This is a recurrent aaaaarghness
O HAI, poncey decluttering strikes again!
Who are these soulless gits? 4.For unread books, "sometime" means "never." There is a small window of time to read a book after you purchase it. Once that window closes, and it has gathered dust for a while, your chances of reading it are slim to none. And forget about rereading books you liked. How many books have you actually read a second time? Donate that unneeded book to someone who will get a thrill when they pick it up, and spend your time on the one book you're excited to read right now.
No, dearie, books do not come with a 'use by' or 'best before' date, and lives there a reader with soul so dead that the concept of re-reading is strange and alien? I weep for humanity. 5.Recycle those piles of papers. Kondo's rule of thumb for papers is "discard everything." According to her, papers will never inspire joy.
I do (eventually) get round to shredding old credit card statements, etc, usually by doing this as a blitz. But old papers? you are talking about my research materials. Not to mention, this is clearly somebody who has never done archival research and only barely restrained themself from punching the air and shouting 'YESSS!!!!' on making some discovery.
Will concede that there is a point where it is a good thing to sift the permanent from the ephemeral (the anomie of being an archivist dealing with the papers of someone or some organisation which has never done this can hardly be exaggerated) but that so doesn't mean 'ditch the lot'. A paternal forebear was notorious for doing this, which included disposing of vital family documentation. (I will also cop to have had a slight panic this week over locating my birth certificate, which was not in the file I thought it was, but was at least in another one.)
Something else I will not be decluttering anytime soon is the codfish tank, right? This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2235718.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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