Analysis of Discarding and Keeping
- Pain Potentially Consequential of Discarding Clutter
- Cost to Repurchase something I discard — Repurchasing something I discard rarely happens. Additionally, the cost of storing and transporting something is probably equivalent the cost of repurchasing but discarding it doesn’t have any of the psychological baggage effects. TRUE!
- Time to refind the item to repurchase if feel need it after discarding the item. – This is probably equivalent to finding the item amongst heaps of clutter, but true some items cannot be found but some items that discard, you don’t want to ever find again!
- Fear of discarding something unpleasant will cause me to repeat that unpleasant experience. — This is the “vacuum” idea that if I discard the flyers from Los Angeles rubbish apartments, or psychology meetings, or the like, I will then repeat those to “fill the void” of that negative space. This idea is that if I keep the unpleasant reminder, it won’t happen again. To some extent this may be true, but it would be very painful to keep and so many unpleasant reminders that you dont’ get away from the spaces that caused the unpleasantness and make pleasant memories.
- Erroneous thought that discarding something may discard a “part of me”. – This is unlikely because I put so much scrutiny into discarding items and it is illogical because some random book doesn’t define my identity. True!
- Pain Consequential of Keeping Clutter
- Physically trapped — can’t move as easily
- COST — cost of storage of keeping clutter and the cost of moving vans or even cars of moving clutter is abominable and gross.
- Overwhelm — massive stress simply from keeping track of all the clutter and sorting it and storing it and transporting it! It’s a massive headache and overwhelming source of pain!
- Doubt Self — Yes, keeping so many clutter belongings does cause self-doubt because you start to become uncertain if those past bits of rubbish are “me”, when of course they are not. If I pick up a book that turns out to be absolute rubbish, I am not that book.
- Anxiety and stress of keeping all the stuff.
- My digital files go neglected — THIS IS THE BIGGEST Incentive for eliminating clutter. I live in my computer. I’ve written a ton and I study and take tons of notes and almost everything is digital for me. If I have a ton of material space clutter, my digital files naturally (because of their being a constant amount of time in the universe) go
OTHER TIPS FOR ACHIEVING CLEANLINESS AND SPACE.
- Clutter is a vile enemy; treat it as such. Do not just dive into clutter. You will be bombarded and assaulted by myriad items, memoirs, things that you had forgotten about or neglected. Then what happens is the clutter infects one conscience and causes worry, overwhelm, depression, and anxiety. This sounds a bit inflated, but the negative consequence to treating clutter “lightly” is accurate. NEVER EVER Just plan on “burrowing through clutter” without a plan without premeditation, just “hoping to find stuff”. Always have a plan. Your plan could be to “move stuff around and examine what is there, get scope and then close it up” or to “deliberately take action and eliminate or sort specific items that you already know are there”.
- In other words: the clutter is not a sandbox; it’s not your friend; it’s not a toy; and it will eat you alive if you attempt to lightly mess with it.
- Wouldn’t you agree that there exist some tasks in which you must have preparations before? When baking a very decadent meal you wouldn’t just randomly open the fridge and try to work with the items, right? You’ prepare adn read up and envision what you’d need. Using a better metaphor, when demolishing a building to then build up something much sturdier and better, you wouldn’t just approach it with a pickaxe and dynomite. Of coure not, you have to take very mathematically calculated measurements to properly demolish a building (eliminate clutter). Don’t misinterpret that metaphor. ”Demolishing clutter” does not in any way imply the necesity of “building something new in it’s place”. When doing a road trip, you “could” simply get in vehicle and step on gas but you would likely run into countless obstacles such as deciding which roads are optimal given conditions time, scenery, where you will stop and rest, etc. The same is true for eliminating clutter, you “could” just dive into it like an absolute buffoon, but getting the goals of clutter achieved that you want to achieve will take probably 50 times as long as if you premeditated and planned out exactly what you will do.
- The best thing to do, therefore, the best approach one must take is to envision what you want to do with the clutter and ONLY ALWAYS ONLY approach the actual physical clutter (make visual and or kinesthetic contact with it) when you have a premeditated not only what is there, but more importantly, exactly what you will do with the items (the books, the old papers, the clothes, the bags, the individual belongings). In other words, here’s a perfect example: I recently tackled an enormous amount of “clothes clutter”. I realized I had 4 great collared long-sleeve shirts that I had already wanted and worked and were mine, so I knew I had a collected and concise (This is important because it cannot be sprawled and amorphorous) piel of old rubbish, ugly, idiotic shirts.
