After spending much of last Friday through Tuesday filling a dumpster with garbage and making several runs to the thrift store with vanloads of giveaways, we have eliminated several years of accumulated junk from our garage and moved a chunk of the kids toys from the house out into our new homeschooling/play area.
As much as I hate wading through knee-high clutter and dream of living in a spare and zen-like space, I'm struggling with the feeling that I just wasted *days* of my life moving around random stuff, instead of hiking and playing with the kids and otherwise enjoying life. I was already feeling this way before I finally sat down to read "A Perfect Mess" (the premise of the book as Steve described it to me is that there is no inherent value to being ordered and neat, that we miss the chance to make random connections when we keep things systematized and we waste our time and money on organizing that doesn't make us any more efficient.) After a chapter or two I got thoroughly discontented that I had just wasted my evening sorting plastic toys into "dinosaur" and "animal" and "pirate" and "vehicle" and "miscellaneous" bins.
I'm still struggling to reconcile the clear and obvious pleasure I get from being in a clean and ordered space with the ridiculousness of spending any significant amount of life energy on moving *stuff* from here to there in my life. I know that I feel a sense of energy and relief when I declutter, but maybe that's only because I finally stop haranguing myself internally about cleaning up every time I look at a pile of mess. Could I not achieve the same sense of energy and peace by just ceasing to believe that houses are supposed to be neat and tidy? Maybe so, but I'm not going to pretend I'm more evolved than I am. That bottom photo looks so great to me, I gotta' tell ya'...
Posts
3 comments:
Yeah, I'm with you, Sue! I just try to keep that balance, and for me that means having space for the chi to flow! But I have definitely relaxed in the whole "my house must be neat and organized all the time" way that I used to be! Fun post to read!
Your room looks great. But I am curious about the book that Steve mentions. I saw it in a book store recently and was vaguely intrigued. As I thought about purchasing the book I fantasized about functioning well in my environs of cluttered papers on my desk, medical journals strewn on the floor around me and the kids art and various projects sittng on and around our various shelves. It was a great fantasy but then I woke up. Ha Ha. Maybe I could save time by not spending so much time organizing, but at this point I don't have the time to read such a book to show me how to live happily in my clutter--the old catch 22. I also believe that we (maybe even especially women)have an innate, maybe a biological basis for organization.
Maybe it goes back to when we were living in caves in the early days of our ancestors and it was necessary to keep our things to a minimum so predators couldn't smell us out, or we could move our camp in a hurry. Of course I don't know if there is any research on this, I am sure there are theories...as I get older I am beginning to believe there is a biological, hormonal and/or genetic basis for most things (but that may just be my theory of the moment).
One more thought: I think the key to organization is simplification. By this I mean keeping only those things that we really need. When you think about this, your list of necessities may start out small but slowly increases. I recently read an article about the poor in various urban and rural areas. I was surprised to see how high the percentage of families that owned a television was(although is the need for entertainment via television also encoded in our DNA?) Another article showed a survey of the percentage of Americans who thought a TV, cell phone, microwave, dishwasher, air conditioning, computer, etc was necessary. I know I could live without all of the above, but would like to still have a computer. I know I could not live (very happily) without books or music.
My husband and I dream of living in a 1000 sf or less house someday (hopefully 500 sf). I know it would be filled wall to wall with books, would throb with the beat of music and would be decorated with photos of friends and family. If we were feeling crazy we would stash some paint, fabric, paper and scissors, ok we would also need metal and wood (see how easy it is for the list to grow?)for artmaking. Until then, like you Sue, we organize.
hey felicia,
thanks for dropping by!
We'll lend you the book, if you're interested. I haven't gotten past the first few chapters but so far, it's all refutation of the idea that organized=more efficient. i'll buy that. but i'm not willing to ignore the peace of mind that comes with an uncluttered space.
And I love the idea of a small house with few possessions, but I guess I'd rather have Steve and the kids around than a spare and zen-like abode, so I'll stick with what I've got!
I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of making a radical lifestyle change, but I don't have enough momentum to break the binds of comfort and familiarity just yet...
Hey, congrats on the new lifestyle, speaking of! Now you've got the time to do your own blog! (Really, it's very easy. Just give it a try. You'll have one up in 20 minutes.)
Post a Comment