commandments of clutter - triage. transcribe. ?

[psocoptera]

Trying to sort through pile of old papers. Argh. A few things are fairly clear - play programs, ball booklets, they're over and done, to be saved (or not) as a record and memento. The rest is a great heap of incompleteness... reviews for restaurants never visited, opening paragraphs of stories never written, song lists for mixes never made. Those NYC maps I might want next time I'm in NYC. What do I *do* with that stuff? I hate to give up on the potential each paper represents - that fic (I still could write!), that restaurant (might be really good!). I also don't want to end up mummified in an accretion of little scraps of paper I might someday act on. If I file them, they're nearly as lost... files are like a dead space, an archive. If I let my desk stay buried under them that chokes off a possible active space where things could get done.

I don't know if it would really help or not, but I want a catchy slogan for reducing clutter. Like how reducing waste has "reduce reuse recycle". So far, I have come up with "triage" and "transcribe" for a parallel slogan. ("Transcribe" since I think I'd rather have eight zillion little text documents than the corresponding pieces of paper... they're lighter, for one thing.)

Can anyone think of a good third? Do you think the "3 Rs" are actually useful in motivating individual behavior as opposed to, like, corporate awareness? Does a good anti-clutter meme have the potential to, say, help my mom clean the house? Or me? (I'm kind of picturing a logo, too... some kind of triangle with arrows converging on one of the points to imply shrinking, maybe.)

Comments

[glassonion]

Hrm, how about "tether", i.e. group things together (by putting them in folders or just putting rubber bands around them or putting them on the correct shelves or whatever)?

[irilyth]

I like "reduce, reuse, recycle" in part because it reminds me that reducing and reusing are even better ways to conserve than recycling.

I was going to suggest transcribing as a way to deal with those little slips of paper. I do indeed have eight zillion little text files cluttering up my computer, but at least they don't make it any harder to move. :^)

triage, transcribe

[eastgategirl.livejournal.com]

Triage, transcribe, t(h)row it out. If you came from Brooklyn, that's how you'd pronounce it...

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

I think you want triage, transcribe, trash.

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

And I often find that the transcriptions can be combined, so that there are only, say, half a zillion little text files. Or in some cases just fewer pieces of paper -- I did that with all the phone numbers in my wallet at one point, putting them all on a single little card, and it made it much better, while still preserving the convenience of having all of them in my wallet.

My method for maps is that if they were free, they'll be free again next time, and it's easier to get a new one than to find the old one, so I tend to recycle them. If they weren't free, I try to keep them with other travel stuff in the hope that I _will_ be able to find them the next time.

And I also agree about files being a dead space -- the only time I actually look in them is if I'm reminded of something that's in there and I need to go find it. Maybe when I move next time I'll manage to clear them out a bit...

[franzeska]

"Toss" also has potential.

[elysdir.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking the other day about how useful the slogan "reduce, reuse, recycle" is -- I recycle all the time, but the slogan reminds me to reuse things, and once in a while I even remember the reduce part, at times and in contexts when I might not remember without the slogan.

To come up with an equivalent slogan for reducing clutter, I'd say you should start by defining the steps. I like people's suggestions for things like "Trash" or "Toss," but it seems to me those may be equivalent to "Triage". It seems to me the process goes something like this:

1. Decide which things are important. (Triage.) (Implicit step: if they're not important, throw 'em out.)

2. If they are important but don't need to exist in the form in which they exist, convert them into a more compact/portable/searchable form where they can coexist with other items. (Transcribe.) (Implicit step: after transcribing, throw 'em out.)

3. If they are important *and* need to exist in their current form, then file them somewhere where you'll be able to find them again. (sTore? inTact? accumulaTe? caTegorize? :) ) I suppose you could levy some sort of penalty against yourself for every item in this category (Tariff).... :) It helps a lot if you can follow the "place for everything and everything in its place" dictum here -- filing cabinets are good things, and I have a shelf of a bookcase devoted mostly to maps, so whenever I'm going on a trip, I go to that shelf and grab the right maps. Of course, sometimes I neglect to put 'em back afterward, which means I end up having to go to AAA to pick up a new map after all. But often it's helpful.

Side note: at such time as you have OS X, I recommend DevonTHINK as the place to transcribe stuff. Great note-taking and organizing software, very useful for storing snippets of info, fits my head *way* better than other computerized approaches I've tried (such as storing notes in Eudora, storing notes as individual files/clippings on the desktop, or storing notes in Stickies or Scrapbook). And if you have a scanner, you can scan things that aren't plain text (such as doodles that you don't care about preserving in original form) and store the resulting images or PDF files in DevonTHINK, along with text notes about them for searchability. Good stuff.

(There are a bunch of other note-taking apps out there that may be more to your liking, and/or may run under OS 9; at least one review I read said that DevonTHINK just didn't fit the reviewer's head, while a couple of the other apps did. But for me it's the other way around -- this is the first app I've seen that's handled this stuff the way I want it to.)

[nearly-there.livejournal.com]

I agree that throwing things out seems to be bound up in "triage"... and as such, I lovelovelove carpenter's suggestion of "tether." Love it.

[tapas.livejournal.com]

The clutter experts on TV (I watch Clean Sweep sometimes on TLC, motivates me to tackle my own endless piles of Stuff) have a routine which goes something like:

1) When did I last use this?
2) When do I expect to use this again?
3) How easy would it be for me to replace this in the unlikely event I did at some point in the future want to use it again?

This isn't designed so much for paper things, but some of the same ideas apply. If you can't remember when you last used the info on this scrap of paper, you have no concrete use for it in the future, and you could reasonably easily find the information in, for example, a web search, then throw it out. They make exceptions for things that have sentimental value, but only if you have them in some kind of display unit where you can see them and appreciate them. Newspaper from the day you were born in frame on wall of den = sentimental value. Newspaper from the day you were born sitting in box in basement waiting to mildew = junk. Intellectually I agree with this, but emotionally I can't do it. I've got 20 or 30 heart shaped muffin tins that belonged to my grandmother. I've had them over 8 years and I've never used them. I have no real plans to use them in the future. But yet, I'm having a hard time letting go of them even though I have other kitchen things from my grandmother that I do use on a daily basis.

[stowaway-geek.livejournal.com]

For filing, I really like those hanging file folders. Possibly in the plastic box from Staples, if you don't have a file cabinet.

I pretty much just have an envelope called "nostalgia" for each year, and toss small stuff into them. Ditto "letters" and "taxes". Seems to basically work, although I'm probably saving too much.

[cereph.livejournal.com]

i'd pick up one of those cheap expanding file-folder things (unless you actually have a file cabnit) then you can have a file for each of those categories.

as far as the main question....i'll have to think about it.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I have *two* file cabinets... what did you think my desk was made from? ::grin:: (The desktop is a big coated particleboard thing.) Having file cabinets and being good about filing things are very different ::grin::.