ABSOLUTE ASCENDANCY

Note: This article is also included in my book, Black Box. The act of organising oneself is a venture of great worthiness while undertaking periodic solitude.

Commencing operation . . .

Overview

So you wake up and the place is a mess. You get to work and again, your workspace is messy. You make it back home after a long day and guess what? Your home is still a mess! It is time to put an end to the seemingly never-ending clutter that clogs up not only your physical surroundings and your virtual world but also your mental space. This article aims to highlight the procedures to carry out to clean up not only your home and office environment, but also your e-mails, social media notifications and electronic devices, as I believe these are all of the utmost importance when it comes to organising your world. There is a direct correlation between the organisation of your internal and external world. If one is in disorder, the other is also liable to entropy.

My relationship with organisation

I have always been pretty organised in my life. It was one of the very few skills that I acquired naturally at an early age. Even so, I would have to clear out my space every six months or so. For many years I held onto things that practically served no further purpose – Out-dated documents, old books, unneeded training gear. Not only that, but I used to buy in bulk and hoarded an excess of toiletries and kitchenware. At one point I probably had near enough a year’s supply of body wash.

A year’s supply! It was ridiculous!

I read a book by the author of Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organising. Even though I considered myself a near-enough expert on the art of organisation, that book gave me the final ten to twenty percent push that I needed to deal the decisive blow in the war of attrition against the junk in my house. The end battle lasted around a month, with time spent decluttering dedicated to the weekday evenings and weekends. For that month, I did no socialising – I met up with no friends. I dedicated the vast majority of my free time to cleaning the home during that month and it was so worthwhile doing.

There were a couple of gems following the KonMari method of organising the home; the main takeaway for me was to engage the battle by attacking one category at a time rather than one room at a time. So, using clothes as an example, I went through the house gathering all of my clothes and then determining which ones I wanted to keep or throw out. That is the gist of it; The book also details a systematic approach to the order of categories recommended to work through, which you can read more about in the next section.

External Organisation

There are three main areas to consider when it comes to organising your physical world, which are listed below.

1. Home – indoors
2. Home – outdoors
3. Office space

1)    Home – Indoors

Having been through the process of organising my home, the following is the approach I recommend to get your house in order.

• Clothes and bedding
• Toiletries and kitchenware
• Books and papers
• Electronics
• Outdoor storage
• Miscellaneous items

Clothes and bedding

As previously stated, go through your home and gather all of your clothes. Be absolutely sure you have collected them all, because if you so happen to miss any, they will be discarded by default because, obviously, they are not important enough to you to be recalled when the stakes have been raised. Honestly examine each piece of clothing one by one and determine whether each piece still serves a purpose. If you have not worn a piece of clothing in a long while and do not plan to do so in the foreseeable future, then discard it. If you have over ten pairs of shoes (I am looking at you ladies!) but only wear three to five regularly, then get rid of the ones that barely ever see the light of day!

Once you have taken care of your clothes, take the same approach for your bedding. You probably have excess linen which is mostly unneeded. Having two sets of bedding in total is sufficient. If you have a guest bed, consider removing your guest bedding and only hiring the linen when needed. Unless you regularly use the guest bed, it is unnecessary for your guest bed to have bedding.

Toiletries and Kitchenware

As above, grab all of your toiletries and keep only what you require for the short term. While it is true that you can save money by bulk buying, this often leads to a gross inefficiency in your storage and promotes a hoarding mentality that can transfer into other areas of your life. Keep only what is needed and replenish your supplies regularly to help keep your home clutter-free. So throw out those extra deodorant sprays, shampoos, soaps, make-up, cleaning supplies and so forth.

For the kitchen, I have a suspicion that if nothing else, your home probably has too many mugs. As one of the most popular gifts to receive among work colleagues, I had accumulated my fair share of cups. I cut this number down drastically upon my clean-up and now have six mugs in possession, which is enough to handle most gatherings. Go through all of your different types of glasses and follow suit. Then move onto your plates and cooking utensils; you likely have a bunch of appliances which have a niche purpose but have not been used in ages. Discard them.

Your spice cupboard will also require clearing out as you likely have a variety of spices which you seldom use – perhaps you needed them for a specific recipe that you no longer cook. In any case, sort through these and keep only the ones you still regularly use. As with your toiletries, you may have an excess of cleaning supplies for the kitchen, which should be minimised. There is a decent crossover of cleaning supplies which can be used for both the bathroom and kitchen, so it might be worthwhile having a single location which contains these cleaning products to help prevent duplication.

