"Experts" on "hoarding" keep repeating this sound bite when talking about a dysfunction in possessions -
> Important things mixed with unimportant..
I know a thing or two about organizing - seeing how in a thousand boxes across multiple spaces, I can easily find anything and put it away.
So when I hear stuff like that, it baffles me.. just what on earth might they be talking about ?
Who and why would organize things by "important" and "unimportant" ? I don't see myself doing that, ever.
It might seem like a sensible thing to say, and to criticize in a dysfunctional set of possessions, but does it actually make any sense ?
See, there's a tiny little huge problem with this -
Importance of something is not a black-and-white, all-or-nothing, zero-or-one factor.
Importance, and perhaps better to talk also/instead about *relevance*, varies significantly with time and circumstances.
Let's consider, for example, a passport - pretty frigging important, right ?
But, say, if you never go on vacations to remote destinations requiring passing through airports and borders, or at within the foreseeable period of time, or do anything "official" enough that warrants the use of it - just how important is it to even have one ?
I have myself gone for years and years without having one, or having one renewed, until I actually had occasion to use it.
Even if you have one, it might sit in some drawer unused, and peacefully expire without ever having been touched since you got it or since you used it last time, and you might not even bother renewing it.
But, if you suddenly decide to go on such a trip, it becomes pretty frigging important, right ?
So, is it important, or is it unimportant after all ?
You might, not unreasonably, make the simplifying assumption that "yes, this is a big official document, issued by government, it took a lot of effort to apply for - all that paperwork to fill, photos to take - let's just go out on a limb and say, important", and it's a small simple thing, it's easy enough to have a drawer or a file folder that says "important documents", where it'd be joined by other things, such as titles to houses, cars, etc.
But, the same "important but it depends" can be said about pretty much anything.
Anything that is considered worth keeping, is seen as having enough importance or relevance, otherwise why would you be keeping it ?
There is some purpose, intent, design, intuition, however vague it might be, about everything you keep, right ?
Only the degree varies with time and context.
And, while having an "important documents" category is not unreasonable, I would say, it's the "documents" part that is more significant than the "important" part - without the "documents" part, it becomes pretty vague and disorganized real quick.
"Important things" - how does that sound as an organizing category ? How does that help find things, assuming you can even guess correctly whether last time you organized a given thing, it was seen as "important" or not ?
And then, what about the rest of things ?
"Unimportant things" - how does that sound, now, and how does that help find anything ? This is outright ridiculous, if you ask me.
And then, let's consider slightly less obvious examples - bank statements, insurance policies, tax returns..
Generally, few people take an interest in these with any regularity, unless something happens that warrants a closer look into the past.
And again, you could make the simplifying the assumption that "current / fresh documents are important, others are not".
But this keeps sliding - everything can be important or not, relevant or not, depending whether you actively need it.
And if something is completely unimportant, why would anyone bother keeping it ?
I myself don't even think about organizing things that way - if I'm keeping them at all - I organize them by the subject matter.
Tax returns go into folders stored in a tax returns space, or into whatever category one uses to organize such things.
Bank documents go into folders labelled with that particular bank's name.
Car accessories go into the car accessories box, or if you have a lot of them, into multiple containers subdivided by whatever principle - say, tire stuff, battery chargers and booster cables, etc.
Now, here's the million dollar question - is the "car accessories" box or set of boxes important or unimportant ?
Or, how do you organize the contents within into "important" and "unimportant", and why, and does that simplify or complicate things ?
You can repeat this exercise with pretty much everything worth keeping, to reveal the absurdity of this sound bite by "experts".
Hearing stuff like that makes me wonder just how clueless they really are, just how much stuff have they repeated so much that they themseleves believe it without questioning it, if there weren't more than enough causes to question that already.
p.s. I can *kinda* *sorta* understand a possible way to look at it that makes sense - they see "important documents" mixed in with something else, something completely random, non-documents even - but really, it's more about "documents" mixed with "non-documents", or documents being not as organized as they should be, that is the problem. Once again, they put focus on the wrong things for the sake of an apparently impressive sound bite - a magic trick once again..