Imagine wanting to watch your big flat-screen TV but not being able to find it in your house. That's what happened to astronaut Leroy Chiao during his stay on the way-too-cluttered International Space Station. He searched for the desk-sized screen without success.

"Something that big, we ought to have been able to find," he says. "But we just couldn't." Nor could anyone else, as far as he knows.

There's so much stuff on the station that it blocks access to storage cabinets, fills up rooms and makes losing objects easy. And the overflow is about to get worse. NASA plans to have space shuttle Discovery drop off 5,000 pounds of supplies next week. The shuttle will haul items back but will leave behind more than it takes away.

The stuff is starting to squeeze out the crew of the station, an international research facility orbiting 200-plus miles above the Earth that has as much room as an average three-bedroom home.