Clutter

Merlin's Review of "It's All Too Much" on Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools

Merlin Mann — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:49:11 -0400

As my battle with clutter continues, one of my favorite people (and one of the smartest guys writing for the web, period), Kevin Kelly, noticed my efforts and took note of my affection for Peter Walsh’s wonderful book, It’s All Too Much.

My review for Cool Tools is indeed adapted from a few posts that originated here, but I think it’s worth pointing to because, a) that book has had a huge influence on how I think about my relationship to “stuff,” b) I’m honored that KK liked what I’d had to say about it, and c) if you aren’t already reading Kevin’s sites — particularly his consistently insightful The Technium column — you’d do yourself a favor to get acquainted fast. Kevin’s the real deal.

I also like what Kevin had to add to the review, regarding the need for an “anti-stuff tool”:

Merlin Mann’s review turned me onto this fantastic book. We’ve rethought our household because of it. We were reminded that life is not about stuff; it’s about possibilities, which the right tools can enable. For a world of expanding stuff, this book is the necessary anti-stuff tool.

”Merlin's Review of "It's All Too Much" on Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 07, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Simplicity must be possible.

grant — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:20:28 -0400

Two stories that I know I should be learning from:

Paul Graham on overcoming distractions. By creating an Internet-Only computer.
Quote:
I now leave wifi turned off on my main computer except when I need to transfer a file or edit a web page, and I have a separate laptop on the other side of the room that I use to check mail or browse the web. (Irony of ironies, it's the computer Steve Huffman wrote Reddit on. When Steve and Alexis auctioned off their old laptops for charity, I bought them for the Y Combinator museum.)

My rule is that I can spend as much time online as I want, as long as I do it on that computer. And this turns out to be enough.
NY Times on overcoming clutter. By giving everything away.
Quote:
Chasing a utopian vision of a self-sustaining life on the land as partisans of a movement some call voluntary simplicity, they are donating virtually all their possessions to charity and hitting the road at the end of May.

“It’s amazing the amount of things a family can acquire,” said Mrs. Harris, 28, attributing their good life to “the ridiculous amount of money” her husband earned as a computer network engineer in this early Wi-Fi mecca.

The Harrises now hope to end up as organic homesteaders in Vermont.

I can't quite see myself going as far as homesteading... but I always get that uncanny feeling when I read stories like these that it really IS that simple to make a change.

”Simplicity must be possible.” was written by grant balfour for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on May 19, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Links and Resources for the Chronically Disorganized

Merlin Mann — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:30:15 -0400

N S G C D | Home

I’m still in a de-cluttering mode these days (more on that soon), so I was intrigued by this resource, which arrived this morning via Mrs. Folders.

While primarily a trade group for “professional organizers,” the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization site has some handy documents and links to help with identifying and solving pathological problems with clutter and hoarding.

If you can tolerate the site’s gruesome ardor for PDFs, you’ll find some informative and eye-opening stuff. From their fact sheets page:

Are You Chronically Disorganized? - The obligatory self-test. Mmm…yeah, I am guilty of #17: “Is it difficult for you to part with things even though they have outlived their usefulness?”
Time Management for the Chronically Disorganized - “Remember that you are procrastinating if you work on a trivial task while a more important one remains undone.”
Tips for Communicating with the Chronically Disorganized - “Avoid what does not work…Don’t say: ‘Just do it!’”

I really liked some of the Tips for Overcoming Procrastination for the Chronically Disorganized Individual or Household (excerpted):

Remember that it is motivation that gets you started and habits that keep you going. Resolve to get started.

Delay until you have enough information but not all the information. Have the courage to make decisions with less than 80% of the facts.

Break up your projects into small pieces and avoid “all or nothing” thinking.

Good stuff. The Now Habit, anyone?

”Links and Resources for the Chronically Disorganized” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on May 06, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Clutter War II: Attack of the Giant Baby

Merlin Mann — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 09:58:02 -0400

As of next Sunday, our lovely daughter will have been with our houshold for six months (Happy Half-Birthday, Eleanor). It’s a good arrangement, and we’re all pretty happy about the whole thing so far. But, to look around our house, you’d think we were raising a small army of babies, each of whom has their own Amazon Prime account and an addiction to things that are shaped like giraffes.

