ORDER BY Earliest Date In A Row

Hi,

I have a table (SQL Server 2000) with several date columns in it, all of
which are individually NULLable, but in any one row, not all the dates can
be NULL.

I want a query which ORDERs BY the earliest date it finds in each row. I'm
guessing I have to do this in two steps:

STEP 1
Using a UDF, find the earliest date and stick it in a new calculated
column "earliest date"

STEP 2
ORDER BY this UDF-created column

If this is the right way to go about this, is there a simple SQL way of
determining which is the lowest of several dates? (ie of doing STEP 1).

Or am I looking at this the wrong way, and missing an easy *one-step* way of
getting what I want?

TIA,

JON