Reading the comments on my post on junk I was
surprised to see the extent to which people's relation to rarely used
possessions varies.
Some people forget rarely used possessions, and get minimal benefit
from having them stored. When they need something, they don't know
whether they already have it, and the effort to maintain an index [1]
wouldn't be worth it. Ben writes:
I end up with curtains I don't need. I decide to store them for the
future in case they are helpful. Years pass. I need new curtains. I
have forgotten the ones I kept, so I buy new ones and put them
up. Months later I find the ones I kept while looking for something
else.
Other people know exactly where everything is, and can walk down to
the basement and make a beeline for a tiny thing they put down there
years ago. Sarah writes:
I can remember where I put a specific doohickey that my
brain labeled as "this could be useful" years later with very little
recall effort; something will come up that actually matches the need
for the thing, a little triumph, and I go to the spot where I buried
my acorn and get it.
I'm somewhere in between, though closer to Sarah. I usually remember
what I have stored when it could be relevant, though I'm less
good at the where. One strategy I use a lot is to imagine I'm
putting the object away, and I'll even walk the path. Wherever seems
good now has a good chance of being the place that seemed good when I
actually did have the thing to put away. Other times, though, I have
no idea whether any of my stuff might be useful for a problem or
project, and I'll just wander around the basement looking for ideas.
Then there's another way people vary, which is how much having stuff,
even out of sight, weighs on them mentally. For some people,
including me, it's mentally costless. Just like it's not a problem
that I "have" 2,615 blog posts, or that I've read hundreds of books, I
don't think about the objects in the basement when they're not
relevant. To others,
however, "excess material is like a pressure on my mind until it's
properly stored, sold, donated, or otherwise disposed of." And some
find this so burdensome that they don't
believe it when we say it's not.
The "burden" axis probably leads to minimalism fads: people with a
"burden" disposition like to write and share self-help books on how to
avoid it. But maybe an even bigger contributor is cultural holdover.
When objects were more durable and people were less
wealthy, keeping things in case you needed them someday was very
helpful! So some of us inherited strong "keep things" culture. But
someone living in an apartment has a small amount of valuable space,
and using it to store things you probably won't need is not worth
it. Plus, if you're moving every September
1st, it's even less worth it! [2] Pushing the culture to update is
probably valuable, even if the advice doesn't suit everyone: it helps
people get out of patterns that are a bad fit for the way their
particular brain works.
I am curious what leads to this range of dispositions, though, and how
people distribute along the "remember where stuff is" and "having
stuff is a mental burden" axes.
[1] My grandfather took this a different way: he had a very thorough
index. It was pages and pages of small items he happened to have in
his basement, along with exactly where to find them. Each shelving
unit, dresser, or bookcase had a letter; each shelf or drawer had a
number. You could look through it in alphabetical order:
Most summers we'd visit for a ~month, because my aunt was a teacher
with summers off and could watch the group of cousins. We'd have the
run of the house, and would often make projects from things in the
basement. We never asked what we could use, and I suspect we made a
mess of his system, but he didn't seem to mind.
[2] Even though accumulating low-value stuff works well for me
dispositionally, I didn't do very much of it until we bought a
house which had an unfinished basement.
Reading the comments on my post on junk I was surprised to see the extent to which people's relation to rarely used possessions varies.
Some people forget rarely used possessions, and get minimal benefit from having them stored. When they need something, they don't know whether they already have it, and the effort to maintain an index [1] wouldn't be worth it. Ben writes:
Other people know exactly where everything is, and can walk down to the basement and make a beeline for a tiny thing they put down there years ago. Sarah writes:
I'm somewhere in between, though closer to Sarah. I usually remember what I have stored when it could be relevant, though I'm less good at the where. One strategy I use a lot is to imagine I'm putting the object away, and I'll even walk the path. Wherever seems good now has a good chance of being the place that seemed good when I actually did have the thing to put away. Other times, though, I have no idea whether any of my stuff might be useful for a problem or project, and I'll just wander around the basement looking for ideas.
Then there's another way people vary, which is how much having stuff, even out of sight, weighs on them mentally. For some people, including me, it's mentally costless. Just like it's not a problem that I "have" 2,615 blog posts, or that I've read hundreds of books, I don't think about the objects in the basement when they're not relevant. To others, however, "excess material is like a pressure on my mind until it's properly stored, sold, donated, or otherwise disposed of." And some find this so burdensome that they don't believe it when we say it's not.
The "burden" axis probably leads to minimalism fads: people with a "burden" disposition like to write and share self-help books on how to avoid it. But maybe an even bigger contributor is cultural holdover. When objects were more durable and people were less wealthy, keeping things in case you needed them someday was very helpful! So some of us inherited strong "keep things" culture. But someone living in an apartment has a small amount of valuable space, and using it to store things you probably won't need is not worth it. Plus, if you're moving every September 1st, it's even less worth it! [2] Pushing the culture to update is probably valuable, even if the advice doesn't suit everyone: it helps people get out of patterns that are a bad fit for the way their particular brain works.
I am curious what leads to this range of dispositions, though, and how people distribute along the "remember where stuff is" and "having stuff is a mental burden" axes.
[1] My grandfather took this a different way: he had a very thorough index. It was pages and pages of small items he happened to have in his basement, along with exactly where to find them. Each shelving unit, dresser, or bookcase had a letter; each shelf or drawer had a number. You could look through it in alphabetical order:
Most summers we'd visit for a ~month, because my aunt was a teacher with summers off and could watch the group of cousins. We'd have the run of the house, and would often make projects from things in the basement. We never asked what we could use, and I suspect we made a mess of his system, but he didn't seem to mind.
[2] Even though accumulating low-value stuff works well for me dispositionally, I didn't do very much of it until we bought a house which had an unfinished basement.