2. Clothes, shoes, bags, etc. Because these are things that are worn or carried, people tend to grow fond of them. They don’t have a use-by date and they often last a very long time. One reason they can cause difficulties is a shortage of storage space. The problem becomes clear once your closet is full.
3. Leisure items such as videos and CDs. People like to keep these because they want ready access to particular films or music. But they’re difficult to store in a way that makes access easy. In this respect, they’re psychologically similar to objects in point 1, above.
4. Things with special emotional significance. There are a lot of these—not just obvious things like photos, presents, and birthday cards, but also, for example, clothes your mother made, toys the children no longer use, a television you bought when you were first married, or reference books you used when you were a student can be hard to dispose of, not so much for their information content as for the memories of your years of study.
5. Things it seems a waste to get rid of. Food is a typical example. It seems wrong to throw it away. Getting rid of expensive things also seems wasteful, for example branded shoes or designer clothing. People feel such things should be looked after. Books and presents can also can be classified in this way.
The hidden psychology of “discarding”
Survey respondents were asked to choose possible solutions from a prepared list for items they didn’t know what to do with. The most popular choice for both men and women was “discard.” The nature of the survey may have encouraged participants toward this response, but even so, they certainly seemed to feel that such things should be discarded if possible.
The second choice for women (selected by almost half) was solving the problem by developing better storage and organization skills. Perhaps this reflects the power of social assumptions about women and tidiness.
A lot of men, on the other hand, would like to solve the problem by moving to a bigger home. One can almost hear them sighing: “If only there was more room!” I understand how they feel, but it seems rather optimistic to suppose that a bigger place would look tidier. Women may think about expanding storage space, but they don’t appear to believe that a bigger house would solve the problem. This seems to be a difference between men and women.
In the survey, I asked people for associations with the Japanese word “suteru” (meaning discard, get rid of). This also revealed interesting psychological patterns. On the one hand there were associations like “feels good,” “decisive,” “new start,” “fresh,” “light,” “moving house,” “minimalist,” “simple life.” This must reflect the mindset of people who chose “discard” as the best solution to their clutter problems. On the other hand, there were associations such as, “It may be necessary one day,” “I might regret it,” and “organization.” Presumably, these people’s preferred solutions were better storage and organization methods. The unease reflected in these associations links to others such as “memory,” “attachment,” “goodbye,” “parting,” “woman,” “man,” “past,” “go,” “abandoning parents,” and “disappear.” I was surprised that a number of people mentioned an association with the historical practice of abandoning old people in the mountains. It is clearly a deep-rooted image.
I suppose it was natural that while many people thought of expressions that associate very directly with “discard”—“trash,” “trash bag,” “land-fill”—many others gave expressions that suggested ecological concerns: “waste,” “dioxins” “recycle,” “flea market,” “processing plant,” “pollute the world,” “perhaps someone could take it.”
BE BRAVE—GET RID OF THINGS
I hope that from the results of the survey you will have realized that while discarding seems simple enough at first glance, it does, in fact, involve quite complex psychology.
This is apparent in the word-association exercise above. Here, individuals often saw the act of “discarding” from different angles at the same time. For example, one said “a waste,” but also “feels good” and “decisive.” Another said “recycle” at the same time as “past” and “light.”
Sometimes, rather than struggle with this psychology it can seem easier to let things pile up. But that’s a delusion. Don’t be a dormouse, hiding in a hole in a tree among your leaves and nuts. Letting stuff pile up will only cause trouble in the end. Be brave and get rid of it.
PART ONE
You can master the art of discarding
Ten attitudes to help you get rid of things
1
DON’T KEEP IT “FOR NOW”
People who accumulate things are fond of saying “let’s just keep it for now” or “we’ll hang on to it for the time being.” But nothing’s going to change, so there’s no point in putting off the decision.
Danger items
People will keep anything “for now,” from information items (documents, magazines, flyers, junk mail, etc.) to food, clothes, gifts, furniture, and appliances.
When does it happen?
Hanging on to something “for now” is an easy way out, so we tend to do so in lots of different situations. Here are some examples:
SITUATION 1: READING THE NEWSPAPER IN THE MORNING
Full of flyers as usual. Mm… could be some useful information in this lot. Hey, this stuff looks cheap… I want a new computer. Ah, a sale at that posh department store… That reminds me—I haven’t got enough shirts for the warm weather. Well, I’m too busy to look at these now, but I can read them this evening when I get home. The wife’s not got a lot to do, so I dare say she’ll read through them all this morning. She’d better not throw them away. “Keep this pile for now, dear, till I can have a look at them.”
