“My house is a squash and a squeeze.”
A little old lady
My collaboration with Quentin Blake(’s book entitled Drawing for the Artisically Undiscovered!)
Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” I have a new understanding to this belief (let’s call it Morelle’s Interpretation) simply goes “stuff expands as much as it can”.
I discovered this when confronted my the shambolic state of my garden shed. Overflowing with tools, pots, children’s toys…stuff. It was unworkable, unsightly, unmanageable and irritating. The shed sits to the side of the house not doing very much but if you ever wanted a light bulb, screwdriver or lawn mower you’d have to clamber over half filled paint pots, bang your knee on the edge of a rusty old bar-b-que and probably hit your head on a mop bucket daringly hanging from a nail. Its just something small like a screw driver, did it require a big tidy up? The mess in the shed was an irritation. Small things make a big difference.
Our loft was creaking with more stuff. Old schoolbooks, baby toys we won’t be needing again. Remnants of fabric. Records that haven’t been played for 5 years (I sold my turntables 2 years ago!) and more, and more and more….stuff accumulated from 30 years of my life and inherited from my own parents loft.
Just a few bits and bobs from our loft
Our loft was full because that’s how much space we had to fill. A friend recently said to me ‘if it goes in the loft, it means you don’t need it’ I had to pause and think. Its true, if you don’t use it you don’t need it. Someone else can use it. The only value would be sentimental. Mental attachment to inanimate objects.
To the lounge. Probably over 700 compact discs gathering dust, unplayed. We use iTunes. Even my 6 year old Ella knows how to search for music using iTunes. We don’t need the CD’s and the space they take up unbalanced the room in a way we never realised until they were gone. What were they on display anyway?
The dining room. We had a nice old upright piano that our neighbours gave us for ‘free’ when they moved. It was good to begin with, we got some value from it but the cost was a low level amount of irritation – the piano had to accommodate the only space our bookcase the bookcase was meant to be. Any sound noise including traffic sounds would resonate and that monster was brewing decades of dust inside. So the bookcase went in to my bedroom.
The book cases and some other stuff…
I think a bedroom should be a place to relax. Under the bed we had a table, an ironing board and some other unused junk. Stuff that we ‘might’ have used one day. First off, the ironing board is a work tool, I think work tools should be banished from a place of rest. Stuff that we might use is the problem. You hear yourself saying ‘I could use this one day – keep it’. Before you know it your house is crammed with junk you might use one day, if, when that day comes about you actually remember where you put it! Your head is filled with remembering you’ve got this junk some place. A bookcase along one wall. An Ottoman at the end of the bed – that I would always walk in to in the dark. Low-level irritants.
Removing hooks on the back of doors was surprisingly a major breakthrough overcoming clutter. Those little buggers attract much more that they were intended for. ‘In the wardrobe! You can’t expect me to put my dressing gown in the wardrobe!’ said my wife Susannah. Moments later she was in hysterics after realising what she had said. The hooks are gone and funnily enough the stuff has gone with them.
We moved in to our house 4 years ago with the contents from a 1 bedroomflat. Our stuff expanded to fill the space available.
The problem as I see it is that people get seduced by storage. ‘Storage Solutions’ IKEA call them. I say that storage is the problem . Remove the storage and the stuff has to dissipate to another storage receptacle. Preferably a charity shop or a dustbin.
Look at all this shit!
Throwing stuff in the dustbin gives a good sense of closure, the mind can focus on the present and future. I realised I had become the family archivist carrying a tonne of baggage and that was weighing me down.
We overcame the hoarding and scarcity mindsets we’ve inherited from our parents (who lived through rationing) we became like bulldozers. Piano gone, skip filled, 700 CD’s given to Barnardo’s disc drive, friends with children or expecting, or neighbours who are grandparents gratefully accepted our stuff – to them its gold. To us, its just stuff. They wanted to give us other stuff in reciprocation but we politely refused.
I tried this new philosophy of removing the storage on the micro level of my desk. I got rid of the pen tubs and shelving from my desk and the stuff had to find somewhere else to live. Like Parkinson’s Law states I had to distil what was essential and clear away all the useless pap. Ultimately I intend to get rid of my desk and just have a comfortable chair.
Its the small irritants that cause the greatest aggravation, drip drip, like Chinese water torture until its unbearable. Now there is a sense of calmness in our house which is very unusual especially with two young children.
Of course, all our bins are filled to the brim, they always are. Why don’t you check your pockets now? Are they filled with stuff? Will you really use all that stuff today?
Why not spend a couple of days getting rid of your mosquitoes? We shape the world around us, from then on it shapes us.
Tags: parkinsons law, spring cleaning
