This is the off topic subforum, right? I hope I’m posting it in the right place.
No, I’m not going to share pictures of my rooms because they are embarrassing. And no, this isn’t just about cable or external drives management… this is actual physical clutter build over many, many years, and the difficulty I have when it comes to throw things to the bin. I have this “reuse everything” mentality and, because almost anything can be useful down the road, I have too many objects in drawers, onto the tables (piles of card boxes and papers and med boxes, and other objects).
I know it is difficult you can help this fellow MR member out easily, but I’m gonna try to describe some of the objects that are within my eyesight that I genuinely don’t know either to throw to the trash, or save it in a place… but I’m running out of places to keep the things. And I have 3 entire rooms full of things. Mind you, it is not “trash”, but rather things that fall in one of this categories:
A) They have an emotional value (toys and books from my early days).
B) They could be useful down the road (screws, cables and devices’ boxes).
C) Clothes.
D) Books.
I decided to post here because I suspect there might be other fellow members that carry the same burden of being a “chaotic genius”, or just are a mess. The thing is, this is the best way to find things! Almost everything I need, I know where it is! And the other problem is that, no matter how I discard objects and try to put order in my room, after just a couple of weeks it just gets back to the previous high entropy state.
A list of some of the things that I don’t know what to do about… either throw them away, or put them in a closet, or just keep them at hand.
Papers: Lots and lots of papers. Some are medical, some are legal, some are just from the grocery store with the week deals, some are important, others remind me of that date or that cinema I had with significant people, or that restaurant that no longer exist…
Hard drives: The problem with the external drives is that… I’ve lost some of them. Yes, that’s the level of clutter. I have some of them, I try to put them in the same drawer, but they get spread with the use… I feel like fighting against myself.
Clothes: Two categories, again. 2) Clean clothes that are folded waiting to be put on a closet, but currently there’s no place for them, and 2) dirty clothes that are waiting for the washing machine. I guess number 2 has a relatively easy solution: have a dirty clothes bin or throw them into the washing machine. But some clothes aren’t suitable for a washing machine so… IDK.
Books: There are two categories in here, 1) Books I keep for nostalgia or because I may read them some day, if there’s an apocalypse and the internet closes… and 2) Books I really use for my studies, or books I like to read every now and then. The first category takes the 80% of the books I have, and they are in a piece of furniture that is breaking slowly and I’d like to throw or replace, but there are too many objects there.
Boxes: This one is a big category. I have many, many boxes and they, again, fall in two distinct categories: 1) Amazon boxes I save in case I have to make a return of an item, so I don’t have to purchase one to send the item, and 2) Product boxes I keep in case I need them for warranty. See, I live in Europe, in my country we have 3 years of warranty by our consumers law, and I always think “what If I’m required to send the product on its original box”? That way, boxes have slowly taken up 30 to 40% of the space of my closets and tables… Then, there are the useful boxes, the shoe boxes I use to put the shoes I am not currently using. But too many boxes, honestly.
Toys and board games: This category has been bothering me less because I put most of them into card boxes, and this boxes have been in the same place for 15 years, taking up space of my shelves… I don’t feel like throwing them away, but maybe I should throw some of them? I don’t know, my infancy is tied to those.
Random objects: Two categories, some of them I use them regularly, others every once in a while, and others are there just in case. This includes: screws of all sizes and shapes, tools to fix things in my home, fragrances, binoculars, a CD archiver with CDs and DVDs (I no longer have a disk drive lol), a music box with a lot of sentiments inside, the drill and other tools, a suitcase that I have always open just in case I have to go somewhere (and only use it every once in a while, but there’s just no room on my closets), some old electronic equipment to communicate through radio waves with its giant power source from the 80s, a box with all my meds, because they no longer fit in the medicine cabinet, some paintings with a frame that I’m not sure I’ll put again in the walls but have an emotional charge… I could go on and on.
The problem is that, in order to have everything in a tidy way, I would have to empty all the closets, throw away half the things, and organize them inside again, and then do the same for the things that are outside the closet, throw away half of it, and the remaining put it on the closet because now there would be space again.
It’s nearly 30 years worth of objects, of a lifetime, and I feel like I am no longer able to control the beast, it has gotten so out of hands, the chaos has spread over several rooms, that I really don’t know how to solve it. Each object, each paper, each box that I hold in my hands, keeps me wondering for 10 or 20 minutes wether I should keep it or not. And that makes it eternal…
Any kind of advice will be welcome, as long as it comes with respect.
