My walk-in basement pantry, like the rest of my pre-motherhood organization, lay in shambles.

Stacks of plates from my 10-month-old daughter's baptism party two months before jostled for floor space with canned dog food, my husband's beer-making supplies, serving platters, canning jars, feathery miniature Christmas trees I was hiding from our feather-loving cat, and all the overflow food that wouldn't fit into the shallow cabinets in our skinny kitchen.

No longer able to reach the once-orderly pantry's shelves, we had covered the floor with jumbo boxes of cereal, bulk rolls of paper towels, packs of tomato paste, sacks of potatoes, cases of soda and other supplies from our warehouse store.

Upstairs, ancient magazines fought with dog hair for dominance of the kitchen and living room, and toys lurked underfoot on furry floors that hadn't been vacuumed since before the party. I seemed physically incapable of getting dinner on the table before 9 p.m., I hadn't exercised in a year and increasingly I found myself on the verge of tears.

My full-time mom, part-time-work, no-time-for-anything-else juggling act had crashed.

Enter my "family management" makeover by Robyn Coffman, a 34-year-old "certified family management coach" from Prescott, Ariz. She is one of 200 such trainers nationwide promoting a new type of coaching that teaches people how to restore order and harmony in their home lives. Unlike career coaching or life coaching, it focuses on the whole kit and kaboodle.

The makeover takes two to three hours for an initial assessment of problem areas in seven departments -- home and property, food, time and scheduling, finances, family and friends, special events, and personal management -- and a follow-up meeting to discuss strategies to fix those problems. The process costs $199 including a printed multi-page "makeover action plan." Follow-up coaching on anything from cleaning out closets to negotiating better kid cooperation can be purchased on an hourly basis.

There are no trainers in Pittsburgh, but coaches in other parts of the country can do makeovers for local residents by phone and e-mail.

When going through a family management makeover, Ms. Coffman said, many clients first have to break through their mental blocks telling them their goal, whether it's a clean house or kinder kids or a few minutes of peace and quiet by themselves, is too overwhelming a task.

"My job as a coach is to empower you to realize you do have the resources to accomplish this," said Ms, Coffman, who provided the makeover by telephone, e-mail and regular mail. "It's amazing how when you get one corner of your life in order, the rest of your life wants to be in order."

What's different about family management training, according to its supporters, is that it uses common business strategies such as establishing priorities, setting agendas, delegating and bartering to make all facets of family life -- from home care to meal planning to time management to having fun as a family -- work together. After all, many women have experience in an office or other workplace, and running a household is its own full-time job, said Dallas author Kathy Peel, founder and CEO of Family Manager Inc.

"So you really have all these great skills and you come home and apply them," said Ms. Peel, who has written 18 books and numerous magazine articles. "You have to start thinking like a manager."

Ironically, it's the business world that taught many women those skills that now is helping create much of the tension in their family lives, according to home and family experts.

On average, American couples -- whether one or both spouses worked outside the home-- in 2002 worked about 10 more hours a week than they did in 1977, according to the most recent National Study of the Changing Workforce. And while men now spend more time cooking, cleaning and caring for children than they did in 1977, the survey found, women still take most of the responsibility for making sure that work gets done -- and more often than not, do it themselves.

In the past, books and magazine articles pressured women to do housework and childcare better, or faster, or cheaper, said Jean Ferguson Carr, director of women's studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Today, women feel that pressure from every direction.

"Now it's about time management because we're being asked to do too many things with too few resources and far too little time, and there's a lot of pressure to do it all perfectly," said Ms. Ferguson Carr.

Getting it done at all, however, would have been just fine with another of Ms. Coffman's clients, Sara Porras, a mother of three in Chino Valley, Ariz.

In May 2004 -- just three months after her 3 1/2-year-old twin boys were born -- Ms. Porras and her husband, Chris, moved into a new home. Three months after that, Mr. Porras deployed to Iraq for 14 months, reluctantly leaving his wife with a home full of unpacked boxes, a push mower to cut their 1 3/4-acre lawn, and two young babies.

About a month ago, Ms. Porras, who now also has a 7-month-old son, reached her breaking point when the twins scattered dirty laundry and clothes from still-unpacked boxes all over the house. She had no idea what was clean and what was dirty, and ended up washing everything over again.

"I was stuck at home and stuck in my clutter," said Ms. Porras, a 33-year-old former insurance claims adjuster whose husband now patrols the border with Mexico during the week and comes home on weekends. "Everyone was screaming and we were always late and we couldn't find anything and nothing was clean. I felt like I was such a failure because I had done such a good job at work."

Ms. Coffman suggested some small changes Ms. Porras could make right away, such as setting out the twins' clothes the night before and having them dress before they came down for breakfast and tackling the laundry a little bit at a time.

Those little victories helped Ms. Porras break through the mental block that had kept her from working on her clutter. Her sons appreciated the difference, especially after she unpacked the boxes that had been stored in their closet, she said.

"Luke said, 'Mom, I like my new room -- it's new and clean,' " she said.

Trainers such as Ms. Coffman ask clients to fill out a questionnaire about how stressed various parts of their lives make them on a scale of 1 to 5. After stress points are identified, the client is asked to pick three priorities for each department and select six fixes for each department -- three to tackle immediately and three to tackle later.

For me, my stacked-to-the-ceiling basement -- and in particular, my overflowing pantry -- had me on the edge. Other stress points included de-cluttering the house of magazines, mail and paperwork, getting dinner made so we could eat together by 6 p.m., spending time with my husband, creating a filing system for financial information, sending gifts and cards before the occasion rather than weeks late (or never) and finding a way to exercise regularly.

If necessary, set a timer to go off when it's time to start making dinner, Ms. Coffman suggested. Try a "7-minute sprint" with my husband and daughter after dinner and before bedtime to tackle even little bits of large projects, such as opening mail, tossing junk, dusting part of the house, and putting away toys. And in that pantry, she said, just start somewhere.

"What can you get done in 15 minutes?" she asked.

I've gotten the pantry floor cleared and have begun spending a few minutes each morning going over family appointments and obligations to work, opening and filing mail as soon as it arrives, and clearing clutter one pile at a time. While it's still a work in progress, what seemed overwhelming and impossible suddenly seems doable.

At Ms. Peel's urging, I've also started thinking about what kind of person I want my daughter to be when she grows up, and how I want her to remember her childhood. And I've started talking to my husband about fun activities we can do together as a family.

Setting those priorities, Ms. Peel said, helps guide everything else in managing a family -- and to your kids, it's much more important than whether the floors are spotless or the kitchen cupboards are neat.

"They aren't going to remember how clean the house was," she said. "They are going to remember if home was a good place to be and if mom was a fun person to be around."