(Minor diversion: I was trying to remember how to spell a word I know for clutter / hodgepodge / knicknacks — “hassarai” — but I couldn’t find it anywhere on line in all the different combos of s’s and z’s and vowels I could think of. I eventually found one variant spelling that led me to the source — a Yiddish word, spelled about eleventy different ways, meaning “garbage, junk, leavings”: chazeray, khazeray, chazerai, chazzerei, etc. Supposedly from khazer, “pig,” from the Hebrew hazzir. Noted here for future reference.)
So Doyce sent me (he claimed there were other folks BCCed) an email about a keen-sounding book on clutter management — not how to store stuff better or more efficiently, but about looking at what you do have and deciding what it means to you, why you have it, why you want to keep it, and how to let go of it.
Ahem.
So anyone who knows Margie and I knows that we are, indeed, pack rats. We rarely throw anything away, and we aren’t good about putting away the things we don’t throw away. I don’t know if it’s some deep-seated insecurity, or laziness, or what, but there it is.
The thing is, we both come from well-organized, tidy households. So it’s definitely not our parents’ fault, if nothing else. And the fact is, we both feel really good when we get things tidied up, and when we get rid of things that we realize we don’t need any more, and see the space that results (which in turn makes it a lot easier to tidy up).
So why don’t we do it more? Again, not sure.
I went through a small exercise on this over the past weekend. We have significant amounts of book shelving up on the loft (indeed, it’s worth noting that most of the home improvement projects — nearly all of them — have been about increasing our storage in one way or another). We’ve compensated for this space by acquiring significant numbers of books (just like adding lanes to a freeway only generates more cars, dropping the speed down to what it was before the project).
We had X amount of space allocated to hardcover fiction books, back when the shelves went up. In the last 12 years, we roughly tripled the number of hardcover books we had. Some were just new books, some were replacements for paperbacks that had worn out (if I have a paperback wearing out, it’s a sign that I can probably justify buying a used hardcover to replace it — and I do replace them). The fact is, that the price differential between paperbacks and hardcovers has dropped a lot over the years, esp. if you look on the discount tables. But I digress.
So anyway, for the last four or five years, the hardcover fiction book space has been largely unusable because the extra books we’d bought that didn’t fit on the shelf just got stacked up in front of what was there. Add in prolonged periods when the shelving itself was blocked because of other projects coming along, and we might as well not have had any of those books in the first place.
Well, the loft has been in pretty good order for a few months now, so, inspired, I went ahead and shuffled a bunch of stuff around, made the space more efficient — and tripled the amount of space allocated to hardcover fiction — which includes room to grow into.
And it felt really neat. Especially when I discovered books I could get rid of (most likely to the local libarary). In a few embarrassing instances, they were duplicates (“huh, thought I’d already bought that one, but couldn’t find it”), but in many cases, they were books that I’d bought at some time in the past, and realize that I’ll never, ever read again (assuming I got around to reading in the first place).
I’ve done this before with paperbacks, too. It actually feels really good, because it’s getting rid of stuff that’s costing, not helping. And someone else is going to benefit from it (one hopes), too.
I need to do something similar with the hardcover non-fiction (of mine), and it’s probably time to take another swing past the paperbacks (of mine).
You’ll notice I keep noting “mine,” even though, of course, what’s mine is Margie’s and vice-versa. But when it comes to books, or even other stuff, I’ve learned (the hard way) that making judgments about what’s “necessary” or “worth keeping” on stuff that I’m not absolutely certain she isn’t invested in is a rather inconsiderate (to say the least) thing to do. I wouldn’t want her making decisions about which graphic novels I’m not going to read again. I shouldn’t be doing the same for her mystery paperbacks.
Ideally, it’s a project we’d do together — but it’s one where both of us have to have the time, energy, and inclination. And, for pack rats, no matter how good it feels afterward, it’s still hard work, which means after a long day of work — or on a weekend when one wants to relax — it’s not at the top of the list of things to do. Which means (for us) it’s something we probably need to try and schedule time toward.
At any rate, yes, the principles laid out in the book Doyce recommends (It’s All Too Much, by Peter Walsh) sound really good, and I should probably look at it, though, in some ways, it’s preaching to the choir. I.e., I know I have “a problem,” and I have a pretty decent idea of what we need to do to reduce our clutter (as does Margie). We need to (to borrow a phrase from another medium) “just do it.”
But maybe not today. 🙂
I’ll say this, and leave the whole thing be:
The approach advocated in the book is the exact opposite of what you’d expect.
To whit: the very last thing you do when dealing with clutter is figure out where it should go. The very first step doesn’t have to do with the clutter at all.
