If your mutual fund portfolio hasn’t been performing as well as you think it should and you’re not sure why, it might be time for a bit of spring cleaning.

A cluttered investment lineup is inefficient at best and costly at worst; by identifying overlapping holdings and gaps in your asset allocation plan, you may be able to cut your expenses and boost your total return. If your mutual fund garage needs a clean sweep, here’s a checklist of 10 things to consider:

1. What’s your goal, and are you on track to reach it? Everybody’s got dreams, but we don’t always articulate them when we’re investing, which financial planners say is a big mistake. Identify your goals — saving for retirement, a college education or your dream home — figure out how long it will take and how much you’ll need to achieve them and set up individual accounts for each. Keep your eye on the prize by regularly checking your progress. If you’re not on target, you might have to invest more or take on more risk.

Too often people invest first and think about why later, or not at all, said Percy E. Bolton, a financial planner in Pasadena, Calif. "Sometimes it’s like you have to be a psychologist ... you have to discover people’s goals," Bolton said. "If an account has no goal, you don’t know what you’re working toward. So when you go to invest, anything will do, and you’re left just hoping it will do OK."

2. Is your portfolio diversified? You may hold a lot of funds, but that doesn’t mean all your eggs aren’t in one basket. Planners say people often pile into the types of funds that have worked well for them in the past, or whatever they think will bring the highest return, and wind up short in other areas, like fixed income, which can provide important protection in down markets. A better strategy is to own a bit of everything.

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"Your chances of picking the best-performing asset class every year is nil, so therefore you have to spread out your risk," said Paula Chauncey, a financial planner with Etre LLC in Boston. "Over-concentration in any one asset class ... is extremely risky."

3. Is your asset allocation out of whack? Once you’ve figured out the appropriate asset allocation for your goals, make sure it stays in balance. Check on how 2005’s performance affected your holdings; if you are 5 percent to 10 percent outside your targets for each asset class, make adjustments. This is something you should do no more often than once a year.

4. Have you been tax-smart about what you hold where? Key to an organized portfolio is making sure your assets are tucked away in the right buckets. This is determined by the capital growth and income profile of the asset. For example, you wouldn’t want to hold bonds in a taxable account because they throw off income. On the other hand, a fund that invests in growth stocks would be fine for a taxable account, because it will generate little to no income.

5. Is your level of risk appropriate? If you’ve had or expect a change in your circumstances or goals, such as the birth of a child, a marriage or divorce, a new business venture or a pending retirement, the asset allocation choices you made several years ago may no longer be valid.

6. Can you match any big losers with big winners for tax-free harvesting of profits? Suppose one of your mutual funds is down 20 percent from where you started. That hurts, but how can you use those losses to your advantage? Look for investments that have done well, take an offsetting amount of profits, match them against your losses and walk away with tax-free gains. Selling something that’s working may feel counterintuitive, but fear not: You can buy it back! The idea is to keep as much of your gains as possible.

7. Is it time to reassess any of your funds? If you own a mutual fund that has raised expenses, changed managers, shifted its strategy, been merged into another fund or been acquired by another company, it may be time to say so long. It’s particularly important to do this checkup if you can’t remember why you bought the fund.

"The greatest mistake is inertia," Bolton said. "We’ve seen individuals in funds that haven’t made money in 10 years. But it’s very hard to sell something if you don’t know what it was supposed to do for you in the first place."

8. Are your fund managers earning their keep? Active funds aren’t cheap, in part because you’re paying for the expertise of the managers making the investment decisions. Check the returns on your active funds against their corresponding indexes and the average performance of their peers to see if your managers are worth the premiums you’re paying.

9. Does your portfolio have sufficient inflation protection? If you’re not careful, inflation will quietly erode your wealth over time. Vehicles such as Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or TIPS, real estate investment trusts, or REITs, growth stocks and even your home can act as a hedge. "Inflation seems like a theoretical construct," Chauncey said. "But with any goal that’s in the future, it is absolutely critical to think about how much additional you need to save or make to offset the impact of inflation."

10. And what is all this costing you? After you paid everybody who has their hands in your portfolio — Uncle Sam, your adviser, the managers of your funds and anyone else who charged you a fee — what was your total return for 2005? If you’ve been paying for professional help, think about what your adviser has done for you lately and decide whether his or her assistance is worth it to you.