And it's bloody difficult to declutter. Mark Frauenfelder directs my attention to "11 Myths of De-Cluttering." (I choose to not use the hyphen, 'cause I'm a rebel, man.)
Collectively the myths mostly reduce to "get rid of stuff." I still have boxes of...stuff, just random stuff...that I haven't unpacked since I moved to my current pad in early 2007. There's been some consolidation. The boxes are collections of the last remaining contents of other boxes full of stuff that I either found a place for or disposed of. And there's clearly nothing necessary in those last couple of boxes, because I haven't pulled anything out of them for a year, or even looked in them for months. But I haven't been able to muster the anti-materialistic courage necessary to just toss them into the dumpster, without any sorting or reviewing. I think I'd be able to do it if I got drunk, but I don't do much of that any more and I'm not about to start again just to throw out a couple of boxes.
Of much more symbolic weight, though, is the sheer height of the pile of random crap that surrounds the laptop on my writing desk. This is not a new problem. Of course, the only import that pile of random crap has is the import that I give to it. But, like Gretchen Rubin, I do believe that one's surroundings can have an effect on the interior mindscape. Mine's disorderly enough as it is...wouldn't it be grand to have a more orderly exterior space to serve as contrast and counterweight? Yes, I say. Yes it would.
Which means precisely squat in terms of actually doing anything about it. But I know that such a project is more than tangentially related to achieving greater fulfillment in my creative life, so those boxes and that pile of random crap should be frightened.
1There was going to be a joke...something about my birth via cesarean section accompanied by a box of in utero knickknacks. But I'm too tired to make that work, so I opted for a footnote instead. Hope you enjoyed it.
Collectively the myths mostly reduce to "get rid of stuff." I still have boxes of...stuff, just random stuff...that I haven't unpacked since I moved to my current pad in early 2007. There's been some consolidation. The boxes are collections of the last remaining contents of other boxes full of stuff that I either found a place for or disposed of. And there's clearly nothing necessary in those last couple of boxes, because I haven't pulled anything out of them for a year, or even looked in them for months. But I haven't been able to muster the anti-materialistic courage necessary to just toss them into the dumpster, without any sorting or reviewing. I think I'd be able to do it if I got drunk, but I don't do much of that any more and I'm not about to start again just to throw out a couple of boxes.
Of much more symbolic weight, though, is the sheer height of the pile of random crap that surrounds the laptop on my writing desk. This is not a new problem. Of course, the only import that pile of random crap has is the import that I give to it. But, like Gretchen Rubin, I do believe that one's surroundings can have an effect on the interior mindscape. Mine's disorderly enough as it is...wouldn't it be grand to have a more orderly exterior space to serve as contrast and counterweight? Yes, I say. Yes it would.
Which means precisely squat in terms of actually doing anything about it. But I know that such a project is more than tangentially related to achieving greater fulfillment in my creative life, so those boxes and that pile of random crap should be frightened.
1There was going to be a joke...something about my birth via cesarean section accompanied by a box of in utero knickknacks. But I'm too tired to make that work, so I opted for a footnote instead. Hope you enjoyed it.
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