Women tend to believe in and be keen on storage methods. Men like to believe in document-organization methods. Things which are systematically arranged may look good and give the appearance of functionality. But the fact is that the first step in any effective approach to storage or organization is disposal.
This is a phenomenon affecting all storage places: closets, food cabinets, tableware cabinets, shelves, fridges, bookcases, files, filing cabinets, etc.
TV programs often feature “storage experts” who proudly expound their techniques for storing things. Such programs are not as common as they once were, but they’re still very popular, especially with women. Mail-order magazines, meanwhile, are full of ads for storage goods. There are also floods of books addressing organization of documents, books, and computer files, which tend to appeal to men.
A unit six inches wide? Perfect! It would just fit in the space between the fridge and the cupboard. I could use it for those spices and sauces I’ve got by the sink. They look very messy at the moment. I could put some cookbooks there too. They’d be easy to get at.
Uh huh… So for the food cupboard it’s best to have containers of the same size. Yes. They’ll fit on the shelf best that way. And if you stick a label on you know what’s what. That’s easy. At the moment, I put everything in one big container, and if something won’t fit in I shove it on the shelf in its bag. But then it gets damp. I’m really not much of a housewife. I wonder how many Tupperware containers I should get. I guess about ten would fit. Yes, I’ll get ten.
These containers are perfect. So well designed! The manufacturers really seem to understand storage problems. The containers use the full width and depth of the cabinet. It’s very neat. Even I’ve managed to get everything in. The row on the right is all towels. In the middle, underwear and pajamas. On the left, scissors, tape, all that kind of thing. It’s wonderful. There’s so much space!
Oh dear! I’ve bought all these books, and the bookcase is almost full. I’d better get another one—just for paperbacks. I’ll arrange them by publisher; that’ll be simplest. I don’t think I can keep classifying hardbacks just by author. I think I’ll have to divide them up like a library does: Japanese literature, foreign literature, social science, physical science, self-help, and so on. Easy to find and easy to put back. Libraries must have good reasons for their classifications. So I’m sure it will work.
The piles of documents we get for meetings just get bigger and bigger. The trouble is everything’s so easy to print out these days. Well, I’d better put this stack away. It doesn’t really matter how many documents I get, though. I can handle them all with my new classification system. Very straightforward with this index. Look at that shelf. So tidy! “Competence”—that’s what it says. In fact, the whole desk looks like it belongs to someone else completely.
There are two potential pitfalls with these methods.
First, the methods are “borrowed.” Experts in storage and organization are generally people who enjoy such things. At the very least, they are temperamentally suited to it. This is what allows them to develop their approach in the first place. Your character is different to theirs. So however much you try to follow their methods, you’re bound to fail at some stage.
People often say things like, “I’ve tried all sorts of classification methods, but I still can’t get my documents organized. I’m hopeless!” But this isn’t just a matter of weak will. There will also be a mismatch between methods and character—the person can’t use the methods without feeling uncomfortable.
What about curator and librarian systems? They seem designed with everyone in mind—can they be applied by individuals (as in Situation 4)?
Dealing with your own books is not the same as dealing with books for the general public or for a large institution. Libraries, museums, and other organizations with large holdings have very systematic organization methods and are run by professional librarians and curators. Think also of secretaries—they are professionals in scheduling and document organization. All these types of work involve special skills acquired through dedicated study and/or experience.
But people don’t often give these skills a moment’s thought. Our storage and organization methods are often random and therefore hard to apply. Looking back at Situation 2 (groceries) and Situation 5 (document classification), it’s easy to predict that things, before long, will be back to how they were. To which you might well retort: “So what about your so-called Art of Discarding? Is that any different?” I would say, yes, it is fundamentally different. Storage and organization methods start from the premise that these are good approaches. At the moment, discarding things is generally thought to be wrong. My objective in writing this book is to break away from this assumption and also, I hope, to make you reflect on your whole attitude to possession.
That’s enough self-justification. Now let’s consider the other pitfall of storage and organization methods, namely that we apply the methods without proper thought—that we’ll classify things and then store them away without ever considering whether it’s necessary to keep them.
