There's one concept that I hear frequently that I just can't really graps, no matter how I try, and that's the idea of "order within chaos". How does that work? This is a term I normally hear from people who visibly live in rather chaotic circumstances - spacially chaotic, mind you. Overstuffed closets where you can't find a thing, with huge plastic containers filled to capacity with shoes, and you pull 50 shoes out of it and none of them matches, heaps of clothes on the floor, tables and desks that haven't been seen by human eyes in over a decade, carefully burried under tons of papers, notebooks, letters, discarded newspapers, clippings, books and an array of things that have no business near a desk or a table.
You stare at it and then at the creator of the mess, and the first reaction of the Chaotist is "I understand my system" ... because there is a system and it's not RANDOM... "I have an order within my mess and I know were everything is". Well, oddly enough, when they are looking for something, it takes them half a day in the best of cases to find it. Someone I know bought four maps of Cracow because though they had a map, they never found it when they needed it, and so they ended up buying the same map four times. I've also heard of someone looking for something that had been borrowed to them for five years. They knew it was in their apartment - they even moved, if I recall the story correctly - but they couldn't find it. The item finally surfaced five years later when they were looking for something else.
You know, it's nice to be clean and orderly, like my friend Dragonfly, who doesn't only keep her things neatly organized, they are also lively and BEAUTIFUL, but if you are a bit like me, and strick order, though you admire it, intimidates you a little bit, you shouldn't fear! Organization isn't about all books aligned to perfection on the shelve, and such an order that you don't dare touching anything. You can allow a little bit of disarray - a lived in disarray, but still organized. It's simple to put things on their place from the first moment, than drop them anywhere and then transform putting them on their place into a chore you postpone and postpone until there's a mountain of things to be stored away in the middle of your space and you need to call in an army of your friends to tackle your mess.
It starts simple. When you get home, if you take off your shoes at the entry like we do here, put your shoes on the same place all the time, and have your home slippers there, ready. It's a no brainer, just take of, put them where they should be, and put on the home shoes. Bag, don't just drop it, it has a place, put it there at once. If it doesn't have a place, assign it one! If you don't have much space, you know that a hook on the back of the door is a perfect place to hang a bag? Or from the side of a shelve unit or a closet? And how much is a good plastic hook? Pocket money!
It's all just a little bit of will. A little bit of will to put the book back on the bookshelve, store away your laptop, put away your notepads and pens... don't work until you are too tired to clean up! Stop before that, other wise the next day the job shall start with picking up the mess, or continuing working IN the mess, and who feels like doing anything in the middle of chaos?
Sorry, I don't believe in the possibility of order living inside a chaos, or any sensible, realistic order-system existing in chaos, but I do believe that order exists within you and you can achieve it and you can make it work for you. It's just a matter of wanting to. ^_^ Wanna give it a try?
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