Books and Papers

Do not get me wrong, I am passionate about books. I used to have a large bookshelf which was jam-packed with reading material. The thing is, though, they were virtually all books that I had already read and was not planning on reading again. Sure, it was impressive to look at, but they were serving no functional purpose. I believe it is somewhat of an offense to hoard reading material. Knowledge should be shared. If you have books you no longer need, then either sell them or donate them; find some way to pass them onto someone else that could benefit. Nowadays I have between five to ten books which sit on a small table at home. I believe this number is modest enough to show an appreciation for reading. The few books that I do have are either in the pipeline for future reading or they have had such a profound impact on me that I have deemed them worthy of keeping, should I ever need to refer to them down the line.

Papers are trickier to deal with because you are likely to have so many. In principle, switch to online statements, if you can, for your banking and utility bills. Then throw out all of your old papers, as online statements allow you to search through your payment history anyway. Set up a filing system for all other paperwork that cannot be delegated online. Things like your car service history, various health check-ups, certificates and so forth. You may have accumulated user guides for the multiple devices you own; these can all go, as these days all of that information is available online anyway.

Electronics

Gather all of your electronic devices as well as the myriad of cables you are likely to have amassed over the years and sort through them all. Perhaps you kept all of your old smartphones and tablets. If you intend to get rid of these, you should ensure you place them in a designated bag for disposal, as electronics are not supposed to be dumped into a regular waste bin. Your local recycling centre should have an area sectioned off for all electronics, so as an alternative, you can go there and unload your electronics. 

Miscellaneous items

Lastly, we will look into what is mostly left over. Miscellaneous items can range from precious keepsakes to old junk to anything in between. Gather these all together and sort through each item, one at a time, deciding whether to keep or discard it. This may prove cumbersome, especially for objects of particular sentimental value; it is your choice as to whether the passage of time has worn such feelings away or whether they remain steadfast. 

2) Home – Outdoors

Now that the inside of your home is nice and tidy, it is time to move on and consider your outdoor cleanliness. This mainly pertains to all items likely to be found in a garage or garden shed. Some of the items listed below may exist inside your home, in which case sort through these while dealing with miscellaneous items in the previous section. The things considered in this section are as follows:

• Gardening equipment
• Handyman tools
• Decoration
• Old furniture
• Miscellaneous items

Gardening Equipment

From the myriad of gardening tools to weed killing sprays, bags of plant fertiliser and soil, the avid gardener may very well have accumulated a lot of stuff that is either out-dated or no longer needed. It could be necessary to replace old tools with new ones or procure fresh supplies of fertiliser or soil. At any rate, clear out what you no longer need and resupply if needed.

Handyman tools

I was surprised to discover that over the years, my home had accumulated three sets of toolkits, two of which were almost exactly identical! It was an easy decision to donate one kit. I kept the other two as one was a generalised toolkit and the other was a specialist toolkit with an assortment of screwdrivers. I, fortunately, did not have any excess nails or screws stashed away, never to be used, but if you do, then organise these as well as your general tools.

Decoration

This pertains to anything used to decorate the home such as paint tins, wallpaper, floorboards and so on. While I was cleaning out my shed, I found a bunch of paint tins which must have been years old. There was even an old door which was removed during a renovation, lying against one of the sides of the shed!  These were all cleared out during my decluttering battle. That being said, I did stumble across a few nice ornaments which I dusted off and placed within my home. It is not all about getting rid of things; sometimes you may find these hidden gems which you can make use of.

Old furniture

In my case, this required me to gather the old furniture from my garden shed and evaluate it in context with the rest of the furniture in my home, what to keep and what to let go of. This is probably the only category where I ended up keeping everything. Quite a lot of my furniture is antique, and upon investigation I determined that I would be able to make use of the few extra pieces of furniture that I found in the shed.

Miscellaneous items

It is entirely plausible to use your garage or garden shed as a dumping ground for any random bits and pieces that you end up wanting to store away somewhere. So for the final act of cleaning and organising the household, take stock of these items and determine whether their degree of use to you is significant enough to warrant holding onto them. You might surprise yourself and end up finding a few unusual things which could be of great use to you. 