That said: hurray for you! It’s always fun to clear out an area.
((and I sent that email to a dozen folks, at least))
I believe you, I was just poking fun at myself.
I would agree that “where should things go” is the last step. It’s just that’s facilitated if you’ve reduced the cruft around you already — and if you have a relatively rational judgment as to what you’re keeping and why in the first place.
Watching Peter and the people he helps on Clean Sweep gives you a real sense of how little clutter most of the rest of us actually have. The families on the show are very, very bad at getting rid of trash. let alone things they can use.
Peter take the “your excess stuff is holding you back” track, which can be true. A dear friend that we know resembles this remark. Looking forward to the future requires letting go of the past. Or an Julia Morgenstern(also an organizer says) – “Love it (and she really means love it), Use it or Lose it.” This is especially good for separating women from out of date clothes in their closet!
My love of books has always been a challenge to organizing, but I found that the financial strain of being a single income family helped a lot: what I used to buy without thought now gets checked out from the library. Only those which I need to immortalize in my collection get purchased with ‘fun money.’ And I have to prioritize that purchase over other purchases I might want to make.
Of course there are all the OTHER things that need to be organized . . . ..
My wife and I went through this to some extent while preparing to move last May. We’re in a smaller apartment right now while we look for a place to buy (taking advantage of the drop in housing prices), so we put a whole bunch of stuff into storage, including most of our books.
We did a lot of tossing things out as we packed, and a little after we moved (since we ran out of time to actually triage things before tossing them into boxes). We’d already culled most of our books, except the to-read boxes, but we must have donated about 10 grocery bags full of old clothes to Goodwill between the two of us.
My problem now is my comics. I’ve got 5 boxes in storage (2 of which are graphic novels that used to be on a bookshelf at the old place) and 11 in the apartment, and I really need to go through them, put all the stuff I want to get rid of in the same boxes, and make a concerted effort to sell it. Or donate it. Or something.
A couple of clarifications, upon rereading.
1. The book problem — especially in terms of new books (let alone graphic novels) is mostly mine, since I do the book buying (Margie tends to re-read, or use the library). (Though, that said, there are a lot of books on the shelves from both of our pre-marriage days that we both need to decide what we really want from, or why we still have them.)
2. Margie has done some tremendous efforts over the past couple of years in dealing with other areas that are hers — clothes in the closet, for example. I could well do to follow her lead.
Tangentially, I went to the retirement dealie of a department director today. He and his wife got rid of everything in a 6-week period; their house, their stuff, everything. They have a small motorhome or something now and plan to spend their time traveling.
He said; “It all started with thinking about people who lost everything in Katrina. They all said ‘we lost our family photos!’ So we digitized all our photos and then we threw them out. It felt good, so we kept going.”
Fascinating, and inspiring.
Sure, let me digitize all of my books, and my house will look less cluttered. If, by cluttered, you mean almost every horizontal surface has a pile of books.
I wish all my books were in digital form, and I had a next-generation reader to read them with. Something on the order of the PADDs from Star Trek. But I have some pretty obscure books; doubtful they’ll ever be digitized.
Still, I like the idea of keeping bits, not atoms, where it is practical to do so. For one thing, bits can be copied and stored in multiple locations.
I did a contact job organizing the historical archives of The Corky McMillin Companies which is a real estate developer/realty company that started here in Bonita. The man who is the CEO of the company doesn’t like clutter, which in real estate is not easy to avoid. Each year, the company chooses a day that they use as “Spring Cleaning.”
No meetings, no agendas, everyone is every office cleans out their offices/desks. There are boxes for recycling paper and others for things destined for the shredder, everyone dresses casually, and they order pizza for lunch. And whether they want to or not, everyone clean out their “work lives.” Now I grant you, it takes a belief in order to take time out from other activities, but I think it’s worth it.
I’ve always said that even power blackouts have a use in an organization. I always use them to clean my office and throw away stacks of paper.
I really have a desire to digitize a lot more of what I have, in terms of papers and records and the like. I’m not sure I have a decent enough backup process — and I mistrust the longeivity of even the PDF format. Papers from centuries ago are still readable and usable. How long will CD backups of scanned PDF files last.
Similarly, while there would be some big conveniences to digitized books — I don’t trust them yet (old fogey curmudgeon that I am). How are they backed up? Who really owns them? How long can I read them? How do I loan them to friends? And if I misplace my current book, I probably have two or three others I’m in the middle of reading. If I misplace my Kindle … gah!
There’s potential there. I’m just not … yet … comfortable with it.