Thank you.
No, I’m not going to share pictures of my rooms because they are embarrassing. And no, this isn’t just about cable or external drives management… this is actual physical clutter build over many, many years, and the difficulty I have when it comes to throw things to the bin. I have this “reuse everything” mentality and, because almost anything can be useful down the road, I have too many objects in drawers, onto the tables (piles of card boxes and papers and med boxes, and other objects).
I know it is difficult you can help this fellow MR member out easily, but I’m gonna try to describe some of the objects that are within my eyesight that I genuinely don’t know either to throw to the trash, or save it in a place… but I’m running out of places to keep the things. And I have 3 entire rooms full of things. Mind you, it is not “trash”, but rather things that fall in one of this categories:
A) They have an emotional value (toys and books from my early days).
B) They could be useful down the road (screws, cables and devices’ boxes).
C) Clothes.
D) Books.
I decided to post here because I suspect there might be other fellow members that carry the same burden of being a “chaotic genius”, or just are a mess. The thing is, this is the best way to find things! Almost everything I need, I know where it is! And the other problem is that, no matter how I discard objects and try to put order in my room, after just a couple of weeks it just gets back to the previous high entropy state.
A list of some of the things that I don’t know what to do about… either throw them away, or put them in a closet, or just keep them at hand.
Papers: Lots and lots of papers. Some are medical, some are legal, some are just from the grocery store with the week deals, some are important, others remind me of that date or that cinema I had with significant people, or that restaurant that no longer exist…
Hard drives: The problem with the external drives is that… I’ve lost some of them. Yes, that’s the level of clutter. I have some of them, I try to put them in the same drawer, but they get spread with the use… I feel like fighting against myself.
Clothes: Two categories, again. 2) Clean clothes that are folded waiting to be put on a closet, but currently there’s no place for them, and 2) dirty clothes that are waiting for the washing machine. I guess number 2 has a relatively easy solution: have a dirty clothes bin or throw them into the washing machine. But some clothes aren’t suitable for a washing machine so… IDK.
Books: There are two categories in here, 1) Books I keep for nostalgia or because I may read them some day, if there’s an apocalypse and the internet closes… and 2) Books I really use for my studies, or books I like to read every now and then. The first category takes the 80% of the books I have, and they are in a piece of furniture that is breaking slowly and I’d like to throw or replace, but there are too many objects there.
Boxes: This one is a big category. I have many, many boxes and they, again, fall in two distinct categories: 1) Amazon boxes I save in case I have to make a return of an item, so I don’t have to purchase one to send the item, and 2) Product boxes I keep in case I need them for warranty. See, I live in Europe, in my country we have 3 years of warranty by our consumers law, and I always think “what If I’m required to send the product on its original box”? That way, boxes have slowly taken up 30 to 40% of the space of my closets and tables… Then, there are the useful boxes, the shoe boxes I use to put the shoes I am not currently using. But too many boxes, honestly.
Toys and board games: This category has been bothering me less because I put most of them into card boxes, and this boxes have been in the same place for 15 years, taking up space of my shelves… I don’t feel like throwing them away, but maybe I should throw some of them? I don’t know, my infancy is tied to those.
Random objects: Two categories, some of them I use them regularly, others every once in a while, and others are there just in case. This includes: screws of all sizes and shapes, tools to fix things in my home, fragrances, binoculars, a CD archiver with CDs and DVDs (I no longer have a disk drive lol), a music box with a lot of sentiments inside, the drill and other tools, a suitcase that I have always open just in case I have to go somewhere (and only use it every once in a while, but there’s just no room on my closets), some old electronic equipment to communicate through radio waves with its giant power source from the 80s, a box with all my meds, because they no longer fit in the medicine cabinet, some paintings with a frame that I’m not sure I’ll put again in the walls but have an emotional charge… I could go on and on.
The problem is that, in order to have everything in a tidy way, I would have to empty all the closets, throw away half the things, and organize them inside again, and then do the same for the things that are outside the closet, throw away half of it, and the remaining put it on the closet because now there would be space again.
It’s nearly 30 years worth of objects, of a lifetime, and I feel like I am no longer able to control the beast, it has gotten so out of hands, the chaos has spread over several rooms, that I really don’t know how to solve it. Each object, each paper, each box that I hold in my hands, keeps me wondering for 10 or 20 minutes wether I should keep it or not. And that makes it eternal…
Any kind of advice will be welcome, as long as it comes with respect.
Thank you.
