I've been doing some house-cleaning yesterday and today. I'm torn between wanting to keep everything and wanting to decrease the level of clutter and disorganization in my house
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One of my vices is definitely pack-rat-ism. Of course, my problems were partially solved when I received the Complete New Yorker on CD as a present. Now I _have_ an archive of everything up to a year and a half ago anyway, so I could freely get rid of my old New Yorkers.
It's all the extra book accumulation and old shoes and papers from college that I really should get rid of. But it's so hard!
P.S. My mother once got me a year's subscription of each of Gourmet, Bon Appetit, and Fine Cooking. I kept these and trucked them around for years, but it was difficult to find recipes and I never took them out just to browse. Eventually I bought the Gourmet cookbook (with all the best recipes) and tossed the foot-of-shelf-space of magazines. For Bon Appetit, I went through and tore out the pages that had promising recipes. 12-months went down to about 1 months worth of paper, and now that recipe "book" contains nothing but items that look tasty. And if I try something and it doesn't work? I just throw it away!
I'm not sure how much this would help in other genres, but if there really are a few articles you want to keep, keep those few articles and toss the magazine. If you can't recognize any of the articles in the magazine you are looking at, then none of them were memorable enough to keep so toss it without guilt.
I think we might actually want to get a vacuum cleaner (though need to check with C) -- is this an upright, or one with a hose that you can attach different widgets to?
Box springs are mainly to support the mattress and also to add height. So it really depends on if you want the bed ~-9" taller. What sort of platform do you have? One with wood slats or one that's just a frame? The slats are generally good enough. I think I liked the support of the box spring, but it just makes my new bed too high.
This has become a battle that I am slowly winning. Basically, I realized that things on paper were inherently not searchable, which meant that I probably wouldn't use them in the future.
Magazine-wise, my primary reading material is The Economist. It comes weekly, so I've learned that if I don't finish an issue by the time the next one arrives, I should just toss it and move ahead. If I ever want to refer to an older article, I have access to the online archives, which are searchable.
I've stopped saving credit card statements. They're online now too.
Basically, what I've tried to do is apply the concept of "Simple Design" to paperwork I save. Am I putting more effort into saving and organizing things that I might need than it would take to retrieve the data that I actually do end up needing later? If so, I should stop.
Physical cruft is somewhat harder to do this with, sadly.
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It's all the extra book accumulation and old shoes and papers from college that I really should get rid of. But it's so hard!
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I'm not sure how much this would help in other genres, but if there really are a few articles you want to keep, keep those few articles and toss the magazine. If you can't recognize any of the articles in the magazine you are looking at, then none of them were memorable enough to keep so toss it without guilt.
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The "bare floors" mode of it doesn't work well (it pops out of that mode).
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So it really depends on if you want the bed ~-9" taller.
What sort of platform do you have? One with wood slats or one
that's just a frame? The slats are generally good enough.
I think I liked the support of the box spring, but it just
makes my new bed too high.
Reply
Let me know...
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Magazine-wise, my primary reading material is The Economist. It comes weekly, so I've learned that if I don't finish an issue by the time the next one arrives, I should just toss it and move ahead. If I ever want to refer to an older article, I have access to the online archives, which are searchable.
I've stopped saving credit card statements. They're online now too.
Basically, what I've tried to do is apply the concept of "Simple Design" to paperwork I save. Am I putting more effort into saving and organizing things that I might need than it would take to retrieve the data that I actually do end up needing later? If so, I should stop.
Physical cruft is somewhat harder to do this with, sadly.
Reply
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