Tidying up

And the act of letting (some) things go

Hi, I’m Sarah! The Best of Intentions is an independent publication about life in Hong Kong, travel, work, culture, along with a sprinkle of psychology. If you like this post, consider liking or sharing it. If you are a regular reader please consider subscribing to receive updates and support my writing.

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Do you ever get that desire to do some major tidying up in your home?

If so, what does this entail? Do you start by organising your paperwork? Perhaps you look at your wardrobe and toss out the socks riddled with holes? Or do you first turn to that miscellaneous drawer that you are constantly telling yourself to organise, but actively avoid doing?

Recently, I had that feeling. I needed to tidy.

It started with the purchase of a second-hand bookcase. After finding a home for it, I began moving in most of our books that had been stored in the wardrobe. They had lived there for four years. Next, I went through my clothes and donated a sack load to charity. Then, I tackled the miscellaneous drawer and tore up several wads of receipts and filed some finance stuff. What next, I thought? I’m on a roll.

So, I turned to something different: my hard-drives. And it’s been quite the eye-opener!

The process has reminded me of the ways in which we may try to present ourselves to the world. For example, I like to think that I am an organised person, and I believe that many of my friends and ex-colleagues would probably agree with this. Significantly, the fact that I demonstrate my levels of organisation to others by ensuring that I meet deadlines; am usually on time for events/people (if not early); and promptly reply to messages only reinforces this belief.

Yet if you were to glance at the hard-drives the evidence would indicate that I am anything but organised!

To give you an idea of what I mean the folders have broad titles like: Work, Media and Admin. So far so good, but these contain numerous subfolders that house facsimiles of facsimiles of files e.g., version 2, version 25, and then, a good deal of these are labelled inaccurately. Very helpful, Sarah 🙄

The Work and Admin folders are vaguely interesting but because I was a teacher for 16 years these folders contain lots of teaching resources. And then, many of these materials are mixed in amongst random admin, so each time I click open a folder, I think: Why is this here? And why am I keeping it?

But then I remind myself that I’m returning to the classroom and will be teaching psychology once more. The exam-related materials (i.e., past papers and mark schemes) can be deleted, but the resources that I spent blood, sweat and tears on producing can stay. For now.

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Work/admin-related stuff aside, I’ve had a lot more fun revisiting my photos. Some images date back almost 20 years but gosh, most of them are blurry and have poor composition, while others are just plain bad. Those in the latter group are desperately seeking deletion. That said, many images that I have come across remind me of fun adventures and good times with loved ones.

However, because I need to establish some kind of teachable moment from this tedious experience of organisation, I have realised that unlike with my manic tidying sessions of the tangible stuff like with paperwork and clothes, reviewing my hard-drives is a long-term project. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and by extension, the drives could take years to review.

But then something else struck me: what happens if I don’t get through them?

The answer is simple: nothing.

The contents will continue to sit on the hard-drives until I eventually get around to doing something, or the technology to access them becomes obsolete. And the realisation that I may never get through everything has helped me to question some of my thinking about this need to be organised.

I know that some of this is related to my personality. Individuals who score higher on scales of ‘conscientiousness’ on psychometric scales like the Big Five Personality Test are more likely to prioritise organisation. But there is something else: my need for control.

When I feel in control then the tiny part of the world that I inhabit becomes that little bit more manageable, and being organised helps with this. Or it feels that way. And as parts of the world appear increasingly chaotic, exerting as much control as possible over our lives can lead us to believe that we are steadying the ship, or like we have some main player character energy and we can have a direct effect on events. (Spoiler - we rarely do).

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Recently, I finished reading Oliver Burkeman’s superb book ‘Meditation for Mortals’, where he shares that the more that we try to exert control over things (including people, especially people!), the more likely it is that those same things will elude us:

“As soon as any experience can be completely controlled, it feels cold and dead; a work of art you fully understand or a person whose behaviour you can predict with total accuracy is no fun at all.”

Deleting some stuff from my hard-drives is hardly the same as bigger questions related to innate and learned characteristics like my levels of conscientiousness, but I agree with Burkeman that trying to seek ultimate control of any experience makes things a lot less fun.

Aging has helped with this acceptance. The older I get, the more I find myself surrendering to the unknown. (A psychological response to the pandemic too, perhaps?). My rationale for this is because after decades of trying to be in control of AS. MUCH. AS. POSSIBLE I have acknowledged that this has not led to a greater sense of happiness, or appreciation for whatever task/s I am engaged in. Rather, the distraction caused by all of my controlling efforts has resulted in me feeling frustrated and exhausted, frankly.

So, here is to more fun and a little less control.

Let’s see how long it lasts 😬

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In some semi-related news, from time to time I am planning on sharing some ‘From the Archive’ type posts with images that I uncover from my hard-drives. But as I promised earlier, most of these will be blurry, have poor composition and/or be just plain bad. Enjoy!

And here is a quick taster of what I discovered recently:

Castleton in Derbyshire, UK. I can’t remember exactly when and perhaps that’s why my head is in my hands (circa 2004 or thereabouts).

Same coat, same rock. Different angle. Derbyshire, UK