Sunday, December 24, 2017

Don't go crazy with organization

This is my box of fasteners. Once upon a time I had some of these in the tool box, some in the milk crate, some in the cabinet and some in a shopping bag stuffed in a door pocket. I gathered them all up and dumped them here. All my fasteners and hardware in one place—until I mess things up sometime in the future.

Lou offered me this compartmented box so I could have most of my fasteners sorted by size and type. That would make sense if I frequently needed nuts and bolts. But I don’t. So sorting them would be wasted time. An hour or so of organization now versus a minute or less poking around in the box on the rare occasions I actually needed something.

I believe we should be only as organized as necessary to function on a daily basis. More than that and we end up servants to the organizational system rather than the system serving us.

True, I occasionally forget where I put something. What I need is one place to put all the things I won’t be using for a long time instead of several special places that made perfect sense at one time, but the sense of which has been long forgotten. I should sort them by frequency of use rather than, say, similarity to other items. It might be a small hassle digging through off-season clothing, tax papers, spare bulbs and owner’s manuals until I find, say, the stapler, but it’s better than moving the stapler out of the way each time I need a pencil or Post-it note. The long-term storage items could be shoved way under the bed and ignored instead of taking up room that could be better used by things I need often.

I think the key to “a place for everything and everything in its place” is accepting that the place for some things is that random pile over there.

6 comments:

  1. You are moving toward a great arrangement I think.

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  2. at our place the boxes of accumulated odds and ends are labeled as "elsewhere" as in the belong elsewhere rather than in the organized storage places.

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  3. When deciding where to store something, I have learned to ask myself "Where would I look for this?" instead of "Where should I put this?" It helps me actually find things since they are now in the place I would look for them.

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  4. I must have a problem, I actually enjoy sorting through stuff like that.Am I OCD? Take care out there, lots of crap going around.

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  5. You're dead on. The super-organization makes sense when you're workin' with the materials every day and want to find things quick. But for once in a blue moon projects? Then it's overkill.

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  6. "....the place for some things is that random pile over there." I like it.

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