come visit, Clive Miller acknowledged.

The tax extension he got six months ago was up. And the 56-year-old writer and financial investor was busy at his Claremont office hunting for lost tax records.

That’s the way things go when you work in the messiest home office in America.

Piles of old mail, stacks of books and a hodgepodge of file folders spilling their contents cover a desk and table tops. Somewhere under wobbly towers of old bank statements and investment magazines are a fax machine and a computer printer.

Rickety plastic in and out trays and particle-board shelves scattered around the 300-square-foot office are hopelessly crammed. File cabinet drawers are stuffed full, and loose sheaves of paper overflow the cabinet tops. An old roll-top desk in the corner is barely visible: So much stuff is piled on it that its top no longer rolls.

The mess is enough to put Miller on the top of the heap in a contest to find the nation’s most cluttered work space.

“I feel a little like the Menendez boys: I don’t know whether to feel elation or shame at what I’ve done,” Miller said of the award.

His prize includes computer gear aimed at turning his into a paperless office. And a four-day visit from a clutter control expert who will help clear a spot for Miller to put his winnings.

“I’m worried that four days won’t be enough,” said Miller, poking through papers, boxes and grocery bags full of letters smothering a couch in the center of his office. “I’m looking for a zero-coupon bond. It’s mystifying where I put it.”

The contest, conducted by Home Office Computing magazine, drew hundreds of entries. Besides snapshots of their messy offices, entrants had to send in a 200-word essay explaining how bad things were.

“Mine turned out to be 800 words,” said Miller. When his 19-year-old son, Dhimitri, chided him for the length (“Well, Dad, here’s an example of the problem right here”), Miller reluctantly tossed out 600 words.

The magazine’s editor, Kathy Brower of New York City, said the contest was started a year ago in response to readers’ complaints that home offices lack an amenity found in downtown offices: janitorial service.

Miller heard about the clutter competition last spring on the radio. “It was a little happy note at the end of a newscast,” he recalled. “I called the magazine and they sent me a copy that explained the contest. But of course I put it in here somewhere and couldn’t find it after a while.”

Miller’s pictures portrayed an office so messy that judges telephoned his wife to ask if the place was really that bad.

“I told them, ‘Don’t get me started,’ ” said Sophia Miller, his wife of 31 years. “My husband is kind of super-compulsive. He drives me crazy. I’d like to throw everything away.”

Clutter has been accumulating for about 10 years, acknowledged Miller, a former literature professor at Stanford University whose own writings include one published novel--and bits and pieces of several partially finished manuscripts hidden among the piles.

Much of the mess is reference material for a volume he is writing on the history of Hollywood. But a lot of it--such as the discount coupons for doughnuts that expired four years ago--isn’t.

Disorganized offices owned by two other Los Angeles-area residents were also cited by the magazine.

Aubrey Pilgrim, a computer book author from Long Beach with thousands of computer magazines stacked in his converted two-car garage office, was third runner-up. The 70-year-old retired Lockheed electronics engineer said Tuesday that his place is so cluttered that “after the earthquake I couldn’t tell if I’d had any damage or not.”

Mirk Mirkin, a marketing and meeting planner who lives in Sherman Oaks and admits he has “cluttered up half the house,” won an honorable mention.

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The scope of Miller’s mess was a shock to clutter-removal expert Lisa Kanarek, the Dallas-based author of “101 Home Office Success Secrets” who will visit Claremont next month to clean it.

“The gauge is: If you haven’t looked at something in a year, get rid of it,” Kanarek said Tuesday. “I’ll have help with me when I go there. The goal is to work within Mr. Miller’s organizational style.”

What if she finds Miller has no such style--or no desire to throw anything way?

“If he wants to save everything, we’ll have to sit down and have a long talk,” she said.