"Clean House," which airs Wednesday on Style Network, goes to homes submerged in clutter and helps the residents dig out, clear out and transform their lives. That's a simple enough mission statement, but the reality is a lot more complicated.

"We're hunting and gathering," says Allen Lee Haff, who's in charge of the yard sale at the center of each episode, "and we accumulate these things, and we lose ourselves in them. Then when you clean the slate, you can see, 'That wasn't me, after all.' You can reinvent yourself."

In each episode, host Niecy Nash ("Reno 911," "The Bernie Mac Show") guides the homeowners through what is inevitably a disaster area and begins to sort out -- with the help of Haff, organizer Linda Koopersmith (author of "The Beverly Hills Organizer's Home Organizing Bible") and designer Mark Brunetz -- just what stays and what goes.

Inevitably, this process turns into a battle of wills, as people cling desperately to the knick-knacks, collections, outdated clothing and just plain junk that they feel define their identity.

"People hold onto things for a variety of reasons," Nash says, "all of which are valid to the individual. I have clients who, when their mother passed away, they feel that if they don't keep their mother's clutter on top of their stuff, it's like getting rid of their mom, getting rid of their memories.

"It's a lot of getting to the root of why people do what they do and delivering them from it. If you don't, you'll just clean it up, and it'll be like putting a Band-Aid on cancer. You'll come back with a camera two, three weeks later, and it'll be like it was before."

While these psychodramas are part of every episode, they're particularly obvious in the Jan. 25 episode, when the crew visits the San Fernando Valley home of Marc and Jill Fink.

While the clutter -- and the Astroturf-green carpet beneath it -- is readily apparent, it's only one issue that the couple is working on. When not commenting on his wife's behavior, Marc Fink even offers some direction to Nash.

"This is unusual," Nash says. "I haven't seen it before either. And before it's all said and done, he will have never seen a woman like me, because he's used to dealing with his wife. A couple more days, we'll work it out.

"Acceptance is the first part of it, and up to this point, he hasn't owned that he's controlling. It's been a thread that everybody else has seen unravel, but he hasn't owned it yet. It's a process. We'll get there. There's always a plan.

"Ultimately, what do we do is come in and jumpstart situations. We're not the entire remedy to it all, because after we pick up all the clutter on the floor, after Allen sells it all, after we make the house fabulous, they're still going to be who they are at the core. What you going to do about that?"

"The issues that we deal with go far deeper than a makeover," Brunetz says. "We're a nation of clutter. Unfortunately, in our case, or fortunately, whatever people are dealing with, they manifest into their environment."

Koopersmith feels that it's often a case of opening eyes. "People truly want to be organized, in their core, or they wouldn't have us here. But people in general, they shut down and they don't see it. It's like this kitchen we're working on. It's so dirty. A part of the psyche of the person just glosses over it.

"It's like intervention, when you finally have an organizer in or you have a show in. It's like, 'Help, I give up, somebody save me.' Then we do that."

As of yet, the show hasn't traveled outside the Los Angeles area -- in fact, a couple of previous families stopped by the Fink house, because it wasn't far from their homes -- but Nash isn't sure she's ready to see what lies under the beds and behind the couches of the rest of America.

"I'm not even ready," she says. "I'm not even ready for Tennessee at all."

But after Los Angeles, Nashville might seem tame.

"In our very first house," Nash says, "I found a man who had a collection of transvestite baby dolls in the top of his closet. I had a 13-year-old boy that had about 17 empty bottles of lotion underneath his bed. I have had somebody that just went to some type of a sexual pleasure palace and had everything out in the room everywhere.

"Anything that is sexually deviant and legal all the way to the illegal is there. You just want to say, 'You did know we were coming, right?' I don't know, but that's how people do."

And if homeowners don't, in the end, like the revamped and redecorated dwelling, that's OK with Nash.

"I feel like I did my part. I lay my head down, and I sleep good every night. I have no regrets about one makeover, none at all. I'm looking at all the mayhem and foolishness I delivered you from. Now, if you don't like it, you go the other half of the way yourself.

"But don't play the blame game, because I don't like it."