Consolidation

In the midst of cleaning and organizing, I couldn’t help but think back to this post from Tynan on “consolidation,” a term he uses for these periods of touching up those minor pieces after the big steps are taken. Throughout the process, I’ve been hit with moments of thinking if the current change is helpful or even necessary. This week, I’ve somewhat taken a step back and considered what areas are actual problems, and what do I see as simply something that could be done.

A Place for Everything and Everything in It’s Place

The above heading was an often spoken line of my late grandfather. He was certainly settled into his home, having lived there for many decades. Rooms changed purpose and people came and went, but he seemed to always have a good idea of where anything was at a given time. This was due to everything having a given space where it belonged.

Following this adage is what has been giving me a lot of grievance lately. I have places for some things but not all, and I often leave things out of place, making them a struggle to find. I have what are basically four junk drawers with their own categories in a sense, but it can still be difficult to sift through it all.

When it comes to those things which do have a given space, many are in places I do not like. A number of items have simply found there way into a pile on or next to my desk. I once kept some degree of organization, but lately it feels like I’ve been leaving too many items out to “go through later” and that time never seems to arrive. A focus for this coming week will certainly be to sort through these items.

Stagnation and Distractions

After settling into a space, be it physical or mental, it can be easy to fall into a standard. Whether it’s the first layout of a room or the method to go about a given task, we can settle into the early standards set.

Often as we carry about the day, we can let slide those little things that we don’t have the time to sort out this moment. I went through this a bit with my recent automation trial, but what I’m thinking of now are more so the things that are left behind.

In an attempt to battle some of this stagnation, I did something to betray my minimalist senses and bought a few things. In this case it was things to improve my space, so I think it’s justified. I bought a few picture frames to finally hang up some pictures and posters that have long been sitting in a folder for a few years. I also bought a standing drying rack after using a shoe rack that hangs on the back of a door to dry clothes for once again several years.

Though this isn’t as big of a step as I took a few months ago when I bought a new desk and bed. These two items fundamentally changed my living space. I’m still not sure if I’m completely happy with the layout of the room, but the alternatives seem less ideal. In the coming days, I think I’ll test some minor changes to the current setup, different angles or slight movement of furniture to see if it improves the space or not.

While recent changes were physical, a focus I had for this week was to work on cleaning up and organizing my files on Google Drive. I have a variety of files, documents, and folders that house a range of information that I use across my life. From small projects to quick notes to personal documents a lot of files are sitting in the cloud. Some I use pretty frequently, while others are stored for backup or as part of what will hopefully be future endeavors.

After beginning to move around some files and rename folders, I began to think how useful it was spending the time on that task when there were many more important ones to be done. That is some trouble I am having so far is determining what priority should I focus on these small consolidation tasks. The gist is that they the small tasks that get pushed aside, but in this case it feels like I have so many that some feel more critical than others.

For the coming week, my plan is to pick one item each day to complete. I’m hoping this will resolve the trouble I’m having of choice. With that I’m going to start up a list of what to begin.