Day 148 of writing every day.
Getting myself focused and putting a stop to the procrastinating has been a challenge. I’m distracted not just by the smartphone and the connection to social media and all the things that keep you swiping and checking for updates. I’m also distracted by the things in my room.
The need to clean my room as an unresolved task had lingered long enough despite the urgency of getting done so I can fit a new fridge. This urgency was in a battle with the self-imposed need to study for hours so I can stay on track with my study goals. But all that did was leave me distracted and unable to focus on anything.
Objects have their own noise frequency in the sense that they occupy space. There’s a difference between simply being in a tight space and being in a space made tight by the amount of things present. You can be turned off by crowds, for example, and a cluttered room can do just the same and make you unable to enjoy your room as you originally intended to.
When clutter gets to be too much, it seems like the question becomes is the room for you, or for your stuff? Maybe people living in houses and apartments with more than one room can compartmentalize the space room by room, but it’s a challenge in a single room apartment. Some might say it’s best just not to own anything, and I share that sentiment to some extent.
I’m pretty much done buying clothes unless they wear out, and that pretty much limits me to socks, undershirts, and underwear. Jackets and bags might need to get tossed after a few years of continued use, but casual clothes don’t seem to wear out as fast. The only time I had to toss out pants and shorts were those that weren’t compatible with me and ended up wearing out around the crotch/inside the thighs but otherwise seemed in decent overall condition.
The amount of space in my room is fixed and the amount of stuff seems to grow year by year if I’m making purchases that aren’t food and drinks or consumable goods that are meant to be used and discarded like cleaning products. Some people love the idea of owning books and it’s nice but I don’t think I’ll be buying anymore physical books that aren’t for Aikido related purposes and stick with e-books when I do decide to buy something for a bit of fun reading.
Personally, having usable physical objects is good in case the power and other infrastructures built around telecommunication technologies should fail us one day for one reason or another. Books won’t run out of power and don’t need the internet to work. But I need to be able to live comfortably in my tiny room and make sure it’s a room for me, not for my stuff. If I really want a lot of material things, then I’d be better off renting a storage unit instead.
After going through a lot of things and storing them more efficiently by maximizing the use of space, I’m finally feeling like there’s less clutter noise in my room. I set things I won’t likely use again for a long time in harder to reach places but also made things easier to move around by ditching cardboard boxes and putting things in the free-rolling drawers beneath my bed. That way I could move the rollers further back and leave the most accessible space underneath my bed usable for things like my backpacks that are often used and switched around depending on what I’m going out to do.
It’s finally starting to feel like I’ll be able to make room for a new fridge and also be better able to focus on studying again after struggling to stay on task for the past few days.
Thanks for reading!
One Chance Works 