SITUATION 2: BACK FROM SHOPPING—YOU WANT TO PUT THINGS IN THE FRIDGE
What’s all this? How am I going to get my shopping in there? Well, I’m going to use it this evening anyway, so I suppose I’ll try to slip it in at the front. Oh dear, those jars at the back—where did they come from? I’ll have to sort all this stuff out. But I’ll leave it for now. Oh no! There’s no space for the natto! Perhaps it’ll squeeze into the vegetable compartment. Oh, look at that wilting spinach! Well, I’ve already decided what to have today… maybe we can have it tomorrow. I’ll keep it for the time being.
SITUATION 3: YOU GET A DELIVERY
A summer gift from Mrs. Tatsumi… Oh dear! More dried noodles! Never mind! Well, we won’t use them straight away, so I’ll put them in the cupboard. Ugh, the box won’t fit! Oh well, I can get rid of some of this packaging. Yes, that’ll do. Good, I’ll keep them for the time being.
SITUATION 4: BACK FROM A WEDDING
The couple has gone to the trouble of choosing individual presents for each of the guests… What have they given me? Well, that’s a surprise. Not quite my kind of thing. Can’t be helped. They’ll notice if they visit and it’s not on display. I’d better hang on to it for the time being.
SITUATION 5: YOU’VE BOUGHT A NEW LAMP
Yes, it’s a great design. Perfect for the room. Now, what shall we do with the rattan shade we’ve always had? It would be a waste to throw it out. It’s still in good shape. I like the design too in a way. Let’s keep it for now and maybe we’ll find a use for it.
SITUATION 6: YOU’VE JUST FINISHED A BUSINESS MEETING
That was a surprise! I never thought they’d send that many people. I was lucky to have enough business cards. But what about all the cards they gave me? I can’t even remember who was who. But I may as well keep them for the time being. And then there are all these documents… The contract’s gone through so it’s not my responsibility now—I won’t really be involved. But, I suppose I’d better keep the documents for now, just in case.
The “keep-for-now” mentality
I’m sure the situations above will be familiar to many readers. Let’s consider whether the characters involved have anything to gain from “keeping things for now.”
In Situation 1 we can imagine the flyers p
iled up on the dining table. When the husband comes home late from the office he’s going to be much more interested in having a bath and watching TV. His wife will say, “Are you going to read these?” and he’ll say, “Of course! I said I would, didn’t I?” He’ll then give them a quick glance, and that will be the end of it.
In Situation 2 the woman will take the jars out of the fridge some time later and be horrified to find the contents moldy. The spinach will wilt away in the vegetable compartment for another week, before finally being thrown out.
Situation 3 will be resolved in the end-of-year clean-up. “What’s this?” they’ll say, as they look in the cupboard. Then they’ll open the packaging to find the noodles rendered inedible by humidity.
The newlyweds in Situation 4 will never come round and their present will end up being put away somewhere. The old light shade in Situation 5 is destined to occupy the corner of a closet for years before finally being thrown away when the owners move, and the business cards in Situation 6 will just fill up the person’s card holder, making it irritatingly bulky, while the documents will lie at the back of a drawer, their purpose entirely forgotten.
The truth is that most of these items have been a nuisance from the moment they were received or replaced. They could have been thrown away immediately, but people don’t face up to that. They keep the item in question “for now,” only to persuade themselves sometime in the future that it should go: “Well, we kept it, but we didn’t use it, so…”
Slightly damaged items are often treated this way too—a teacup with a fine crack, a pen that doesn’t write very well, a blouse with a small stain… These are nuisance items as well, but it somehow seems a waste to get rid of them, so we hang on to them “for the time being.”
Things that are kept “for now” are in a kind of limbo, held back on the brink of becoming trash. “For the time being,” “for now” are just ways of escaping the act of disposal.
When something is actually necessary, the “for now” psychology does not come into play at all.
In a way the “keep-for-now” response is like the Recycle bin on a computer. If you send a document to the Recycle bin it’s no longer in front of you. But it hasn’t really disappeared. It’s still on the hard drive. It’s only when you “empty your bin” that you really get rid of the document and it’s deleted from your hard drive.
But there’s one big difference between a computer and the real world. A computer’s Recycle bin can fill up without using any physical space, and if you exceed capacity old files are automatically deleted. But in the real world, if you put something somewhere “for now” it will occupy that space until you finally get rid of it.
Think like this!
Don’t let the “for now” idea even enter your head. If you really want to look at a flyer, pick it up straight away. If you’re bothered by jars in the fridge, take them out immediately. If you receive a gift of food, take it out of its box and place it somewhere where it stands a chance of being eaten. Even if you’re unlikely to consume it now, take it out of the box anyway. The fancier the box, the more likely people are to leave the food inside, but if you take it out you’ll find you get an opportunity to eat it and share it.
People often feel it’s a waste to throw away lamps, appliances, or furniture, so they end up keeping them “for the time being.” But you must find another way out. Use second-hand shops or your network of friends. I’ll talk more about these later.
Documents, business cards, and magazines can be very difficult to deal with, but again, don’t just keep them “for now.”
