Univ. of Martha

Martha Stewart's new instructional Web videos promise an upgrade to domestic bliss. Doree Shafrir follows Martha's how-to advice to get organized for the first time in her life.

When Martha Stewart was a teenager in Nutley, New Jersey, she used to babysit for a woman with a very organized linen closet: "She had the most beautiful cupboards all down a long hall, and in the cupboards were all her neatly folded sheets, and towels, dinner napkins, tablecloths," Martha has said. "And I thought then, 'Wow, what a great idea, maybe someday I'll be that organized.'"

Click below to view our gallery of the writer's apartment before and after Martha's Web intervention.

As I watched her say these words—in Organizing, the fifth part of a seven-part series that one may purchase, for $9.95, on the iAmplify Web site, part of Stewart's Martha University series—I realized that this is truly what separates those of us who are born to be decoupagers of tables and throwers of formal dinner parties for 12 from the rest of us.

And so, inspired by the release of the film Julie & Julia, I decided to undertake a similar experiment as the blogger Julie Powell did when she decided to cook the 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days, but on a much smaller scale. Instead of attempting to become Martha Stewart over the course of a year, I would see how much like the doyenne of domesticity I could become in the course of a single afternoon.

I've never been been much of a cleaner; when I was 4 years old, my parents were told during their conference with my nursery-school teacher that everything was going well, except that whenever it was time for cleanup, I was nowhere to be found. It's a pattern that's repeated itself throughout my life, except now I'm really the only one who suffers because of it.

I accumulate things: Tchotchkes, old Polaroid cameras, vintage radios that don't work, stickers, issues of Life magazine from the '50s, costume jewelry, books, bags, shoes. My poor 450-square-foot apartment, where I currently live with my boyfriend, Sam—whom no one would ever mistake for neat either, though to be fair, he owns approximately one-eighth of the amount of things that I do—and our dog, is practically bursting with all of my crap. Sam recently proclaimed that I was not allowed to purchase any more trinkets, and not only that, he was going to start throwing things away.

"Like this! What do you need with this?" he said one day, picking up my ViewFinder.

"But ... but that's my ViewFinder!" I said. "I like it."

"When was the last time you viewed the ViewFinder?" he asked.

Silence.

"Exactly," he said.

So when I found out that Martha Stewart was selling some of her classic instructional videos on iAmplify (a kind of clearinghouse for paid celebrity videos; other offerings include Eckhart Tolle's Secrets of Happiness video and a "Female Sexuality Hypnosis Session" with a Dr. Ava Cadell), I rolled my eyes internally and wondered on how many platforms the woman could think to sell herself. But then, with my household issues at the front of my mind, I got to thinking. Though I like to cook, I am generally not what I would call conversant in the domestic arts—and in that category I include crafting, scrapbooking, flower arranging, children, gardening, and practically everything else that Martha and her empire are obsessed with—and so I've never been a Martha groupie.

But I don't think she's a freak, either. Sometimes I wish I derived more pleasure out of making sure my kitchen table was always clutter-free and that my sheets smelled like lavender. But there are also some fraught, uncomfortable issues that housework brings up for young women in the 21st century: Are we perpetuating archaic gender roles if we pick up our boyfriends' socks, or do we do it and just assume that they'll do the dishes later?