Oh my, the stuff. The baby stuff. Everywhere. Means of conveyance, swingy seat, Bumbo, squeaky toys, fuzzy toys, toys for biting and bending, jammies, jackets, socks that do and don’t look like shoes, amusing hats, blankets, books, rattles, pacifiers, cleaning supplies, extra diapers — plus of course, there’s the raw tonnage of stuff belonging to the caretaking adults that has been displaced or disused as a result of the occupying baby’s needs. It is a scene, man, I can assure you. And there’s not an iota of blame to place on the actual baby; it’s all us (and mostly me). [By the bye, for an illuminating look at the perils of the creeping ParentCrap industry, have a look at Parenting, Inc. It’s chilling. And, for me, personally damning.]

At any rate, as we approach that august 183-day mark in our little girl’s life, you might be able to guess where my head is right now. Yep. It’s on clutter, and on what I need to do to get my face back into Peter Walsh’s excellent de-cluttering book as a means for regaining domestic sanity and striding toward the possibility of a life without tripping, piling, or losing what’s left of my sleep-deprived mind.

But let’s start with first principles:

It’s All Too Much
by Peter Walsh

Well, obviously for me, it starts with re-reading It’s All Too Much (isbn.nu | library search). As I’ve said before, this is a fantastic book that distinguishes itself by helping you understand why you have clutter, rather than just trying to help you find new places to store and “organize” it. Author Peter Walsh encourages you to imagine the life you really want, and then ruthlessly purge the items that are keeping that vision from becoming a reality. Pure gold.

Now, if you don’t have the time or inclination to look at the book with me right now, or if you’re one of those smarty boffins who points out that this would represent yet another piece of clutter — or even just to bring existing Peter fans back up to speed — here’s some posts from my previous excursion into the world of It’s All Too Much. It was a bracing sprint that helped me rid myself of crap that had been doing nothing for my life for years:

My War on Clutter - “Although no official record of the conversation exists, I would not be surprised to learn that I tried to talk the staff who delivered me into letting me keep my first diaper; just because — y’know — you never know when it might come in handy.”
My War on Clutter: Never “organize” what you can discard - “The truth is that this is like covering your tumor with a bandage, and without thoughtful paring-down, all those crates and boxes and storage spaces do nothing to improve the basic problem.”
My War on Clutter: The Tools to Purge BIG - “I cannot overstate the importance of making a zone like this early in your project. You must know without hesitation that whatever you run across — no matter how big or bulky — will find a temporary home in your dump zone before quickly being whisked out of your house forever.”
My War on Clutter: Inspiration for Independence Day - “If my own clutter war is piquing your interest in improving your surroundings, tomorrow could be the occasion for you to put a few minutes toward making a dent in your own pile.”
Vox Pop: Converting clutter from trash to treasure - Readers share their excellent suggestions on responsible, useful ways to repurpose trash into someone else’s treasure.
More from Peter Walsh on clutter, quality of life - “Capacity is only worth building when it’ll be used in the service of stuff you really want.”

Thing is, I now return to this book and this mission with a renewed level of resolve because I have to face the previously unthinkable; we must convert Dad’s entropic home office into a nursery suitable for a shiny little baby who doesn’t appear to enjoy sleeping on USB cables and books about developing in ShockWave (yes, thanks, there’s still lots of “low-hanging fruit” remaining).

So this new adventure begins. I hope to share some of this parent-focused de-cluttering with you over the next couple weeks, so pop back by if that appeals. For what it’s worth, I hope it will also have tidbits that appeal to the child-free or child-neutral amongst you.

As I returned to It’s All Too Much in the last week, I was struck by a line that sounded like something straight out of my Time & Attention talk. In introducing a chapter on the excuses most people give for suffering clutter, Peter Walsh says:

Everything in your home is there with your permission.

And it’s true. Or putting just a slightly sharper point on it, it might be said that “Everything in your home remains there with your permission.” That clutter becomes a tiresome houseguest that you just don’t have the heart to throw out. And he keeps inviting his messy friends who also have decided to camp out on every available surface.

So, if you’re the sort of put-together life hacker who would never accept a lame project or a pointless task, what sense is there in not applying the same rigor to your surroundings? Exactly.

Anyhow, here I go. Wish us luck. And, as ever, I hope you’ll share your thoughts on how you beat the crap back after your little one arrived and took over. I’d love for Eleanor’s second six months to take place in a comfortable, clutter-free house that baby, parents, and giraffes alike can enjoy.

