Simplify Before You Organize
Philosophy May 9th, 2008As we prepare to move (yet again), we’re faced with the same question we always ask: what should we do with all our stuff? Despite paring down each time we move, we as human beings (or maybe more so as Americans) just tend to accumulate stuff. It comes in through your mailbox, in grocery and shopping bags, and via all those many packages from Amazon (hey, free shipping!).
I recently took an airplane-ride-skim of a little book called 30 Days to a Simpler Life. It’s about ten years old, but the advice was largely still relevant. One of my favorite takeaways was to
Simplify before you organize
It makes perfect sense when you read it, but it’s easy to work quite differently. Whether you’re looking at too many shoes in your closet, projects scattered around the office table, or even todos that are rolling around in your head, the tendency might be to think “okay, I need to put all this in a nicely structured system, and then I can decide what to do with it all.”
wrong.
Instead, whip through whatever mess you have and mercilessly delete things. Delete might mean throwing it in the garbage, recycling it, giving it away, or crossing it off your mental list before it ever sees the light of your GTD app. In the end you’ll spend less time organizing, and you’ll buy less stuff to organize with.
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Your post came at the perfect time. Just started to find myself organizing my excess…maybe I can try and eliminate instead!
One thing I have found is being merciless in clearing things out is often the best way to have a paradigm shift in terms of the amount of stuff that is around. I often used to think the world would end if I got rid of certain things. The reality is though that if you don’t make a step change (ie reduction) in ’stuff’ the clarity (and relief) you seek will not come.
A cluttered desk or cupboard is still cluttered if a large amount of unmanageable stuff remains after a purge. You want to be able to relax when you see the space you have cleared not tense up again.
I also find that if you want a momento of something you are thinking of throwing out, photograph it or scan it into your computer. You can then label the file and use the search facilities on your machine to locate it later. I have a folder for such items and review it from time-to-time. This can include nice cards or important letters that you don’t want to lose but that you may not need to be physically around.