abril 23, 2012

Way to decluttering and keep order in home

ALEJANDRO MELO-FLORIAN BIO

Images -World Wonders Language Translator By Knol Foundation

ALEJANDRO MELO-FLORIAN BIO

Is difficult to day to find time to assure adequate order in our home. Time dedicated to ourselves is progressively shortening and that is because the way we live demmands more and more time to be productive.

A lot of days, almost everyday can be a rush, so there is no time enough to make order, and we are afraid to let things go because we think: I keep it, just in case.

So we start to keep things and to keep things, some useful: the home appliances, OK, they are useful. The books, OK, we need to read anf to be informed. The clothing: OK we need to look appropriately. But some other things are not so useful and a lot of them are merely clutter, to not mention waste.

Many homes in our lifestyle are warehouses to store clutter: To be aware of this situation is not an easy thing, because clutter do not start suddenly. Clutter starts with the running of the years, and a lot of thinks, souvenirs, clothing, begins to pile up and of course, to waste space.

Benjamin Franklin

Portrait by Joseph

Siffred Duplessis – fragment

was a very practical man and one of his not so commonly known talents was to keep house in order. He can be considered somehow the forerunner of housekeeping, because he coined the phrase A place for everything, everything in its place.

In our society, the things present at home are the fruit of many talented men and women whose inventions improved not only survival, but adaptation abilities of the mankind.

But during the XIX and XX centuries, the improvement in production of goods created step by step the culture of consumption. And our society start slowly to acquire slowly the goods to achieve adaptation and a better, comfortable lifestyle, and to keep it, because these novelties were not easy to acquire.

The moment in which this process cross the line is far from being identified, but some thinkers mentionHomo consumens and Homo zappiens to refer to the situations when the consumption of goods is not a tool, but becomes a lifestyle.

So, our parents kept many things specially when the pass through the mill of The Depression, because there was not easy ways to replace it, so many of us grew up with such a conservative spirit, but in our new times we are dealing with a new situation, that is shortening room. The new places to live are shorter than previously.

Further, since the point of view of room, usually we are not so aware in our minds of the limitation of room and we usually deem our homes to be granted with a big deal of room. Consequently, we slowly start to acquire different thinks, even some people develops a sort of obssessive compulsive disorder about shopping, giving rise to the term shopholic and shopholism or oniomania. And our home with a limited room sooner or later will reach the limit to no addmitance of more thinks. In this point is important to avoid clutter, that each new thing incoming home, means one old thing leaving home.

That is one of the secrets to avoid clutter. So you keep the new acquisitions, and the old ones become rummage sales, garage sales, donnatives.

In medicine there is one medical condition called Diogenes syndrome and that is another of the vintages of the obssessive compulssive disorder. People is hoarding and cluttering everything, and they face big anxiety and sorrow because they store everything, even waste. Their homes become stores, and they isolate from social contact because their homes are freak disordered.

One good way to declutter home is assimilate new culture as per to acquire new things: a new thing in, an old thing out.

References

1. E-book http://ordenesucasa.com/

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_hoarding

3. Diogenes syndrome: http://www.arsxxi.com/Revistas/fframesart.php?MTg%3D&ODg0Nw%3D%3D&MA%3D%3D&RU4%3D&&MTg%3D&ODI0

Comments

Jeremy Seifert

This is a great description of the problem….. but I’d like to see more helpful advice…

Thanks for taking the time to put this out there. One small bit of criticism – almost the entire article is devoted to the problem, with only the last sentence offering any advice on how to solve it. I think that’s where the most potential is here.

I really think this sort of thing is taking off in a small little movements around the world, but especially here in the US (thank goodness). The Tiny House Blog is one place I’ve been keeping up on this but there are many others. I struggle with this a bit myself, but it helps living in a smaller space (our condo is 995 square feet). I wonder what advice there is for those seriously looking to downsize but struggling with how to do it?

I think there are recommendations with how to change our mind about stuff (you point to one example of this – try to keep a status quo of ‘stuff’), perhaps thinking about the baggage a ‘just in case’ purchase or a ‘just in case’ refusal to chuck something. I also think that many people are like me – once you get a bunch of extra stuff, it becomes work to even sort/purge it. Especially if you’re thinking to sell it. That’s why I’ve started adopted the policy of donating a lot of stuff. You just really need to try and let stuff go. Plus, the ‘giving away’ prospect helps change your mind about the stuff you have more than you might think. Besides, if you end up doing a garage sale, you’ll only make a fraction of what it’s worth, and STILL have a bunch of stuff left over you’ll need to take to Good Will. Just bite the bullet and give stuff away.

Hope that helps!

Aug 21, 2011 7:12 PM

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