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NancyLebovitz comments on Procedural Knowledge Gaps - Less Wrong
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Dealing with serious clutter-- the kind of situation where the house has never been in good order and there isn't any obvious place to put most things.
Sometimes I take a crack at it, but there's so little progress and so many non-obvious decisions to be made.
The key point I have discovered in my own recent massive household declutter:
Distinguish "generally useful" or "potentially useful" from actually useful.
No, you'll never eBay it. No, you'll never wear that shirt or those boots. No, you'll never fix that laptop. No, you'll never get around to finding someone who really wants it. No, that weird cable won't actually ever be used for anything, because it hasn't been used in the past five years. No, you'll never get around to taking it to the charity shop. No, it may be a shame to throw out something so obviously useful, but it's a curse. No, you never did any of these things in the past so there's no reason to assume you will in the future. No. No. Stop making bullshit excuses. JUST NO.
Get a big roll of garbage bags. Delight in having so many full bags of discards that your bin overflows.
You have to be utterly uncompromising. Set the "when did I last use this?" to one year. Anything unused in longer than that better have a REALLY EXCELLENT justification.
If you swear you're going to eBay it, give yourself one week to do the listing. If it's not done, throw it out.
A very helpful method is to have someone else to help you be uncompromising. (Particularly with kicking your backside when you make one of the excuses.)
Paul Graham's essay Stuff talks about the problem. He lists books as an exception. THEY ARE NOT AN EXCEPTION. Be as ruthless with your book pile.
(I have been doing a huge clearout of STUFF for the last couple of months - saga in my journal - and kept linking that Paul Graham essay like the holy writ it is. NO DAMN ATOMS. EVERYTHING MADE OF ATOMS IS A WHITE ELEPHANT UNLESS IT CAN PROVE IT CAN PAY ITS BLOODY RENT. AAAAAAAA)
Sounds like the "outside view" approach to cleaning. It seems to me the “really excellent justification” heuristic could be generalized into expected value, with some danger of overfitting—something with infrequent but important use like a fire extinguisher might earn its place just as easily as a bic pen you use twenty times a day.
I think it's more generally the phenomenon Paul Graham talks about: stuff used to be valuable and people didn't have much of it; these days, it's actually not of value and most people have too much of it. That is: we're all rich now, and we don't know how to cope with the fact.
It's moving up to a better class of problem. Like how Britain has a major health problem in 2011 with poor people being too fat, whereas in 1950 food was rationed. It's a great problem to have. Though it's still a problem.
Yes, it really helps to get in an outside view - the friend to help and berate you - until you get the proper visceral loathing of stuff.
I think this explains a lot of it. Another part is that people don't think about the costs of owning stuff: it occupies your space, you have to keep it organized, and you have to move it around whenever you move.
These costs are easy to ignore, because they aren't in mind when you're thinking about buying a specific thing. The mentally-available facts are "what will I get by using this?" versus "how much money does this cost?" Similarly, when you're looking for stuff to get rid of, it's hard to bring those costs back into light, because they're so general to everything you own
I don't have lots of stuff, and I'm pretty willing to get rid of stuff or give stuff away. I think this is largely because I highly value my space, my attention, and my time, and I've practiced being sensitive to those values when I'm making decisions about stuff.
"you have to move it around whenever you move."
Usually I'm adverse to reducing clutter, due to the cost of going through, organizing it, and throwing away most of it. Every time I move I end up losing a huge chunk of my stuff because suddenly it's much cheaper to throw it out instead of moving it :)
Good point. My heuristic is to say: My house cost $100/ft^2. A $2 knickknack with a square foot footprint really costs $102.
But could you really have saved $100 by having decided to buy that same exact house except without that extra square foot?
Probably not. But, if you had rather less stuff, you could have probably bought a pretty similar house with one fewer closet for a few thousand less.
This. My housemates and I needed a three-bedroom apartment instead of a cheaper two-bedroom because some of them have so much stuff. Especially large furniture.
