Thing World
Things around you take a lot of your time if kept unorganised. Humans have to carry things of different kinds with them to different places. Finding a place for things wherever you are and meticulously keeping them in their place will help you remember and find it easily when needed.
If you do not know where you kept the umbrella or your raincoat, you will end up searching when you have to go out in the rain. If you do not place your swim shorts, cap and goggles in one bag, you will have a tough time bringing them together. If you do not keep your glasses in the bedroom in a place, in the living room in a place, in the bath in a place, you will search everywhere. If you do not have a place for your car keys and remember to keep them there when you come into your house, you will not find them easily the next morning when you are in a hurry to go somewhere. Same thing applies to your clothes of different kinds , the daily wear, the undergarments, the occasional wear all segregated and kept and a bin for them to shove in when ready for wash and again back in the cupboard at the same place for reuse.
Every THING has to be found a place and maintained right there. Every small thing you use. And once you leave it there, you need a way to remember their place. The thing -> place should be an association you need to maintain in your head. Often used things will not be a issue as you will have a way to remember the place when you use them. But things like that Umbrella or Swim shorts which you may need when it is raining or when you go out on a yearly vacation or that rarely used backdoor key will slip if you do not have a way of remembering like the less visited websites where you have to login. So note them down in a book and remember the place where you keep that book. At least if you keep writing in that book of things regularly about things that are rarely used, it will help to remember the book.
You need a way to keep the documents, letters of various kinds that will hit you in your life over a long period of time organised in a way you can find them. Go by their strongest characteristics while organising them. If your bank statement is mainly needed for Tax compliance and is majorly used during the Tax season then organise or connect them to your Tax file somehow. Do not be in a haste to keep things in the wrong category. Then you have lost it almost permanently into the black hole. Keep dumping bills or receipts you never need like the ones you paid for a dinner with friends and end up hanging in your wallet until it bulges with such useless pieces of trash.
When you do a transaction and got a bill, ask if you will ever need them for Tax or for other reimbursement from employer type of purpose and if not, dump it mercilessly. Otherwise they hang around to harass you for the rest of your life. This applies to a lot of stuff you hold thinking that they will turn Gold some day. You need to be honest, questioning their existence and be ruthless in eliminating them if you want your life back.
Following some rules with regard to these inanimate objects help you to save plenty of time and mental energy. I remember the scene from a Quentin Tarantino film ‘Jackie Brown’ where Robert De Niro goes looking for his car in the parking lot when he is supposed to leave in a hurry and being unable to find it, shoots the girl who makes fun of him. Thats the level it can get some times :-)
In summary I gave you examples of ‘find a place for every THING’, ’bunching like things’, ’segregation by use’, ‘categorising around strong themes’, ‘questioning the existence of things’, ‘being ruthless on elimination’, ‘delay until you get the bin right’ and so on.
I feel this is a space to be disrupted with some sort of an App (no not another database in the disguise of an App) but some way by which things can tell where they are if queried in a physical space like you can page your cordless handset.
I can write more on this, but at the end of the day, handle less and live more is what I really feel like saying as you may be a tough nut and many of the above may not apply to the way you see your life.
