Resolving to tidy up is more easily written about than actually executed. It’s always about making better choices from a menu of possible solutions, where getting stressed about starting remains far too powerful. I’ve tried to do this so many times before but it’s become pernicious.
Good and bad choices are not so easily razored like Occam’s, so I’ve been trying to dig my way out of some personal and domestic problems while trying to tidy up.
This diary is simply a reminder that I have to work to tidy my surroundings and begin to schedule more fixes to my life which began with straightening out my passport in December. Side Pocket’s 80th birthday reminded me that I might want to get to that milestone. I have to start somewhere, first steps and all.
“...existential activities have value that ameliorative ones do not...”
The reasons for the “mid-career crisis” are not well understood. Why does job satisfaction suffer during midlife? Judging by my own experience, and by conversations with friends, there are multiple factors: the narrowing of options, the inevitability of regret, and the tyranny of projects successively completed and replaced.
[...]
When we look back at our lives, we conjure—sometimes with relief but other times with regret—the roads not taken. Can philosophy help us come to terms with this?
I think it can. It does so by reframing the predicament of regret. Why do we feel a sense of loss about lives not lived or professions we won’t pursue? We do so, even when things go well, because the values realized by different choices are not the same. Worthwhile activities are worthwhile in different ways.
[...]
Recognize that missing out is unavoidable and don’t try to wish it away. Understand that attachment is a counterweight to regret. Make room for activities with existential worth. And value the process, not just the project or the product.
hbr.org/...
Much like life’s existential joy, the objects need to get pared down or at least I need to get a handle on the tyranny of objects. Some of you (Thanks Chrislove) have had differing opinions on Marie Kondo, and her theories are a bit fascistic, but if you have constrained space, any method seems important in the absence of will, and an ever present ambivalence about utility and sentimentality. I will try it.
Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organising, is an international bestseller. She has been the subject of a movie in Japan and the waiting list for her services, once three months long, is now so extensive she has temporarily stopped accepting more clients.
Her “KonMarie method”, as she calls it in the diminutive and illustration-free volume, encourages a rapid, dramatic and transformative one-time organising event completed methodically and lovingly in no more than six months. It is not an ongoing battle against clutter.
Kondo sees tidying as a cheerful conversation in which anything that doesn’t “spark joy” is to be touched, thanked and ceremonially sent on its way towards a better life elsewhere, where it can discover a more appreciative owner.
www.theguardian.com/…
Spark Joy
1. Focus not on what to chuck, but on what to keep
When we have a clearout, most of us tend to focus on what we’re going to throw away. Kondo’s approach is the opposite: she says we should concentrate instead on what we’re going to keep. The reason is simple: there are so many items of sentimental value, ...that it’s too overwhelming a task to think about what to jettison.
2. Ask yourself of each object: does it spark joy in my heart?
... To work this out, you have to touch the object, and see what response that elicits inside you.
3. Make sure you’re properly committed to having a tidy-out
It’s crucial, says Kondo, that you don’t begin to declutter until you’re properly committed to it.
“Unless you are truly committed, you will most likely become discouraged or distracted before finishing your tidying journey,” she says.
What’s more, sentimental items are in fact the last sort of clutter that you should clear out: Kondo recommends that you “train your tidying muscles by tidying in a specific order, and begin with the categories of items that are typically easier than sentimental items”. You must tidy, she says, by category, not by location or room. “Your tidying should be in this order: clothing, books, papers, komono (miscellany) and then – and only then – will you be ready for your sentimental items.”
4. Never leave stuff in boxes at your parents’ home, or send it to them
5. Make a plan for taking care of the precious early items from your children’s lives
6. Say farewell to precious items that belonged to your dead parents or grandparents
7. Tidy photographs together as a family
www.theguardian.com/...
The real problem will be digital clutter, but that will happen only after the objects get tidied.
"The biggest mistake with digital tidying is focusing too much on what to discard,"
The tally of my digital clutter is both extraordinary, and entirely commonplace. On the internet, we are all hoarders.
To avoid getting overwhelmed with my first tidying task -- organizing the laptop -- Kondo recommended creating two folders:
- one called "Important Documents," and
- another called "Spark Joy," for all my "spark joy items."
"Then delete the rest! Stop keeping komono 'just because,'" she said by email, using a Japanese term for miscellaneous items. Kondo personally moves what matters -- mostly her favorite photos -- to external hard drives, which she then organizes "by date and client." Nothing stays on her laptop. "If you haven't opened that document in three years -- and reading the title doesn't spark joy -- then let it go with gratitude."
[...]
Kondo tries to confront the siege of emails in her own life by organizing new messages into two categories: save and unprocessed. The latter, which includes any emails she wants to read and reply to, are left in her inbox. "When I notice that my inbox is piled up, I try to make time to process them all at once," she says.
Her smartphone habits are even more enviable. "I do a digital purge once a week from my iPhone," she says.
Then again Marie Kondo restricting one to having only thirty books might be a stretch.
And then there’s the pantry … I have a box of Panko I should use, but I can keep the peanut butter.
The next step is a DASH plan for eating without making myself crazy measuring portions. I have to get rid of some things and not purchase specific items and rethink things like salad dressing. This may still be the result of too many months of dollar store food and not enough other foods.
Then again one can always overdo it.
5S is a Japanese framework for shaping and organizing business environments to improve output. It was originally developed alongside Just in Time manufacturing techniques.
There are 5 constituent parts to 5S:
- Seiri (Sort)
- Seiton (Set in order)
- Seiso (Shine)
- Seiketsu (Standardize)
- Shitsuke (Sustain)
www.process.st/...