Thanks for this post - it really strikes a chord with me at the moment. For the last couple of weeks I've been embarking (this is all embarking and little travelling, maybe) on a big clearout. So far I've filled 1.5 wheelie bins just with paper to recycle, emptied out from more than 90 plastic files - some work stuff, but mainly oddball projects conceived and abandoned over the years, research scribbles (unintelligible now), articles photocopied etc etc, all hoarded over years, in some cases as much as 25 years back to my early teens. Yikes. Despite all this, my study/home office still looks chaotic.
I've been reading stuff like Zen Habits (http://www.zenhabits.net) (though he is rather too pure and minimalist for my taste), and trying to change the way I think from 'I'd better squirrel this [1997 bank statement/sheet of terms and conditions/idea for a novel/third copy of a poem I wrote as a teenager/etc] away just in case' to 'Do I really need this? Did I really even know I still had it?'.
It's bloody hard, as I'm a natural hoarder, and books tend to remain sacredly beyond all this, apart from occasional minor sloughings. But at least I'm trying to do this before we end up moving house, rather than letting events take over and things just getting shoved into a box and moved on yet again.
I like the point "S" (Shereshevskii? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Shereshevskii)) makes about memories - but I'm hoping there's a balance. I'm trying to keep things that represent times and ideas and dreams past, without them turning into baggage, emotional sometimes, but mainly just baggage.
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I've been reading stuff like Zen Habits (http://www.zenhabits.net) (though he is rather too pure and minimalist for my taste), and trying to change the way I think from 'I'd better squirrel this [1997 bank statement/sheet of terms and conditions/idea for a novel/third copy of a poem I wrote as a teenager/etc] away just in case' to 'Do I really need this? Did I really even know I still had it?'.
It's bloody hard, as I'm a natural hoarder, and books tend to remain sacredly beyond all this, apart from occasional minor sloughings. But at least I'm trying to do this before we end up moving house, rather than letting events take over and things just getting shoved into a box and moved on yet again.
I like the point "S" (Shereshevskii? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Shereshevskii)) makes about memories - but I'm hoping there's a balance. I'm trying to keep things that represent times and ideas and dreams past, without them turning into baggage, emotional sometimes, but mainly just baggage.