3 ms·

The Economics of Tidying Up

29 points by efm 11y ago

jhallenworld 11y ago
My experience is that a large fraction of creative people are basically lazy slobs. What can be done? A professor I know installed two dishwashers in his apartment: one for dirty and one for clean. This seems awesome, but it's certainly tricky to make it really work: You need to limit yourself to only one load of dishes. You can get into the situation where you have two washers with clean dishes. You either have to mark one of them as dirty and re-clean those dishes, or ugh, sweep the clean dishes into one washer. Also pots never fit.
- rabboRubble 11y ago
  That seems entirely doable. I've wanted two silverware baskets. One for the holding the clean utensils outside of the washer, and one to be in the dish washer to receive the dirty. Pots absolutely fit. The only pots and pans that don't go in the washer are non-stick. Everything else, including the jumbo soup pots fit. Not much else does along with the pots, and I don't care because I'm not washing a pot by hand. As an aside, I actually finished up Kondo-izing my apartment about 2 months ago. I am working on selling the items that were too valuable to simply throw away. Very nearly close to being "finished".
- kbob 11y ago
  If you never cook, you never wash pots.
cantrevealname 11y ago
Obligatory link to Paul Graham's article on the same issue: http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html Quote: "I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what's around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting." You need to de-clutter to think better. It is certainly true for me.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
hanniabu 11y ago
A good organizer is a hoarder. It's better to take a good at everything around, go category by category, and get rid of everything you don't need. Save nothing for those 'what if' scenarios that never come. Say goodbye to momentos that serve no purpose. If you feel joy when holding or looking at it, I would say that serves a purpose, but that's a fine line and easy to cross by putting everything in that category. Get together everything you're getting rid of and have a yard sale. Anything you don't sell, drop off what you can at a goodwill and throw the rest out. You'll feel a huge weight lifted off your shoulders when done, a weight you didn't even know was there when you started.
adamio 11y ago
Japanese manufacturing calls this "5S" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S_(methodology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S_(methodology)

29 points by efm 11y ago

My experience is that a large fraction of creative people are basically lazy slobs. What can be done? A professor I know installed two dishwashers in his apartment: one for dirty and one for clean. This seems awesome, but it's certainly tricky to make it really work: You need to limit yourself to only one load of dishes. You can get into the situation where you have two washers with clean dishes. You either have to mark one of them as dirty and re-clean those dishes, or ugh, sweep the clean dishes into one washer. Also pots never fit.

rabboRubble 11y ago
That seems entirely doable. I've wanted two silverware baskets. One for the holding the clean utensils outside of the washer, and one to be in the dish washer to receive the dirty. Pots absolutely fit. The only pots and pans that don't go in the washer are non-stick. Everything else, including the jumbo soup pots fit. Not much else does along with the pots, and I don't care because I'm not washing a pot by hand. As an aside, I actually finished up Kondo-izing my apartment about 2 months ago. I am working on selling the items that were too valuable to simply throw away. Very nearly close to being "finished".
kbob 11y ago
If you never cook, you never wash pots.

cantrevealname 11y ago

Obligatory link to Paul Graham's article on the same issue: http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html Quote: "I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what's around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting." You need to de-clutter to think better. It is certainly true for me.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

hanniabu 11y ago

A good organizer is a hoarder. It's better to take a good at everything around, go category by category, and get rid of everything you don't need. Save nothing for those 'what if' scenarios that never come. Say goodbye to momentos that serve no purpose. If you feel joy when holding or looking at it, I would say that serves a purpose, but that's a fine line and easy to cross by putting everything in that category. Get together everything you're getting rid of and have a yard sale. Anything you don't sell, drop off what you can at a goodwill and throw the rest out. You'll feel a huge weight lifted off your shoulders when done, a weight you didn't even know was there when you started.

adamio 11y ago

Japanese manufacturing calls this "5S" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S_(methodology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S_(methodology)