some thoughts on sorting strategies

[marcicat]

*'Have you used it in the last year?'

I like the objective nature of this one. It's very clear. But it is way too impractical for me. 1) I can't remember if I wore the same shirt twice in the same week; I definitely can't remember if I used something in the last year. 2) I lead a slow-paced life; not everything I like to do happens every year. 3) Must something be useful to be wanted? I think not.

*'Does it spark joy?'

Conversely, I like the freeform nature of this one. It's so flexible! But feelings are hard. I contain multitudes. What does sparking joy really feel like? How do you know? This one seems like it should be easy, and yet I often find myself unable to decide. Or getting stuck on whether I think it *should* spark joy. Ultimately a frustrating metric for me.

*'Would you pick it up off a Free Stuff table?'

So far this has been the most useful strategy I've found for deciding whether or not to keep something. If someone else was giving it away for free, would I take it? It's been helpful in determining things I was keeping 'just in case' but that I don't actually want. And it's super fun for the things that I feel like I don't *need* but would absolutely take for free, because each time, I get to tell myself, 'you can! it's yours!' Which kind of feels like getting a bunch of awesome free stuff.

Comments

[lannamichaels]

One strategy I use is "is it worth the space it's taking up?" combined with "how easy is it to replace?". So something that I haven't worn in years, takes up a lot of space, but would be really hard to replace isn't gonna be gotten rid of. But something that doesn't take up much space, I can't remembe the last time I wore, and is very easily replacable is gonna be the thing to go if I need the space for something else. I got rid of a pair of jeans a couple months back because it didn't fit anymore and if it did start fitting again, well, that pair of jeans would be really easy to replace. Jeans take up a lot of space, so goodbye jeans.

[marcicat]

Ooh, I like that too!