After having read Unhip's and Mega's blog entries, I realized, yet again, that I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about planning and being organized and still, amazingly, I'm neither a great planner, nor very organized.
Prime example: my clothes. I used to simply wear everything once and then throw it into the laundry but now I don't feel it's ethical. For one, we now continually have a mountain of laundry (three kids) which is mostly taken care of by my wife and I feel guilty about adding to that mountain. So, when it seems prudent (no stains, not too wrinkly), I rehang and wear again. But this causes a huge problem because I can't remember what I wore the last time I taught my T-TH class or even the day before. Recently, as I realized I was spending 5-10 minutes each morning trying to make sure I didn't wear the same shirt twice in a row, I created an organizational system. And there-in began my problems.
I confidently said to myself, "From here-to-the-future, I will place my worn shirts to the left end of my row of hanging shirts and my problems will be solved." Unfortunately this organizational strategy is similar to my counterintuitive tent erecting problems (see earlier blog): I tend to forget if I'm supposed to put my worn shirts to the left or to the right. Putting them to the right would make more sense because they would then be closer to the hamper which would then symbolically represent their slow descent to uncleanliness. But that's a problem too because after I place a shirt on the right (next to the hamper) it will slowly move to the left, away from the hamper, as I wear and place other shirts on the left. Damn, now the worn shirt is moving away from the hamper which doesn't make sense. On the other hand, I might decide it makes more sense to place them on the left, thus creating a mneumonic device albeit a fairly complex one: hanging my shirts on the left is counter-intuitive because the left side is the furthest away from the hamper and from the symbolic sense of dirtiness. But on further consideration, placing a worn shirt on the left is completely accurate in that now the worn shirt will slowly proceed towards the hamper (on the right) as I wear more shirts and place them on the left. Did you follow that? I'm not sure I did and it's my closet.
Adding another wrinkle, pun intended, my system still isn't completely rational because, while I usually wear a shirt twice and then wash it, I am sometimes, if I get real lucky and have a light day, willing to wear a shirt three times. But this third wearing causes problems because now I have a twice-worn shirt sitting next to (assuming I'm placing them on the left end of the row) a once-warn shirt which are both, now, slowly moving towards the hamper. And this is the story of my life: how will I keep track of which shirt is once or twice-worn and how will I make sure a shirt is never worn a fourth time? At some point, my nose will announce the need to wash but then this might be at 6:30am when I'm rushing to get out to work and trying not to wake-up my wife. At this point, I will SUMB F-it, this ain't working. The next day I will just dump the whole damn lot of 'em in the dirty clothes. I'm slowly losing faith that there is any holy grail of organizing principles out there. I'm cursed to live in chaos.
2 comments:
wow! none of that even made sense to me. at the moment, I'm taking a break from cleaning out a cabinet of junk (woo-hoo, fall break). part of the task is shredding a bunch of old bill receipts. once, several years ago, some company questioned whether I had in fact paid my monthly bill. I actually didn't know, because I'm horrible at keeping financial records. so, my genuis solution was to write the check # and pay date on every bill I sent, so I would at least be able to confirm payment to myself. (and I actually saw someone in a coffee shop employing this same system, so it's not just me). the problem with the system is that I end up with stacks of paper that are essentially useless, which leads to another step of eventually having to purge them from my life. ugh, I hate trying to be organized.
I agree with Ron--or rather, I will repeat his concept with a different emphasis: chaos is our natural state. My dad's a physicist, and I took the second law of thermodynamics to have a poetic significance: the universe tends to disorder.
By the way, financial life is maybe one of the worst areas of disorder for me. So I hear you, lis, about the bills and the dates, etc. What a pain in the ass.
As for your shirt system, Ron, whew. I followed you, but I was scared while doing so.
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