3)    Office Space

This section is for those of you who work in a different location from your home. If you work at home, then you can skip to the next section. Organising your office space will be a cinch in comparison to your home. A lot of companies maintain a clear work desk policy, so there is an enforced need to keep your workspace tidy. You can utilise the exact same principles mentioned above to tidy your home, but it should be even easier as you will have fewer categories to handle and less stuff to sort through.

One pitfall I have seen people falling into is the hoarding of coffee mugs. At one of my previous workplaces, one of the administrators would send an e-mail when coffee mugs were scarce in the kitchen, reminding workers to take their cups back to the kitchen at the end of the day. Make a habit of clearing your working area at the end of every working day and it will be a simple and easy task to keep your workspace clear.

Virtual Organisation

Once you have your real world in working order, it is time to move onto your virtual world. The three areas for consideration are as follows:

1. Tidy your e-mail
2. Organise your electronic devices
3. Declutter your virtual presence

1)    Tidy your e-mail

Let us start by e-cluttering all of those e-mails that you have either yet to read or you need to action, but they are haphazardly scattered all over the place. Also, I can only imagine the amount of promotional garbage, job listings and whatever other notification e-mails that are coming through to your inbox because you subscribed to some website to receive some freebie or resource which is now out-dated. You will not be barraged with a bunch of marketing e-mails for subscribing to Absolute Ascendancy. Put the following list into action to keep on top of your e-mails.

• Unsubscribe to anything no longer of interest
• Create inbox folders with e-mail rules if possible
• Synchronise multiple e-mail addresses
• Action all e-mails
• Delete your e-mail address

Just like with the house cleaning, it is best to dedicate time to do all of the tasks in one shot, preferably.

Unsubscribe to anything no longer of interest

This may take a while, depending on how many subscriptions you have which no longer hold value. You can use a site called Unroll.me to unsubscribe from any of your subscriptions easily. Unfortunately, due to the new data protection laws implemented in the European Union, anyone residing in any EU country is forfeited from using the service at the time of writing. At any rate, while it is quicker to delete e-mails, by spending the extra time unsubscribing, you permanently eliminate the problem. Like a weed, if you simply cut it off from above ground level, it will just grow back, but if you pull it out from the roots, it will be gone forever.

Create inbox folders with e-mail rules if possible

A filing system is in order! Instead of having all of your e-mails default straight to your primary inbox, create a system of subfolders with categories of your choosing to partition incoming e-mails accordingly. You can divide your e-mails by work, finance, home, subscriptions, actionable items, etc. If your e-mail provider has the functionality to create e-mail rules or filters to automatically perform actions based on set criteria, then spend some time creating some rules to automate your e-mail workflow. This will save you lots of time once implemented, especially if the rules are robust.

Synchronise multiple e-mail addresses

This is only applicable if you have more than one e-mail address, but this only requires you to look at one e-mail provider to get a view of all e-mails received by any of your e-mail addresses, which is not only convenient but also time-saving.

Action all e-mails

By taking immediate action on every single e-mail received (whether you read it immediately, file it away for later, or simply delete it), you will help prevent the typical scenario of returning to your inbox at a later period and rereading unnecessary e-mails because you had forgotten what they were about.

Delete your e-mail address

And get a new one if you need to. Yeah, I went there. Straight up hit the nuke button and begin anew. It is what I did. I got so sick and tired of all the garbage I was receiving daily that I realised it would be so much simpler just to get a new e-mail address and have a clean slate, rather than try and organise it all. I had my old e-mail address for 7 or so years and during that period, I amassed a nigh-unstoppable onslaught of trash e-mails. Their relentless assault was merciless. My inbox was spammed  every single day! It had bypassed the point of salvation, and termination was the only time economic solution left.

But what about all of my contacts?

Notify the ones you recall that you are changing e-mail addresses; any others are clearly not a high priority. The world will not end just because you obliterated your e-mail address and sent it to the shadow realm. I am sure I have forgotten to tell a few people myself, but oh well, life goes on! I will deal with any potential consequences as and when they arise. Sometimes you have to take a loss somewhere to reap a gain elsewhere. I may have lost some useful contacts and data by deleting my old e-mail, but I have gained tremendous clarity in my new e-mail address.

2)    Organise your electronic devices

Next, let us take a look at your electronic devices. I am willing to guess that your smartphone or tablet is full of useless apps and games that you no longer use. Your computer or laptop, stuffed with data that has long since served its purpose, to the point where trying to find the files you need becomes a nightmarish endeavour. Let us do something about that by working through the following list.

