Pack Rat For A Reason

Rachel Leow makes me feel better about my books and boxes of stuff I’ve gathered through the years:

Only Collect; that is to say, collect everything, indiscriminately. You’re five years old. Don’t presume too much to know what’s important and what isn’t. Photocopy journal articles, photograph archives; create bibliographies, buy books; make notes on every article or book you read, even if it’s just one line saying “Never read this again”; collect newspaper clippings and email them to yourself; collect quotes; save your ideas for future papers, future projects, future conferences, even if they seem wildly implausible now. Hoarding must become instinctual, it must be an uncontrollable, primal urge. And the higher, civilizing impulse that kicks in after the fact is organization, or librarianship. You must keep tabs on everything you collect, somehow; a system must be had, and the system must be idiot-proof. That is to say, you should be able to look back on it six months for now and not be completely stymied as to why you’ve organized things that way. (The present versions of ourselves are invariably the biggest idiots, and six months will make that clear).

The organizing party is seriously kicking in as I stare at stacks of papers and books that I have throughout my office (I’m still in shock I have an “office”) and boxes in my basement.  The effort to catalogue is enormous and one I wish I had started a long time ago.  I’m sure I’ll find that the majority of the junk I have is fairly worthless in all senses of the term, but that’s part of growing up and fine-tuing my collection, as Rachel discusses in the article.

Very good advice.