Yup, also, the incremental cost of space in a self-store unit is of the order of $1/month-ft^2, say $240/ft^2 capital cost at a 5% annual rate - and that is a true incremental cost. The more severe approximation is ignoring which items stack well and which don't, and ignoring the additional costs of maintaining the items, keeping track of them and so on.
Better yet, get a Kindle.
I'd love a Kindle if it wasn't a hideously locked-down proprietary money funnel. I'm waiting for something with an eInk screen that just opens documents if I put them on it, in whatever format. I've wanted something like that to read PDFs with approximately forever.
I already don't read my paper books. I'd rather download a PDF than read the book that's on the shelf just over there. This appears to be unusual amongst my friends.
I got my hands on a Kindle a year back, and it just opened PDFs and text documents I put on it using it as an USB drive. Amazon even provided an app for rolling your own Kindle-format ebooks from hypertext files, which you could again just plop on the Kindle over USB.
My main problem was that the regular Kindle was too small for viewing technical article PDFs full screen. I can already use my smartphone for reading stuff that's easily reflowable, like most fiction. The Kindle DX should be better for this, but I haven't had a chance to try that.
The Kindle 3G has native PDF support. It also supports .mobi ebooks from any non-DRM'd source. (And most other formats can be converted to .mobi using a program like Calibre.)
There are other e-readers that have far less stringent requirements for getting books. The Nook and Kobo are an example (as are the Sony E-Readers). I have a Nook and have yet to purchase any books from the Barnes and Noble store. I constantly put DRM free books from Project Gutenberg on it and just placed the Less Wrong sequences on it as well. There are also FLOSS programs for editing PDFs to make them easier to read on an e-reader. A little research goes a long way!
I use my thinkpad tablet--my main computer--for reading anything I can manage to get in .pdf, but I do really envy the Kindle screen. And battery life. I keep checking back to the PixelQi site hopefully...
I read paper books because 1) I can get them really cheap used (cheaper than the library fines I always get from borrowing them...), 2) they require no batteries, 3) dropping them or stepping on them will not damage them irreparably, and 4) they are not likely to attract unwelcome attention on the buses through the rougher parts of town.
The first batch of Notion Ink Adam tablets have shipped, they have a PixelQi screen and run Android. Can't yet buy one unless you caught the pre-order, but to me that means they've moved out of 'vapourware'.
If you know that your dislike of paper is weird, you shouldn't be giving general advice about it. (you said we should throw out books)
Your dislike of the Kindle sounds like status quo bias to me. Maybe the proprietary format means that the books will only last a few years, but is that so bad? In return, you get a searchable format and no physical clutter. And if you switch to another format and lose everything, you're purged of electronic clutter!
Yes, you should definitely throw out your books. For everyone else it was obvious hyperbole for literary effect, but for you I mean it literally. What on earth?
Yes, that is so bad. I'm not paying paper prices for bits that evaporate, and I'm not giving Amazon a hundred quid's encouragement to pull that sort of stunt. That's an even more direct incentive to piracy than trying to watch a commercial DVD. In return, I get a searchable format and no physical clutter!
Although purging my life of digital clutter is actually an attractive idea. Hence the notion of "inbox zero". Like not really appreciating minimalism until you've been subjected to horrible aesthetic noise for a long time.
I liked that cartoon, but it's not completely accurate. I can skip over all of those things on my computer with software DVD players, whether the DVD was commercially authorized or not. This is a problem with some DVD players, not really a "piracy" issue.
Enforcement in software players is lax for whatever reason, but makers of DVD players need to agree to honor the Prohibited User Operations flags in order to get a patent license to use the DVD video format. So the general point stands that if you're skipping previews, someone is either in breach of contract or breaking the law.
and DJVUs. So there isn't anything like this yet. Thanks for saving me some research time.