The function of a business card is that it helps when you want to make contact with someone. There’s no point having the cards of lots of different people from the same department of the same company. And unless the name on the card means something to you, the chances of you ever having to contact the person in question are very slim. When you put documents or magazines away somewhere, ask yourself what exactly you want to keep them for. If you keep them for no particular reason, they’ll just get in the way and make it more difficult to find things that are genuinely important. If you’re going to keep them, have a clear reason for doing so. (I’ll say more about papers and documents under Attitude 7.)
2
AVOID “TEMPORARY” STORAGE—DECIDE NOW!
Things we decide to hang on to “for now” tend to have no clear potential use. Where we have a specific function in mind there’s a danger of allotting things a “temporary” or “provisional” home. And the problem then is that “temporary” often ends up permanent.
Danger items
Anything that we feel should be retained and organized—books, CDs, videos, documents; things that are stored, but at the same time used regularly—food, clothes, stationery, and other everyday items.
When does it happen?
It may be simplest to take some examples from the workplace.
Imagine a desk. You’ve allocated the side drawers as follows: top drawer—stationery; second drawer—PC equipment; bottom drawer—documents for retention. The wide drawer above your knees is for notebooks and work in progress.
But things defy this classification and start encroaching into areas they shouldn’t.
SITUATION 1: ON TOP OF YOUR DESK
On your desk there’s a pile of stuff you regard as current: documents relating to a plan in progress; journals you have to read; a weekly news magazine you bought yesterday. You’ve put them there together “temporarily.” You’ve just finished a meeting and decide to put the papers from that on the same pile—you may want them next week, so you think they might as well go there temporarily too. If you were to put them away, you might forget where you’ve put them.
SITUATION 2: YOU’VE COMPLETED A PROJECT
Recently, you’ve been working on a plan. You’ve done similar work in the past and so you took papers out of the old file and kept them on your project desk. Now it’s complete and responsibility is passing to someone else, so you think you’ll get rid of unnecessary papers. But the current documents are mixed up with old ones. If you throw the old report away, there’ll be no copy left. You don’t have time to sort through every single piece of paper, so as a “temporary” measure you put everything together in the old file.
SITUATION 3: SOMETHING INTERRUPTS YOUR FLOW
You’ve just printed out some presentation documents when something more urgent comes up. You slip the documents into a drawer “temporarily.” They’re not worth filing away yet, and you’re about to copy them anyway. Besides, you’ve kept them on the computer.
SITUATION 4: MISCELLANEOUS!
You have a lot of stuff that doesn’t fit neatly into your drawers’ allocations: a guarantee, a catalogue, some photographs, some cookies somebody gave you, a lighter, etc. You’re not sure where to put them, but there’s some space in the wide drawer above your knees so you shove them in there.
SITUATION 5: PAPERWORK IS MOUNTING
The number of documents you have to keep is increasing fast, so you decide to store them “temporarily” in a cardboard box at your feet. You can just drop everything in there. It makes life easy. The box has plenty of capacity. You’ll get around to sorting the documents out properly in due course.
The “temporary” mentality
You may intend to put something in a place “temporarily,” but once it’s there, the chances are you’ll never move it. Even if the place is unsuitable, it’s very unlikely you’ll change it. If there’s a box in a corridor, people tend to just walk past it—nobody thinks to move it. If there’s a pile of papers occupying your limited desk space, you’ll probably just push it to one side. It’s a pain to do anything else. The number of “temporary” items grows and the situation gets out of control. Here are some of the things that happen:
i. You forget they exist (Situation 1).
ii. You don’t know where you’ve put them (Situations 3, 4).
iii. You put them away and you never see them again (Situatio
ns 2, 4, 5).
iv. Important things get mixed up with unimportant things (Situations 1, 2, 5).
v. You keep putting things in the same place because it’s easy (Situations 1, 2, 5).
You obviously won’t be able to take advantage of things if you’ve forgotten they exist (i). If you can’t remember where they are, you won’t be able to find them (ii). If you store them away without much thought, you probably won’t use them again (iii). If you’ve mixed necessary and unnecessary things together, it will be difficult to move items or throw items away (iv). If you start putting things in a particular place because it’s easy to do so, that place will end up as a kind of trash dump (v).
Of course, this doesn’t just happen in the workplace—it happens at home too: in living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms. In fact, there are very few things that don’t get this “temporary” treatment. Keeping things “for now” or putting them somewhere “temporarily” is very natural human behavior.
It reminds me of squirrels in the forest. They bury nuts as stock, but sometimes forget about them. When spring comes the forgotten nuts germinate and saplings start to grow. It’s a kind of cooperative relationship between squirrels and trees, based on food and reproduction. But is there any benefit in our own tendency to store things “temporarily”?
The Art of Discarding Page 3
