It's standard tidying advice to keep your flat surfaces clean because they accumulate clutter.
This is true.
But if it was easy, it wouldn't be such common advice. Things accumulate from different places for different purposes and demand to be left out so they aren't forgotten. Clearing that off might take ten minutes of processing papers, or a mad dash to move things between rooms.
Who's got the time and energy for that?
If you do, go for it. But I don't most days.
So here's my alternative.
Always move the clutter upwards, even if you can't be bothered to put it away.
If you walk past a discarded jacket on the floor, put it on a chair instead.
If a half read book is on the sofa, put it on the coffee table.
If there's spices on the kitchen counter, put them away into the cabinets.
This doesn't have to be literally upwards.
If you have dirty dishes on the counter they should probably go down into the sink, and a bin on the floor qualifies as "higher" than the floor.
But as a rule, higher surfaces are smaller, more organized, more visible, and less hazardous. Things on the floor are annoying for blocking the walkway, things on the desk are annoying for blocking your workspace.
The key is to make it the smallest meaningful step to the point that you could do it when walking past with negligible effort.
I always have jackets in three or four different places. On the bed, on the desk chair, on a random table. Literally all of those places are further from the entrance than the closet. But they are the "closest" step, so they end up there. I just need to keep them moving, and they'll get back home eventually.
Everything gets done eventually.
But for now, I want to stop tripping over it.
- Rew
Nightly Notes
I tried to write a different post a couple weeks ago which also riffed on the "clear flat surfaces" advice from an entirely different angle, and yet it's only after bumbling around to sit down and find time to write this that I realized how to articulate what I'm doing.
That's a good sign. Writing is working.
There's a recurring theme of low effort incremental improvements. That was the premise, after all.
But I hadn't realized quite how pervasive it is in my life. I mean really, look at the last few posts.
I could have made my tagline "your life can be (marginally) better, and the rest is commentary".
The more time goes on, the more I realize how obvious of a person I am. My values have been consistent for years, and I don't even know half of them.
We reveal all we are in anything we do.
- Rew