Thank you! Do you recommend that instead of Simple Sidebars?

Ok you can use widget logic for that. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widget-logic/. This will add a field to all your widgets. Expand the widget you want to use on the home page and add the following text in the Widget logic field.
is_home()

Yes but I want to do that only on the homepage.

Sorry, I might not be explaining it well either. Here’s the eleven40 demo from studio press: http://demo.studiopress.com/eleven40/

See how the About Me is id=”sidebar”

But Archives is id=”sidebar-alt”

I want to put a custom widget in id=”sidebar-alt” – the top left

I’m sorry Bonnie, I’m not trying to be difficult but I still don’t understand the layout you’d like. Is it primary sidebar – secondary sidebar – content?

Brian, it’s sidebar-content-sidebar. But eleven40 displays it like this:

secondary sidebar | Content | primary sidebar

so in your example above, my test shows the new area on the top right, and i want it on the top left.

Bonnie you want content-sidebar-sidebar?

Oh…. Yeah I knew that. Sorry I didn’t think to ask you that. I didn’t see how you had it set-up so I didn’t think of it. Glad you got it worked out 🙂