- I knew that I could quickly go through those and feel delightful after having eliminated much of them afterwards because:
- 1) I knew exactly how much I was working with (it was roughly 8-9 pieces of clothing wrapped in cleaning wrapper all hanging up). Work with a predefined subset of clutter or else get buried in the avalanche of clutter hell.
- 2) I knew exactly where it was located. Often you find things you want to discard or sort, scattered, then in the search process your unravel more cans of worms which discombulates your nice clean crisp sorting and eliminating process.
- 3) I knew where each item would go. Shirts that I discarded would go in a huge garbage bag to be sent to charity and shirts I was uncertain about would go in a certain pile and shirts I wanted to keep would go in this pile and those piles would be stored accordingly. This one is essential. This is the most crucial component of eliminating clutter because you have to have “an outlet” for every belonging you encounter. If, for example, you sort out and discard a stack of 20 old seemingly useless books that you 1)know how many are there and what kind of book they are and 2)know exactly where they all are located and 3)know where each will go based on a criteria you predefine, things will operate swimmingly when you process and eliminate the clutter. Here’s an example of defining categories for a sort (say, of books):
- Discard pile (garbage bag)
- Already Read & Keeping Pile
- Already Read (boring or useless) & Keeping Pile (these will obviously be more easily discarded)
- Unread & Keeping Pile
- Or another (and simpler ) set of categories is simple
- Discard!
- Keep!
Conclusively, whenever you attack and resolve and dismantle clutter, at the VERY minimum, know :
-
- exactly how much (with which you’ll be dissolving) AKA Work with a Pre-defined Subset of Clutter.
- the exact location (of the clutter you’ll annihilate) AKA Be able to quickly acquire that subset of clutter.
- the exact spots or zones (for the clutter to be fully eliminated) AKA Define areas of clutter.
- It doesn’t hurt to have a shovel and/or a blunt heavy object and maybe some pepper spray to attack anything that emerges out of the steaming amorphous blob of clutter that you will dissolve.
DEFINITELY DO NOT. Start “reading through” the clutter items you’re trying to eliminate. Perusing old memorabilia and enjoying it as a seperate and distinct time from eliminating clutter. Also, don’t put on clothes you’re trying to eliminate because what happens? With the books you’ll find reasons to keep them “Oh they mention this author! I hate xyz book but I like xyz author they mention. or Hhmm this paragraph is interesting but the books sucks, etc.” Or you’ll envision some fantastical far-off ridiculous nonexistent utilization of clothing that will never be worn. Do NOT indulge in your clutter! Process it and then enjoy perusing the old journals from school.
HUGE KEYS to dealing with clutter
NEVER peruse, never treat teh books you’re going to get rid of as something you’re perusing through in like a bookstore. Instead, treat the books like toxic objects that have weighed down and burdened your life!
FOCUS on all the awesome BETTER, more aligning things you’ll be able to focus on:
- the uplifting friendships you’ll smoothly not just maintain, but enjoy, cherish and love
- and better yet, the friendships, you’ll completely discard as rubbish just like te material rubbish you will discard
- your energy which will skyrocket!
- your digital life! you can full go digital and have ALL (or atleast 90% of which) of you memories of somethings in your computer, perpetually backed up, all stored, properly named and organized that you can access at any time. of old dorm, living residence photos, of old memorabilia, that’s incredible,
- In short, you’ll be able to focus on all the stuff that’s truly valuable to you!
- “De-junking allows you to start over. You don’t want your clutter and memories of the past getting in the way of your future. It’s very idealistic, but getting rid of your ex’s belongings or your old company files can really help you to start over and make a new beginning.” Shed the skin. A snake wouldn’t go burrowing back into the old crumpled, brittle broke skin it just shed off would it? No, certainly not. Don’t try to go burrowing back into your heaps of junk, rubbish you shed many years ago. Liberate yourself from what you’ve shed off and removed and enjoy your future and new beginning in the new place.
and truly how awesome is it to have so many digital files crisply organized and clear? That’s rad!!
I’m not an expert in eliminating clutter but I’ve done a Lot of it and want to keep myself from accumulating rubbish so I don’t have to endure the exhausting, awful, indecisive, wreck, hellish, pain of having clutter to process. I want ot enjoy the smooth, electric, white, bright, scientific, aligned, crystal clear, energized, organized, only uplifting experiences of simplicity and cleanliness of only what I need.
Some of the biggest obstacles for me were attachment and fear of a void or hole that would be present upon eliminating clutter. But instead the opposite was true. If I careful scrutinized the clutter and eliminated what was stupid, useless, unnecessary, burdening, heavy, draining, and/or cumbersome, I felt energized and the stuff that is most valuable to me (science, math, health, staying organized digitally, contact with uplifting friends) became the centerpiece forefront of my life. Rad!
