Un-Hoarding [Productivity]
I've talked about 'balance' before - how I deal with my obsessive tendencies - how, if one part of my life is insanely organized, there's surely another part that's crumbling (presumably absorbing the blow).
The past 6 months I've been doing so well with managing my projects and my hobbies. Here's why:
I'm kind of a dick about sentimentality and have no qualms about chucking things out, so I established some rules so that in the event that I no longer exist, there are still traces of me that friends and family can go through.
* I scanned old photos, letters and documents before I threw them out.
* I kept notebooks and notepads. Pre-Twitter, I would write down my "tweets" on the tens of notebooks I've always had lying around everywhere.
* I boxed a lot of books to be given away, either because I didn't like them and likely won't ever read them again, or because they are reference books I can find online. I drew the line at books that friends have gotten me over the years. After all, each book I received as a gift has its own story - how they were picked, where they were bought, and for what occasion. I will allow myself this one.
* Since I go by the un-hoarding rule "if I haven't used it in a year, I will never use it", I've had to physically stop myself from throwing out things that DON'T BELONG TO ME. In the old tradition of cementing friendships, I've accumulated tons of things belonging to my friends, and they've been with me so long I forget they're not mine. That's what the remaining boxes in the above picture are: things to be returned.
---
Of course, now that my bookshelves are in perfect order, you can imagine what kind of shit the rest of my life is.
It's yin and yang, bebis.
The past 6 months I've been doing so well with managing my projects and my hobbies. Here's why:
There's books, office supplies, beauty products, fashion accessories, magazines, and (not in picture, bottom shelf) shoes on there.
I'm not a hoarder, which is why I'm not sentimental (or maybe the other way around), but since I organized this dark corner of my life, I've discovered that in fact, I am kind of a hoarder. I counted 71 unread books from this shelf (out of 160+ total books).
It took me about 2 or 3 years to get to the above photo, and just 4 hours to get to this one:
* I scanned old photos, letters and documents before I threw them out.
* I kept notebooks and notepads. Pre-Twitter, I would write down my "tweets" on the tens of notebooks I've always had lying around everywhere.
* I boxed a lot of books to be given away, either because I didn't like them and likely won't ever read them again, or because they are reference books I can find online. I drew the line at books that friends have gotten me over the years. After all, each book I received as a gift has its own story - how they were picked, where they were bought, and for what occasion. I will allow myself this one.
* Since I go by the un-hoarding rule "if I haven't used it in a year, I will never use it", I've had to physically stop myself from throwing out things that DON'T BELONG TO ME. In the old tradition of cementing friendships, I've accumulated tons of things belonging to my friends, and they've been with me so long I forget they're not mine. That's what the remaining boxes in the above picture are: things to be returned.
---
Of course, now that my bookshelves are in perfect order, you can imagine what kind of shit the rest of my life is.
It's yin and yang, bebis.
Comments
Post a Comment