"Just throw it in the attic!"

For most, the attic is large filing cabinet for memories and a storage facility for items which we may one day need again. In the houses I've lived in, the attic is a secret compartment that's revealed when you pull a string that's attached to a door that's attached to stairs. When you pull on the string the attic groans distinctively and stairs emerge like a mouth open wide for deliveries.

The attic is a purgatory for items that are either too laden with sentiment to let go of, or those that are undefined in value and necessity. Once an item is relegated to a life in the attic it ceases to exist. It is not until the attic stairs are revealed anew that the item becomes important and coveted once again. You can live without it until it's gone; once it's gone you need it more than ever.

Most attics are an embarrassing mess. The point seems to be to fill them up with stuff worth forgetting or to head up there now and then and make a game out of trying to find something. Since no visitors to the home ever set foot in the attic, the home owner is free to go wild in this part of the house. "Just throw it in the attic!"

The problem is that the attic is the brain of the house. When the brain is all jumbled and stacked up and confused, not to mention weighed down with items that don't matter, the whole house does the heavy lifting. All the energy that the house exerts to hold up the attic could be better spent somewhere else. Not to mention the wasted energy of the inhabitants of the house who have to live with the knowledge of a jungle of forgettable stuff living above them, stacked precariously, patiently and eternally waiting to be set free and given a new lease on life at Goodwill.

Entropy

"Disorder is always increasing"

These are the words my physics professor used to define the word entropy many years ago when I sat at a high school sized desk. While the other kids in the class jotted down this new word and its definition in their notebooks, my mind went elsewhere. I knew had just met my organizational nemesis - entropy.

Disorder lurks around the corner, anxious and eager to rear its cluttered head into each and every spot you do not defend and protect. Disorder can arise suddenly, after a week of neglect, or it can pile up steadily, year after year. Creating disorder is much easier and certainly more spontaneous (and fun) than reinstating or maintaining order. But once disorder is created it will inevitably turn on you, becoming a nagging burden or even worse, a silent stressor in the corner of the room. Disorder is always more powerful and stubborn than order. As soon as you look the other way, there comes disorder, slithering back to reinstate its domain.