The Odd Categories
Rubbish A Possible Potential Future Use
Nebulous. Very Unlikely Future Use. This stuff is purely items that you do not think you will ever need nor want, but feel like
REasons why this is such a problem for me?
Because I’m unemotional. It’s difficult to make these decisions because some of them require an emotional opinion (e.g. I threw out an old striped tie because I saw a picture of me wearing it and it looked like rubbish.)
PROMINENT NEGATIVE Consequences of Clutter
When you travel, you often travel to get away from your clutter as opposed to traveling toward a place to enjoy it. This, quite understandably, wrecks any concept of vacation travel.
You end up buying more junk because of having pre-existing clutter. The clutter is a SYMPTOM of some problem in your life. That clutter is a symptom is unquestionably a veracity of the highest order. This sounds counter-intuitive. Someone has piles of rubbish, how could they buy more of it, but think about it. Picture some kind of businessman or scientist; everything about him (or her) is clean, polished. Let’s say he wears all the same clothes and actually has 5 sets of the exact same clothing that he rewears; his house is impeccable and bleached; his clutter is nonexistent; and all of his “belonging” are digital. He has very little furniture and his work invovles extremely precise laboratory work with DNA. He eats consistently the same diet because he knows it’s nutritious and puts him into the peak state of clarity. This “clutter free” person that one has envisioned now comes across a keychain item in a gift shop that sells for $2.50 and a stuffed animal. Do you think this person would purchase this clutter? Absolutely NOt!! People who fester in the squalor of clutter are ALWAYS the culprits of purchasing more clutter and the most of it. Advertisers who sell clutter, target the idiots already drowning in their own clutter!
Some provocative good questions to ask yourself to throw things out:
- Could I set a number (say 30 things) and throw out that amount?
- What blockage is keeping this rubbish being created?
- How good will that mobility and freedom and piece of mind be having eliminated this clutter?
- How much will my anxiety plummet and relaxation skyrocket when I eliminate this clutter?
- Where will I be in life after having eliminated this clutter?
- “In fact, I not only ask them to throw out 50 things but also ask them to make a list of what they’re throwing out, so they can look at it later and actually feel lighter. Here’s why: When you start throwing out a lot of physical clutter and you get on a roll, a new urge kicks in – the desire to clear out all the clutter in your mind.” – Michelle Goodfellow
- At first before seeing it was “sofeminine.co.uk” (good ol brits!) I was perplexed as to why most all pictures contained only women (surely, males need decluttering as well!). However, while most of these types of articles I long ago abandonded because of their useless, tacky and superficial nature, this article is a stark contrast. It presents reasons for keeping and discarding things in a kind of photo library format and is extremely clear. An excellent reminder and source of encouragement to eliminate clutter and stay clear. http://www.sofeminine.co.uk/mag/psycho/d885.html
- For the purposes of this article, one can simple adopt some of the qualities of a throwawayer (in moderation to maintain balance of course) while maintaining a few of the memorabilia and organization qualities of the hoarder for the best balance. I’ve listed the qualities of each:
- Throwaway:
- Anti-materialism
- Starting Over
- Need for Freedom and Control
- Fear of Attachment
- Extremes
- Hoarder
- Guilt
- Living in the Past
- Fear of Seperation
- It’ll come in handy (mabye-someday)
- Extremes
- Good Balance
- Get Organized
- Recycle
- Sell
- Give to Charity
- Believe in the Memories
- Memory Boxes
Parallels to Computer Programming
In computer science and programming we have a concept called “starvation”. Starvation in the processing of code refers to a process of an application that is supposed to be running and executing something but it doesn’t (maybe it’s waiting for an output variable from another process or maybe it’s waiting for the result or the “go-ahead” or a threshold to be reached from another process). The stalled process is said to be “starved”; it can’t move forward until the process that’s causing the starvation does what it needs to do. The same is true for clutter. Almost always, if you can identify something as definitive “clutter”, but can’t get yourself to get rid of it, the clutter-identified-but-can’t-discard item is most likely in a state of “processing starvation”.
The goal is to “collect” pleasant memories in life! YES.
Does staying in xyz place geographically doing xyz things surrounded by xyz amount of clutter create pleasant memories?? If not, bye!
he goal is to “collect” pleasant memories in life! YES.
Does staying in xyz place geographically doing xyz things surrounded by xyz amount of clutter create pleasant memories?? If not, bye!
