Clean - 5

Keeping shit clean is hard, sometimes agonizingly so. Despite my consistent motivation to keep my living spaces (physical and digital) organized, things always manage to spiral out of control. Sometimes it takes a few weeks, and sometimes only hours, but the ultimate result remains unchanged.

I'm almost absolutely certain that the problem is the sheer amount of stuff that I keep around, a large part of which is stuff that I don't often use but keep for that one use case or for sentimental value.

In my room, for example, I have a lot of objects that don't really need to be kept around. In my desk I keep old electronics that I might use at some point for messing around with software. In my closet there are heaps of clothes that I don't wear very often but don't feel like getting rid of, and a few old sentimental shirts like my elementary school soccer jersey. On my bed there are five pillows - only one of which I use for sleeping (I have to throw the rest on the floor and clean them up in the morning) - along with a blanket and a quilt. On the digital side, the Google Sheets app makes for a great example of this issue: I use it about twice per year, since I only use the google suite for school and rarely need to edit my spreadsheets on the go, but I swear that the moment I delete it always somehow ends up becoming the moment I need it.

Suddenly it makes sense why my room is disorganized for so much of the time; it's overfilled, in the sense that it holds more than it needs to. The same goes for my phone: 129 applications are hard to organize well. Logically, if I had less stuff, I would have a cleaner environment. Of course things would get messy eventually as I bring in more unnecessary items, but nonetheless I find it difficult to imagine a scenario in which my room looks cluttered when all that's in it is minimal clothing, a bookshelf, a computer, and my phone. That's a dream that I'll never achieve, as I will always have other things I can't or won't move out, but like with utopian societies, it's there to critique the present, not to help me fantasize about the future.

Getting rid of things is easier said than done. Maybe it gets easier the more I do it; maybe not. Either way, there's clear and obvious reason for me to practice. Further experimentation required.