”Clutter War II: Attack of the Giant Baby” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on April 21, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

More from Peter Walsh on clutter, quality of life

Merlin Mann — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:26:32 -0500

Oprah’s Clutter Man: “It’s Never About the Stuff”

Clean Sweep’s Peter Walsh (previously) has a new book out, and Mediabistro had the chance to chat with him while he was out promoting it.

While I wish Peter had held out for a more cromulent title (“Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?” Ouch.), I so admire this guy’s grip on what clutter does to your mind. Or at least what it does to mine.

Typically swell quote:

Our show was never about the stuff. I told the producers early on that you can only organize so many closets and garages before people lose their minds… We all have stuff. What we had to do was tell people’s stories through their stuff, and see them realizing what their relationship to the stuff had become.

and, later:

What is your vision for the life you want to live, and do your life choices reflect that vision? Specifically: Is your home a space for the life you want?

Ours is a culture based on the idea that whenever you run out of space, you should just pull up stakes and move five miles west. Then you can be happy. Is it any wonder that we seek organization rather than deletion as the solution to an overwhelming problem? Yeah, I think this goes well beyond not being able to find a business card in your junk drawer.

Capacity is only worth building when it’ll be used in the service of stuff you really want. Whether that’s calendar events, your Fabergé eggs, or those crusty Lean Cuisine plates from last summer, the quality of matter that you allow to stay anywhere in your life eventually starts rubbing off on everything it touches.

”More from Peter Walsh on clutter, quality of life” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 19, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Ask MeFi on sane solutions for book clutter

Merlin Mann — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 11:25:12 -0500

Advice for clearing literary clutter | Ask MetaFilter

There’s a thread on Ask Metafilter about book-centric clutter that’s getting lots of good comments right now. It started when matildaben asked for “practical and creative systems for reducing the number of books I own,” saying:

The vast majority of my possessions by weight and volume consists of books. I would like to develop a system for getting rid of them that will have a very practical, behavioral, methodical approach to the emotions that compel me to keep them…

The solutions people offer are thoughtful and suggest that many of the better ideas are coming from fellow bibliophiles who’ve struggled with The Book Problem.

Like several folks in the thread, I think this comment from occhiblu gets to the heart of what makes clutter such an emotionally complex problem:

On kind of a meta note: To some extent, I think de-cluttering involves recognizing that regret is part of life, and being OK with that. Yes, I’ve given away books that I now often wish I still owned. But I’ve also screwed up relationships, made iffy career choices, etc. — you suck it up and move on. If you try to cling to every single thing (material, spiritual, or emotional) that you might need one day in the totally hypothetical future, you’re going to end up bogged down in a lot of stuff.

Yep, that pretty much nails the problem and the cause for me.

Recap: Merlin’s “War on Clutter”

As it happens, I’m about to begin the next phase of My War on Clutter. If you’re in the same boat, here’s links to my articles from that series.

Unclutterer talks with “Clean Sweep” host, Peter Walsh (Series inspiration)
My War on Clutter (Series introduction)
My War on Clutter: Never “organize” what you can discard
My War on Clutter: The Tools to Purge BIG
My War on Clutter: Inspiration for Independence Day
Vox Pop: Converting clutter from trash to treasure

”Ask MeFi on sane solutions for book clutter” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on December 27, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Dick on Kipple

grant — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:59:50 -0500

Quote:

There's the First Law of Kipple... 'Kipple drives out nonkipple.'

...Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you to go bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up there is twice as much of it. It always gets more and more.

No one can win against kipple, except temporarily and maybe in one spot.
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick, 1968

I think kipple is the main problem with my computers. It’s not just adware (on the Windows box), but the weird little things that wind up in the nooks and crannies. Installers for demoware. Photographs of children. Zipfiles loaded with mp3s… of songs that I already have in other directories, or on other machines, or on CDs on the shelves on my walls.

It spills into my inbox - newsletters I should read, old notes to myself - and my bookmarks - links to sites I need to read sometime, or specific blog entries about things I need to know.

But it seems to be far worse physically. Notes, magazines, review copies of (fascinating) paperbacks, paper clips, address labels.

It's useful to me to think of this stuff not in an atomized way, as a million things to process, but as constituent parts of one thing: kipple. That way, I can actually start to act on it.