This tendency can make life difficult for architects in particular. Let me quote a specialist:
Almost all homes have in-built cabinets and closets. Women always insist on them at the planning stage. I’ve been asked to build five closets into a design so that the place will be tidy. But as soon as the family moved in all five were full and the house was still overflowing with stuff. People say it’s common for animals to gather a lot of things together, hide them somewhere, and then forget where they’ve put them. In mankind it seems to be women that do this (author’s note: male delusion). Women love cabinets and closets because they can shut the door and keep things hidden. We know from experience that they’ll be happy if the plans show a lot of closet space. But we also know that however much closet space there is, it will soon fill up as people buy more and more things.
Through my work I sometimes meet people from construction companies. All of them say that houses with a lot of storage space are very popular. Into this ample storage space go storage devices. Into the storage devices go different types of stuff, in accordance with storage methodology. And, over time, the stuff accumulates. Looking back at Situation 1, we can imagine small kitchen items being crammed untidily into the narrow unit. And we can also predict that stuff will keep on being stuffed into the cabinet in Situation 3 until it is absolutely full.
Documents are no exception.
Storage and organization methods must be viewed from a completely different angle. We have to realize that these methods are only necessary because there’s too much stuff. Reduce the amount of stuff and we won’t have to rely on these methods at all.
As Miyawaki indicates (above), the amount of stuff people have is destined to increase until it fills the available storage space. People with too many books buy new bookcases. These bookcases fill up immediately, and again books start piling up on the floor and staircase. Whatever the size of your closet, it will fill up with clothes. As long as you allow things to accumulate, you don’t stand a chance of getting the place tidy just with storage and organization methods. No organization method can cope when there’s not enough space to accommodate things.
Earlier I quoted Yukio Noguchi’s Super-Organization 3. The book was said to represent a radical new approach because of Noguchi’s focus on the time dimension in the organization process—good order, he argues, is not just a question of categorization. But to me his approach seems similar to others in that it is still based on the belief that things can be organized if you follow a systematic methodology. Also, Noguchi proposes a provisional (or “for-the-time-being”) disposal buffer. I’ve already explained what would happen if such a stage is introduced.
Ultimately, I think the biggest danger of storage and organization methods is that one may be seduced by the pleasure of preserving order. If the preservation of order gives you peace of mind, that is fine. But if you want to prevent things accumulating, it’s important to employ really active disposal techniques.
If you reduce the number of things you have, then a system for storage and organization won’t be necessary. You’ll be able to manage things naturally. Even if you leave them in a jumble, you’ll be OK. I can understand people thinking that work documents are different. This may be true for academics, for example, who have to keep a lot of papers. But the number of documents someone like me has can be managed pretty well even if they’re mixed up together.
I’m not a very tidy person by nature, so I don’t manage my work room in a particularly systematic way. But on the whole I only keep documents that are essential, so I can always find what I’m looking for quite quickly. Knowing roughly where they are is generally enough.
Before finishing this section, I’ll suggest one way in which storage and organization methods can be useful. Let me quote a proponent of the simple life:
I have read books and magazines about organization techniques and storage methods. I tried a special storage method that said it would enable me to declutter without throwing anything away. But I found that I was just moving piles of stuff around and only making it look slightly better… So I made up my mind to get rid of everything that was unnecessary… I decided on this basis that 80 percent of the stuff in and on my desk should go… Throwing things away is tougher than you’d imagine. Sometimes it makes you feel guilty. But you just have to think carefully, face those feelings, and carry on. That way you’ll end up with only the things that are really necessary for you and your family. And because of the pain you’ve experienced discarding things you’ll begin to hesitate before buying new things too readily. I think you’ll also begin to appreciate the feeling of taking care of things that are really necessary.
That is the message of someone who really thinks about her relationship with the things she owns. If borrowed storage methods have any use, it’s simply to show us that they don’t lead to a tidier house.
A final thought: we often come across methodologies that promote “simple life” ideas from Britain and elsewhere. Yamazaki, for example, is basing her lifestyle on a German model. Her experience prompts us to think about how we relate to things. But I think it is best not to suppose we can easily introduce a different lifestyle from a foreign country. The fact that the expenditure-centerd lifestyle of the United States doesn’t work in Japan doesn’t mean that we should look to another country for a model.