[quote=scaredyclassic]For 51 years, ive seen myself as a cluttered, kind of sloppy person. It bugs my wife, but she lives with it, I guess. The story I’ve told myself is that’s just how I am, I don’t mind it, it generates creativity, other stuff. One concrete problem I had for many many years was not being able to find my wallet or keys, primarily because I would just drop things randomly and unthinkingly, mindlessly.
Reading that book made me want to try something else, and I can tell you, without judging one mode as better than another, that it is very interesting to try something new. And I love this. I love getting rid of things. I love having space around stuff. I like thinking about where im going to put things and having a place for stuff. I love pitching tons of crap. I just like it. Is this the rest of my life, progressively neater and more orderly? Well, maybe, I don’t know. Im a bingey kinda guy. It doesn’t seem like a horrible outcome to me. There’s worse things than being neat and organized. I think I’ll still be internally kinda messy, but as Im thinking now, it’s like a light went on. This is how I want to lvie from now on. I want things very orderly. I just do. I remember not caring, but now I care. I don’t think ic an go back! If you are cluttery and messy, I’d say that’s fine, but I’d encourage anyone thinking about the issue to take a looka t the book and give it a go. It might surprise you how pleasureable it is. For instance, I now take out and put away my coffee grinder each morning. I used to just leave it out. It takes a few more seconds, nothing really. And the counter looks nice! There’s so many little things like this. Maybe I’m slowly trying to wind up my affairs, over a few decades, but it is downright intoxicating to pitch old crap!
My mother is a very very orderly neat and organizaed person, and I am beginning to suspect all my self-proclaimed clutteriness is just rebellion against what she would want…[/quote]
You should give up coffee and I’ll give up clutter.
Actually this weekend we decided to fix a few problem areas. There was a large table in front of one of the great room view windows that was catching lots of stuff and we were even stuffing things under it. So we moved it to the office and put a small table with a plant there. Also , evidently I kicked my wife out of our office about a year ago and she has been using the entire kitchen table as an office and it is really kind of sad looking. We usually eat at the Island/bar and she cleans off the table for get-togethers. So I made room for her in the office again(with the table). Enjoying those changes already. Huge difference…just those little things. Plus, I am a shit for kicking her out of the office and now I am less of a shit.