• Documents
• Photos
• Passwords
• Bookmarks
• Programs
• Get new devices

Documents

Just like with your e-mails, create an organised folder structure for all of your data, for categories you deem necessary. With a system in place, any future files will be easily stored and it will be straightforward to access any old documents.

Photos

All of those selfies and scenic shots you have taken during your ventures can be uploaded to a dedicated file storage system such as Dropbox or the like. Images can take up a lot of space, which can be problematic if your device is lacking in storage, so utilise a cloud-based storage system as previously mentioned, or store your images on an external hard drive. Either solution helps prevent loss of data if your device crashes.

Passwords

The pain of recalling passwords is commonplace, I am sure. The more virtual sites you access, the worse it becomes! With websites becoming stricter in password requirements, it can certainly be a hassle to remember which password needed the capitals, which needed numerals, which required special characters and so on. On the other hand, if you are careless enough to use the same password for all of your sites, sure it is convenient, but should a single account become compromised, the entirety of your online world subsequently becomes at risk. There are numerous tools you can use to store your passwords; either use an online app or write them down. If you do write them down, I suggest not writing the full password but writing something related that can cause a mental trigger for you to remember the actual password. In general, it is bad practice to write down your actual passwords in case they get stolen. It is typically safer to use an online tool to store your passwords, but the choice is yours.

Bookmarks

Yet again, a filing system will do wonders for all of your favourite sites. Create categories as needed (examples could be music, blogs, shopping, finance and so on), and then you will have no problems quickly locating whatever site you need to access.

Programs

If you have not already, now is a good time to delete all of the programs and apps on your devices that you no longer need. It is also a good idea to always do an initial clean up whenever you purchase new equipment, as it is often the case that devices come preloaded with programs which you will never use. By doing this, you should no longer need to speed up your devices and you make it easier on yourself to find the applications you actually do need.

Get new devices

If it is too much hassle to organise all of your electronic devices, but more importantly, if you genuinely require a technological upgrade, then you can save yourself time (but not money) and buy yourself new electronic devices as needed. My old laptop recently died, so it was an excellent opportunity for me to procure a new one and subsequently grant myself a clean slate to try and maintain.

3)    Decluttering Virtual Presence

Finally, it is worthwhile spending some time cleaning up your virtual presence. You probably have far too many online accounts; delete the ones that are no longer of use to you. As for social media platforms, unfollow people, pages and groups you no longer associate with. Switch off all social media alerts as the vast majority is nonsense, which only serves to divert your attention and ultimately waste your precious time. Your virtual space should only be filled with meaningful and uplifting people and content. Anything else is at the bare minimum, unnecessary waste and, in the worst scenario, a dosage of mental poison.

My Results

I ended up donating a heap of clothes, excess kitchenware and toiletries as well as old books that I could no longer see myself reading in the future. I even ended up clearing out the shed which had several tins of old paint as well as too many gardening tools and a whole host of other miscellaneous items. I could have tried to sell some of these items to get a bit of extra cash, but this would have significantly hindered the decluttering process, which was the number one top priority during the month-long combat. Do not let potential monetary gain distract you from what truly matters.

Now my house is so much cleaner and brighter. There is ample free space throughout the house, in cupboards and wardrobes and just in general, which is just fine. Empty space does not need to be filled. You need not try and make full use of every compartment your house and belongings provide. It is perfectly fine to have empty drawers and shelves. I no longer have a year’s supply worth of body wash and, for the most part, all that is left in the house are the things I actually want to keep around.

My virtual world is also more simplistic and streamlined, mostly thanks to acquiring a new e-mail address and laptop.

Conclusion

The main task, once you have organised yourself, is to maintain that state of order. I estimate every six months or so, I will end up having to do a quick sweep of the house to get rid of any excess that may have accumulated, but in no way is this going to be as time-consuming as the decluttering processes I used to do before the dedicated one-month fell swoop. It is worthwhile to do a full review of your items during each subsequent check-up, as feelings and priorities can change with time. Things you once adored may have lost their shine. I would estimate spending an hour every six months sufficient enough to declutter my home henceforth.

Everything is in its rightful place and my mind is rightfully decluttered. Organising your external and internal environments is definitely a good challenge for you to take on, and the rewards are immense.

Mission complete – Overlord Drakow signing out.