Five Things for the First Monday of Autumn

[scarlettina]

1) I am in the process of cleaning up my bedroom. It's fascinating what such archeology can turn up, especially given my epic levels of clutter tolerance. Here's one thing I've realized over the last couple of days: Leaving things in piles for stupid-long periods of time enables me to detach from them emotionally, making them easier to dispose of

Comments

[herself_nyc]

The piles thing reminds me of how I managed my desk back when I had a job with a desk. Paper would pile up and pile up, and about every 4 months I'd decide to tidy, and look at the piles, and realize I had no idea what was in them and therefore couldn't need them, and just sweep the whole thing off into the garbage pail.

This method never backfired.

[houseboatonstyx]

Piles of clothing are different. What's on top is what was last worn. What floats to the top is what gets worn most often. What should be discarded is what's hung neatly in the closet, because that means I haven't worn it in a long time.

[herself_nyc]

True, I wasn't thinking of clothes so much.

Frankly, I think I'd have a problem with piles of EVERYTHING if I didn't employ a weekly housekeeper. I realize this isn't possible for a lot of people. But given my childhood and college-student proclivities to total slob-itude, it's made my adult life so much saner. The housekeeper washes my clothes and puts them away every Friday and in between I put the dirty things in the hamper and manage to mostly keep up the sense of order. And once a year or so I go through all my rails and drawers and ruthlessly get rid of anything I haven't worn since the last time.

[houseboatonstyx]

Heh. I just realized what my system needs is a large fancy compost bin. Yanno, the kind where you pile stuff on top and there's a drawer at the bottom to take the oldest stuff out.

[scarlettina]

Well, I do have a problem with piles of everything, Lately, though, I find myself tackling those piles one at a time, and it's enormously gratifying. Last night as I prepared for bed, I found myself doing a little dance in the corner of the room that had been piled with clothes I haven't worn in ages and that is now gone. Look! Floor! :-) Tonight, it all gets ruthlessly vacuumed! I'm so excited! :-)

[scarlettina]

And I think this is exactly why it was so easy for me, yesterday, to pull clothes from the piles and go "Oh that? Gone." I was in fact surprised at the things I still had that I thought I'd gotten rid of a year or two ago. More stuff for Goodwill...