A short comment on a long comment

[lexin]

From here, which was drawn to my attention by legionseagle, this frequently gets missed when people talk about decluttering:

"No. I can't just "go buy another one" if it turns out I needed it after all. They cost money. Shopping costs gas and travel time (or shipping costs and time) (or spoons). Often, if I only need one once in awhile, I would have to buy a whole box every time, and then throw out the extras every time. Or I could just keep the box, and always have one. Also I hate retail stores, they make my head hurt, and I'm a bred-in-the-bone cheapskate, so chances are if I have it, I got it used for little-or-nothing, so no, I can't just stroll into the once-a-year rummage sale and buy another one for a quarter. Of course, I am not someone who is going to hire an expensive and prestigious clutter consultant, either."

These days, I live on a low fixed income and I can't just buy anything that I might want on a whim. Those days are gone, gone, gone never to return.

Comments

[legionseagle]

That's a really good post. And I particularly liked the thing about

So. Something that very rarely gets talked about in these books is that sometimes, having a messy space rather than a tidy one is a good thing for which you have rational reasons. For example, I expect Marie Kondo's siblings kept their spaces in utter chaos so that Marie Kondo could not find their stuff, throw it out, and then lie about it.

See the discussion about passports, elsewhere.

[lexin]

I would have been infuriated if she'd been my sister. She sounds a complete nightmare to live with.

[legionseagle]

I also liked the part where melannen explained about having bits of scrap iron lying around the yard: "Look, people keep scrap metal piles in the back yard because having scrap metal around is useful, not because they're inherently untidy."

That was exactly my philosophy on the boat. You had a really big locker and several smaller lockers, and you saved screws and you always had extra 10 mil spanners (for some reason, while I had a complete socket set and several random spanners, it's always the 10 mil one that's most use. To begin with, it's the size of the standard diesel engine bleed screw) and every time you had a crisis you bought things that would be useful if you ever had that sort of crisis again.

[lexin]

Totally, totally. That's how I've ended up with quite so much sewing stuff.