Not my usual topic, but I've got a ton of it in my house and home office. I have filed away a lot of stuff that is no longer useful or relevant anymore and I'm resisting going through the files and dumping about 2/3rds of it. And then there are my multiple desks and surfaces and filing trays with unsorted piles of miscellaneous stuff that I haven't figured out what to do with or know is important but haven't taken the time to deal with. So, all the time I have the problem of not being able to find things quickly. An article I read today called simply Clutter 1 by Sally Shannon points out 3 compelling reasons to get rid of clutter:
Maybe the reason I'm able to talk about my clutter is that this morning I had had enough of the clutter in my bedroom and spent about 45 minutes getting rid of things and putting them away. Both methods work. With that task out of the way other possibilities beckon...
- We don’t trust our own resourcefulness. Not only will we find it (on the Internet, at the library, calling content experts…) when we need it, but we will have the most current iteration!
- If what we need is buried in or hidden by our clutter, what difference will it make if we have it when we need it? We can’t find it. It’s taking up space and wasting our time looking for it.
- Or even better, we don’t even remember that we have it. Then, as fate would have it, shortly after an event or circumstance or problem, we stumble on something and think - “Now, I could have used that last week/month….”