Two examples:
1) I sold my car, now I take the bus most places. I no longer have to concern myself with the price of gas, shopping for car insurance, oil changes, random breakdowns. (Well, buses break down, so I wait an additional 15 minutes for another bus. Try getting a tow truck in 15 minutes.) Life is actually simpler and in a way, less stressful.

2) I bought a piece of crap pottery wheel for $16. I used it, I made a pot, it was fun. Now I’m done with it, but it’s still fully functional. I don’t want to store it, I know I’ll never use it again. I don’t want to throw it away, what a waste. I don’t want to return it; it just feels immoral. It’s been on the Free Stuff of Craiglist for a couple days now, no serious takers. What the heck! At some stage it’s easier to just rent stuff or not buy it. I almost regret buying it.

Thanks Jacob!

The comments are very interesting as well. A lot to think about.

Mike

There are also the factors of money and the environment when it comes to stuff, but they’re obvious.

@Jakob, re 2: lol Yeah, I was probably way too mind-numbingly lazy between highschool and uni…
However, I’m fairly sure that most people (not you!) are way lazier than they could be and that the IQ (and skills in general) of most people is much less than what they’re potentially capable of. Like getting rid of fat, the answer to increasing skills and IQ is simple but painful: lots of exercise and effort. Easy for people to understand but not accept.

@Jakob, again: lol Great cartoon, and spot on, especially right now for me, squirming away at a Banff workshop this week. At least it’s easier to squirm together with other squirmers than to squirm alone in an easy crowd

I think he’s got a shot. If he can get the thing published while the economy is still in the toilet, I think that’s only going to help with finding a receptive audience.

Jacob the bestselling author, coming to an Oprah book club near you:)

Compared to computers wetware is utterly pathetic, something of the order of 100 bits/second. This means that brain wiring is far superior to anything found in a computer; computers now being about as intelligent as insects.

@physimatics – … hehe and in physics, we call that factor “cheating”.

@Britz again?! (Aren’t you supposed to be working?). This cartoon is for you (and me): http://xkcd.com/602/ Normal people (if any normal people see the link) wouldn’t relate (I checked). Anyway, the difference between math/phys and computer science is interesting. Consider the TeX book by Donald Knuth. This book is the most painful thing I have ever read. He is all over the place, I can’t find anything. Clearly we think and organize our thinking in very different ways. Somewhere (maybe in another book) he mentions that he has no problem describing the (identically) same thing in five (slightly) different ways (and usually in different places too). This is opposite to physics which would describe slightly different things (inductively) in the same way.

@Debbie M, brauhster – I’m saying to design the system of parts and connections to solve the problem optimally. Such a system does not necessarily have the fewest parts possible. If you have two parts, you can make one two-part connection. If you have three parts, you can make three two-part connections (like the sides in a triangle) and one three-part connection. If you have four-parts, you have 6 two-part, 4 three part, and 1 four-part. If well thought out (in advance) this gives you a lot of flexibility compared to a simple system with fewer parts, where you have to devise new solutions on the spot. The problem in most designs is the tendency to increase parts without increasing connections. This was all very abstract. Replace parts with pieces of clothes and connections with outfits for an application.

@Kevin W – Yes, indeed. I have had my own problems selecting proper blog categories as the blog evolved. It is not an easy task.

@Robyn – Well, this blog is all about taking something very simple and making it very complex. Humans love that kind of stuff. For another example of overcomplexifying a simple problem, see the popular discussion on exactly how big one’s “emergency fund” should be.

less stuff = less to organize and one gets to move on to other things in life.

or perhaps I’m missing something.

I think library science addresses the same sort of thing, but from the perspective of physical objects and human beings.

I thought that downsizing was your 1st choice. Am I misunderstanding the quote aboue?

Back to the point of your post, I agree. It would be easier to find things in my closet if I got rid of all the things I’m not using and moved all my rarely used things elsewhere. And even if I have way too much crammed into my closet, then knowing that all my blazers are together and that all the black ones are on black hangers makes it very easy for me to find a black blazer that is no longer showing in the front. Especially if I have enough light.

So are you trying to say to downsize if you have to, but also to try to be creative about “increasing the organizing methods”? If so, did you have any specific examples in mind?

A corollary is to use organizing methods that make sense to you even if they don’t make sense to other people if they don’t need to make sense to other people. The obvious example is how you organize your music. Is it alphabetical by artist (easy for anyone to deal with) or is it organized by period, mood, color, medium, or some other attribute(s) (see the movie “High Fidelity” for a good description of this–and also it’s quite a fun movie).

Another example is spices (see the book or movie “The Accidental Tourist” for an example). after trial and error what works best for us is to put all the spices normally used for sweet things (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, vanilla) together on the top shelf, and then alphabetize the rest except with all the peppers (black pepper, lemon pepper, chili powder, chipotle chili powder) together in the “p” section and all the salts (seasoned salts, salt substitutes) together in the “s” section. This isn’t confusing to us, even when using a “sweet” seasoning for a savory dish. Making separate categories for things like Italian spices didn’t work for both of us, though.

Hmm, you could also do a downsize/organize combination. Like when I first come to work, I catch up on my e-mails. So that’s like downsizing my duties during e-mail time.

When physicists try to predict gravity the majority of the time they use Newtonian mechanics. Only when a very high order of accuracy is needed will a more complex framework be used. An example would be calculating the precession of Mercury or finding the effects of relativity on time in a GPS unit.

In the event that a system is too complex one can always apply a factor to the problem to account for the error. In engineering we call it a factor of safety.

I hope this is helpful.