Given my interests and the kind of stuff I'm likely to do when engaged in what's laughingly known as Self Actualization, it stands to reason I always have a guitar out and ready to be played. For that matter, I always have a direct box and preamp connected to my recording PC. Just gotta plug in said guitar and a mic while I wait for the machine to start up, and I can record an idea almost as quickly as it comes to me. Most of the time the machine's already on...

You'd be surprised, though, how many times I'm too lazy to get a microphone out of the closet.

Recently I've started to clear out my closets to put my vinyl out and on shelves where I can select a record and have it on my turntable without having to unstack boxes and look inside of them to determine which section of the alphabet they contain. (Yes, they're boxed alphabetically. No, they aren't labeled. Yes, I know that's kind of silly.) It's part of a larger plan to revisit most of my living space to keep it organized and get rid of as much of the stuff I don't need as I can.

After years of attempting to be organized, I've decided there's really one main rule:

• Don't put things on top of or in front of things.

If you only follow that one rule, you'll be way ahead of the game. It's bad enough to be unmotivated. Happens to everyone sometimes. Consider, however, the travesty that is having any small amount of motivation sapped by an organizational schema that forces you to need additional motivation just to get to the thing you need to do the thing you're somewhat motivated to do.

Most people don't stay motivated for very long unless they act on the motivation right away. When there are additional hurdles to that action, the chances of acting decrease rapidly. Note that when you add the finite nature of Free Time to this equation, the amount of time to do more than one task can thwart the original intention even when the unusual conditions of multiple motivations are met.

e.g. If you suddenly get motivated to knit for the first time in ages, that's great! If your yarn is all in a box under another box of unrelated shit, all of which is behind two other things, now you've got to be motivated to excavate in addition to being motivated to knit.

That's assuming you know where the yarn box is. If you don't, then you've got to be motivated to search, excavate and knit.

On the other hand, if your yarn was in a box you could reach without moving anything else, you'd be well into that sweater before it was time for dinner. When you do put it down to go make food though, be sure to put your unfinished work somewhere you can get to it easily. If you're like most people, starting something means you're more likely to be motivated to continue than you were likely to be motivated prior to starting. Give it a name: Momentum.

So that's the big rule. There are probably as many others as there are organizational styles, but for what it's worth here are the only other two I personally follow:

• Put all related things in places where they make sense.

You know how when you arrange all your books on shelves you always end up with an "oversized" shelf? The books on that shelf aren't where they belong according to subject. It's fine except you wind up having to remember a list of exceptions to your rule. You have to know which books are oversized so you know where to find them.

That's probably fine with one shelf worth of books as exceptions, but think about what happens when your whole home gets that way. You wind up having to remember too many exceptions, and they aren't even all the same type of exception. Why did we put the extra sheets for the upstairs guest room in the closet in the downstairs bathroom again? There was probably a reason, but I can't remember it now... Sadly not being able to remember the reason means it's likely I won't remember which closet to look in.

Don't get me started on the way this kind of shit grows exponentially when you suddenly have access to a garage or, worse still, a basement.

• If things are together with related things but not visible, label them.

I'm a big fan of boxes like these. They are great for putting lots of little things together. Group your shit however you like. Just remember, there's a reason they have little windows with rectangular bits of paper in them. You can write on them. Or label with pictures, if that's your thing.

If you don't want to buy fancy boxes, you can use any box. Amazingly, most pens will write on cardboard. (Why I still haven't done that to my record boxes is beyond the scope of this entry. Give it a name: A fascination with blank white cardboard LP boxes.)

Alternately, you can write on masking tape which has the astounding ability to stick to most materials used to make useful containers.

Now I'm going to get to the other things I put off today while cleaning. Curiously, becoming better at managing the first three dimensions doesn't always improve management of the fourth.

what's on:
"A Bear That Chokes" (Portastatic - Hello Recording Club February 1994)