Cluttered.

That’s the impression that the new House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had when he checked out the spacious Capitol office suite he inherited from Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

“He’s very neat,” said Boehner’s press secretary, Kevin A. Madden, one of only three DeLay leadership staffers who became part of the Boehner operation.

It’s way too early to say how the Boehner era as majority leader will differ substantively from the years before DeLay was forced to step down in the wake of his indictment on Texas charges of campaign money laundering.

But on the style front, we can bring you these developments. With an eye toward reducing clutter, Boehner had the desks in the front office, filled with five in the DeLay reign, reduced to three. Last week, Boehner also changed to a standard-issue Capitol blue carpet from a blah brownish floor covering.

In his personal office, Boehner kept DeLay’s furnishings and carpet. He just moved the furniture around to make it more open.

Madden works in a windowless warren. He switched from using a desk to a table, on Boehner’s suggestion.

Meet the new Boehner leadership team:

• Chief of Staff Paula Nowakowski, who was the staff director for the House Education and the Workforce Committee. Boehner vacated the chairmanship of that committee to move up to majority leader.

• David Schnittger is the new deputy chief of staff. He moved over from being chief of staff in Boehner’s personal office.

• In a change in how the majority leader’s office is structured, Greg Maurer becomes the director of member services. Under DeLay, those duties — liaisoning with lawmakers, legislative coalitions and interest groups — were handled by a deputy chief of staff.

• Kevin Smith will be the majority leader’s communications director. Smith had the same title at the Education and the Workforce Committee.

Madden quit the DeLay operation on a Thursday but a few days later ended up back in the office after getting a call from Schnittger. Everything clicked, and Madden returned to reprise his role under a new boss.

Madden is the chief spokesman, while Smith deals with communications strategy and speech writing.

Other DeLay holdovers are Anne Thorsen, the deputy floor director, and Matt Wolf, floor assistant.

Boehner made his pen-and-pad debut Tuesday.

DeLay had set ground rules for his briefings — he asked that only legislative topics be discussed and, for the most part, the reporters complied. To DeLay’s credit, he kept up with his regular pen-and-pad sessions until the end.

On Tuesday, Boehner, for the time being not controversial, did not try to limit the agenda. Boehner, Madden said, has a “greater appetite for engagement” with the press than DeLay.

Toward that end, there is the possibility that Boehner may have regularly scheduled televised briefings with the Capitol press corps. In the beginning of his tenure a dozen years ago, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) allowed cameras at his briefings. Gingrich eventually dropped the televised sessions because he was committing too much news on camera.

DeLay’s travails earned Madden a good reputation for handling crisis communications. Madden’s best tip for the beleaguered: “Get your side of the story out there first, and personalize your defense.”

Sweet is the Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it