Books can be valuable even if you never read them again, in several ways. If you have kids, you never know what they might read, or just what attitudes they might pick up from the presence of books. If your books are in a public part of your house, guests may see them and either start a conversation or be impressed. If they are behind where the guests sit, you may see a book a guest will like and give it to them. Also, of course, there's the potential for bathroom reading, a page of an old favorite.
That said, when you're moving house, you should be more ruthless than usual with books.
Oh boy. I also have books I do not agree with at all. And a hole section on my shelf for »stupid s*it«. It can be weird if your books lead people to form mistaken opinions about you.
I own more books than would fit on a kindle.
Also I really like them and don't want to get rid of them... but that's a totally different pathology ;)
Throw stuff out/give it away. Lots of stuff. If you have two of it, or don't really like it, or plan to replace it soon and won't need it till then, get rid of it.
Completely clear out some place, like a closet or a drawer or a shelf - do this by putting its contents in obviously inappropriate temporary locations, like on a bed, if necessary. Decide from scratch what belongs in this place. Put those things there. Repeat with the next space. If you don't have a way to efficiently use the space, buy an organizer of some kind suited to what you plan to put in. (Wire racks, drawer dividery things, bookends for open-ended shelves, etc.)
Leo Babauta from zenhabits is a good source to go to.
Decluttering was a personal struggle for me, that I think to have handled now. Here my current model for how to de:clutter. Note that I mix actual experience with theory, also some might not be universally applicable. Also I don't know which points to elaborate on and which are obvious.
Preface:
Order is a process, not an end state! Much progress is achieved early on. Like optical decluttering the visible areas, when everything is nicely boxed up. (80:20 principle)
Tools:
I use stackable plastic containers like these. The important factors are the volume that allows to store all kinds of things, transportability by hand, and the possibility to stack them onto them self.
Lots of garbage bags. (Get some of the big ones, some the smaller once9
Tape that can be written on + marker pens.
It might be a good time to install more shelf space
Timing
Depending on your schedule you can use like half an hour each day, or some hours once or twice a week to attack it, and make as much progress as possible. Use a kitchen timer. Get family involved if applicable.
Target areas
Choose a room, or an area smaller than a room to attack. Common rooms or your own are best. (I think that parents should not clean up their kids rooms, safe for fire and health hazards.)
If you are into planning, make a list of all areas and their order, so you can cross them off. Find out which parts of the process give you pleasure and optimize accordingly. (Some people find it helpful to know exactly which steps to take, some get anxious from it. It helps to know which one you are.)
Maybe clean floor space first. And tables.
Depending on level of entropy you can go in one swipe, or do multiple rounds.
Methodology
Put everything that is obviously to throw away in a garbage bag. Put everything else into the boxes. You can do a lazy general sort here right away, but its not necessary. If you do label the boxes with the tape + pen. Take boxes out of the area. Clean the area. Think how you generally want to to lay it out. Put stuff back into the area. Leave everything else in its respective box, till you get into the area where it belongs.
In the end you should have some thematic sections. All office supplies in one place, all electronics. All tools etc. Make your own categories!
In general I find I helpful to know where an item belongs. It should be clear without much thought.
Appendix:
The way to declutter differs widely along what kind of stuff you actually have lying around. Some general pointers:
Lots of good advice here!
I'd also add: don't get bogged down in details.
Many, many are the times I've set aside time to properly clear up and found I've spent an hour sorting through one stack of papers...
I'd suggest: start with the big things first. You can sort which papers to keep and which to throw after you've picked up the bigger things and put them in boxes out of the way.
There's a huge amount of relief in cleaning up even just the easy 80% of the clutter, so tackle the low-hanging fruit first and leave the details for the second pass.
Maybe to much of it. From the reactions so far it seems not to be too useful in practical terms. I guess the amount of hacks acquired by any one person is difficult to transport onto others.
I like this site: http://unclutterer.com/
It includes advice, examples, a forum to ask advice/share stories, and the weekly "Ask Unclutterer" column. Not to mention some hilarious examples of unitaskers.
A book I recently heard was good: the lifechanging magic of tidying up