”Dick on Kipple” was written by grant balfour for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on December 13, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Why Are You Reading All That News?

wood.tang — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:41:54 -0500

When I wrote about my method for controlling RSS overload a couple weeks ago, 43 Folders user terceiro left a comment that put me in my place:

You’re feeling stress about your RSS feeds? Talk about self-created problems. The real solution to managing RSS feeds is to stop reading RSS feeds. It’s simple … when a purely optional “convenience” technology is causing stress, it’s time to re-evaluate at a pretty fundamental level.

I read this and thrashed and spluttered like Yosemite Sam for a while before I admitted it: he’s right. It is a self-created problem, and I need to understand what makes me feel the need to consume the equivalent of a Carnegie library every day, instead of just finding a more efficient way to choke it down.

When I read discussions about managing RSS and information overload, I tend to see three justifications for why people “need” to subscribe to 842 news feeds:

I want to stay informed about the world - Meaning, I never want to be one of those idiots on Jay Leno who can’t name the Vice President. I identify with this impulse the most strongly.
I need to for my job - Particularly for IT folk, usually along the lines of, “I need to stay on top of developments in programming/web design/cat herding so I can advance my career.”
I need to for my blog - As in, “I need to follow all these different feeds to find interesting stuff to pass along to my readers.” Everybody wants to be Jason Kottke or John Gruber.

After thinking about my own motivations and admitting that I’ve uttered all three of those at some point as well, my answer to every one would be, “Really?” Are you really going to miss that promotion if you didn’t hear about the JDK update the second it was released? Are you really going to lose readers if you don’t link to that third Boing Boing post? And are you really going to turn into a sheltered, mouth-breathing Epsilon if you happen to skip the news cycle one day?

For me, it’s always been a matter of identity. I like to view myself as an informed, plugged in, man of the digital world, and to be this person, I think I need to see all the latest news, comment on the hot blogs, post things on del.icio.us. That’s all fine and dandy if that’s the person I want to be, but within reason. I should know by now from experiences with other jobs, other vocations, and other vices, that if they start to cause me this kind of concern, something needs to change.

“The world won’t end without you knowing it. Trust me, your mom will call.”

This isn’t to say that we should all chuck our newsreaders and smash our TVs, but that we should, like terceiro said in that comment, keep a little perspective. In terms of those first two reasons above, we don’t give ourselves enough credit for being the smart, inquisitive people that we are. Even if you shut down the RSS reader for a few days, you’ll still know everything you need to know to do your job right. The fact that you possess such a powerful thirst for knowledge will cause you to absorb it passively wherever you go, from snatches of overheard conversations, TV, and radio. It will be enough until you have more time and energy to read it yourself. And the world won’t end without you knowing it. Trust me, your mom will call.

In regards to #3, we can also get a little full of ourselves at times. Despite wishful thinking, there aren’t many bloggers who would be missed if they took a day off here and there. Take this site for instance; I bet you didn’t even notice Merlin was gone. Unless it really is your job, you should probably pull up short when it starts to feel like one.

Here’s a suggestion: over the holidays when you’re traveling, or when things are slow because everyone else is traveling, remove yourself from the news cycle for a few days and see if you don’t shrivel up and die. Take long walks. Cancel something. And when you come back and open your newsreader again, hit that “Mark All as Read” button and start from scratch. I’ve started doing that 2-3 times a week now, and it feels glorious.

”Why Are You Reading All That News?” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on December 11, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Jacob Marley vs. Bob Marley: Shutting Out the Ghost of Music Past

wood.tang — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:32:10 -0500

In the few weeks since I wrote my first plea to trim the fat from your iTunes library, I’ve continued purging my own collection. On the first pass, I simply deleted the clearly objectionable stuff, things that I couldn’t understand what made me want to keep them in the first place. It was rather easy, and like I said, it slimmed my corpulent media collection by a third.

Now though, it’s getting down to brass tacks, and I’m making some hard decisions about what to keep. I don’t need to do this for disk space, mind you, but as I’ve been trying to do a better job of organizing all my music and video with smarter lists and ratings, I’ve come to a simple conclusion: even if I still think it’s good, I just have too much.

“A massive CD collection never felt like such a psychic burden as a massive iTunes library.”

