Organized Chaos

In response to this post by Josh, I must make some points about our contrasting choice of lifestyles. He notes that he lost his razor even though he keeps a 'clean ship' and organizes his belongings. I contend that this is why he lost it. People lose things always. Its human nature. If you have a perfectly organized system, and one thing is lost, the organization is now totally invalid, because the reality of the room doesn't match your preconception. Where do you look? Where do you even start looking? If its not where its supposed to be, you are out of places to look, and now you have to just paw around blindly. My method is to keep my areas in a state of dynamic, quasi-ordered chaos. Not filthy, by any stretch, but things are scattered around, or in little piles. Sometimes I have to look around for a minute to find something, but I almost never actually lose things. The reason is that I'm accustomed to hunting for things. Years of living in this state has given me a very keen awareness of my habits concerning placement of objects. There are places I set things down, nooks and crannies to search, drawers I commonly use, etc. If I don't remember exactly where something is, I just make a standard and efficent sweep through the house, and invariably turn up the missing object. Keep an organized house, and you can find your things for now, but learn to hunt, and you'll never be lacking! Or maybe I'm just rationalizing my disorganization by desperately groping for logical connections. I hope you find your razor Josh!

4 Responses to “Organized Chaos”

  1. on 04 Oct 2002 at 7:33 am Jim

    I’m a firm believer in natural organization. Things naturally place themselves in chronological order. The longer it has been since you’ve seen something, the deeper it will be in the piles. Depending on your memory, you must to return the pile to as close to the original state as possible, or realize that the last time you saw a specific object was when you were looking for something else. Of course the worst thing that can happen is for someone to mess with the natural balance by trying to find “a place” for something.

  2. on 04 Oct 2002 at 6:41 pm Mom

    Everything in it’s pile…and every pile in it’s place.

  3. on 06 Oct 2002 at 4:43 pm tenseone

    I still haven’t found it, and during this time I have cleaned my house twice.

    !!!

  4. on 07 Oct 2002 at 11:43 am Sam

    I’m sorry you haven’t found your razor yet. good luck!