My mother was a Virgo. You should have seen her drawers. If she asked you to get something for her, she’d say, “It’s in my bureau in the third drawer on the left, on the right-hand side of the drawer, in the back, at the bottom of the stack.”

And she’d be dead-on. I’m an Aquarius. Oh, I’m not saying we’re the slobs of the zodiac. I mean, I put things away in my drawers — I just don’t know what things are in which drawers. Once, when I was about 13, my mother threatened to turn all my drawers upside down on the floor of my bedroom to teach me to keep them tidy. Thankfully, she didn’t actually do it. I never really picked up my mother’s knack for getting organized. But one thing she was able to teach me was to throw things out.

“If you don’t know what to do with it, or where to put it, or why you ever bought it in the first place, or if looking at it depresses you, throw it out,” she’d say. “Never keep anything that makes you feel heavy or weighs you down.”

As it turns out, my mom was right about a lot of things, and this was one of them. And whenever she asked any of us to throw things out, she meant for us to do it then, not later. We called it her “Do it now or oh brother!” mood.

So it’s not surprising that when I coach people, I always ask them to throw things out. But not just a few things. At the end of the second or third session, I ask everyone I work with to go home and throw out 50 things. “And by the way” — I usually look stern here — “magazines and catalogs count as only one thing. You can throw out a hundred of them, but they count as only one.” People usually stare at me with horror. “But I just went through my closets,” they’ll say, “and I’ve already thrown out everything I can. Forget it.”

But I don’t forget it. In fact, I not only ask them to throw out 50 things but also ask them to make a list of what they’re throwing out, so they can look at it later and actually feel lighter. Here’s why: When you start throwing out a lot of physical clutter and you get on a roll, a new urge kicks in — the desire to clear out all the clutter in your mind. That’s when you get into the really good stuff. It’s the mental clutter that drags you down and holds you back, that keeps you from stepping into the next great segment of your life — the one that’s filled with promise, joy, adventure, and, best of all, fulfillment. You can’t move forward into the future when you’re constantly sucked back into the past.

It’s not that hard to get into the swing of throwing things away. Try it. You’ve had that single earring for years, and you keep hoping the other one will show up. It won’t. Throw it away. You’ve got 12 lipsticks in the exact same shade that you never wear anymore. Toss ’em. Then there’s that drawer in the kitchen. You know that drawer. There are old receipts in there from years ago; there’s a bunch of change; there are dried-up tubes of Krazy Glue. And you know what else is in there? Keys. Keys that haven’t opened anything in decades. Throw them out. Throw it all out.