Other than the cost of acquiring it and the physical space it consumed, a massive CD collection never felt like such a psychic burden as a massive iTunes library. Because what I listened to on CD was limited to what I consciously pulled off the shelf, years of questionable purchases and bands that didn’t age well never crashed my DJ party. They simply stayed on the shelf, collecting dust. But now that the booty bass novelty song that used to be so much fun back in college has just as good a chance of popping up on shuffle as “No Woman No Cry,” it comes back to haunt me like the Ghost of Music Past, with gold chains clanking around his neck instead of shackles.

I realize I can avoid this problem with more smart playlists and clever tagging (or simply hitting the skip button), but how many people have the time to give that kind of care and feeding to a 10,000-track library? I’m one of the most obsessive music collectors I know, and I don’t do it. The answer isn’t so much devising a better needle-retrieval system as it is creating a smaller haystack.

This whole purging process has made me realize how much my tastes have changed. My main test when deciding to keep a song/album/artist now is to ask: would I ever intentionally pick this out to play? If the answer is no, I dump it. It’s a much different answer than it was 10 years ago, and even if I used to blast the hell out of a certain song, if I can’t see myself reaching for it again, it’s time to move on.

This time around, I’m at least making a compromise by archiving the files instead of permanently deleting them (tip: tell iTunes to move them to the trash, then copy the files out of your trash bin before you empty it). It’s fun to reminisce sometimes, but it shouldn’t be that much work to sort out what your former self enjoyed from what you simply want to hear now.

”Jacob Marley vs. Bob Marley: Shutting Out the Ghost of Music Past” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 16, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Put Your iTunes Library on a Diet

wood.tang — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:24:42 -0400

My music buying habits have slowed considerably since my college days, when I’d rush down to the music store every Tuesday and spend every penny I hadn’t guzzled through a beer bong the previous weekend, but I still managed to amass a rather prodigious CD collection. When I got a Mac and an iPod, this turned into a rather prodigious iTunes library, and quickly became a major thorn in my side.

Having suffered through a couple hard drive crashes, upgrades, and subsequent backing and re-backing up lately, I’ve really been feeling the weight of that 100+ GB media millstone around my neck. I felt so great when I ripped that last CD and put all those unsightly jewel cases into storage, thinking it would simplify my life. Instead, it just created bigger headaches.

I know, I know, there are a bazillion ways I can slice and dice my iTunes library, storing it on different drives, shunting the videos off to a server, pimping out my machines with terabyte drives, etc, but it begs the question: do I really need all that crap in my life?

I finally started doing something about it by ordering what I called D-Day II. My D-Day I happened in college when someone swiped a CD wallet full of about 50 discs, the first major casualties to my music collection. The irony is that while my renter’s insurance paid me a pretty good settlement, I only repurchased about half of what I lost, and those were the supposed good albums that I was carrying around in my car all the time. It should have taught me the lesson back then that when it comes to buying music, we all suck.

So D-Day II involved combing through my iTunes library, deleting all the music I knew that not only would I never listen to again, but would probably embarrass me if it popped up in a party shuffle. Face it, as we get older, our tastes change. All those middling, B-list albums I bought based off recommendations from Yo! MTV Raps or three-star ratings in Rolling Stone? Gone. The 90% filler tracks on albums I basically bought for one good song? Gone. It was surprising how much junk I was toting around; after one pass, without making any really tough calls, I slimmed my iTunes library by a third.

And don’t get me started with video. I haven’t even bought that many TV shows or movies from iTunes, but I can already see it’s going to cause problems. Once my son passes his Dora phase, it’ll be adios, Swiper, no swiping my hard drive space. And as much as I loved those seasons of Weeds, I can’t see myself ever watching them again, so if push comes to shove, Nancy and Conrad will have to go too.

I understand some of you may not have the guts to delete this stuff completely, but do yourself a favor and move the files to an external disk. Then put it away, mark down the date, and if a year later you haven’t touched it, delete that thing and use it for porn again like it was meant to be. If you’re having trouble getting started, Merlin posted some good tips about using smart playlists to identify the lame stuff.

Smart people like Peter Walsh are making a career out of helping us purge our physical junk, but we neglect our computer junk and end up with digital rec rooms stuffed full of bad 311 albums and box sets of Fastlane. What’s the worst that can happen anyway? You’ll have to buy a few albums again? Trust me, you won’t even miss them.

”Put Your iTunes Library on a Diet” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 15, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"