and loneliness is cleanliness
Lately, quite a lot of the free time and energy that I've acquired has gone into cleaning. Which is good, because when I moved into this room, I didn't have time to completely unpack, and then I suddenly found myself so busy that even basic maintenance fell by the wayside. The overall effect on my room's organization was akin to that of a hastily assembled and subsequently abandoned shanty perched atop one half of a very nice foundation. But I've recently been cleaning up the place with the fervor of a man desperately staving off the omnipresent ennui of unemployment. It's looking pretty good; I'm kind of wondering how I'll spend my time when I'm finally finished. My guess: alcoholism.
Haha, that was a little joke I told you there.
As should come as a surprise to nobody, all this cleaning has made me give some thought to my cognitive arrangement. Usually I have a really hard time finding anything after I've cleaned, because the places I think to look for something when I need it generally have no relation whatsoever to the places that I think would be sensible to put it when I'm cleaning. On the other hand, when I'm being messy and just drop things when I'm done using them, they are generally to be found in the first place I think of.
Importantly, this is not a place that necessarily makes any sense at all. I first started thinking about this when determining what order to put my office keys in. No matter how rational they may seem, or what heuristics were used to arrive at them, certain key sequences are just impossible for me to keep track of, whereas others are much easier to remember, even though they frequently do not involve any clear pattern of which I'm conscious.
For the same reason, I've resigned myself to keeping hydrogen peroxide under the sink rather than in the medicine cabinet, just because my mind is utterly stymied by the idea of looking for it in the medicine cabinet. The weird one, though, is the bottle of mucilage that goes next to the hand soap. It always seems to find its way there, and I really want to move it somewhere less ridiculous, but I know that if I ever have to find it, I'll be all "dammit where is my mucilage and why isn't it next to the soap like God intended?"
Haha, that was a little joke I told you there.
As should come as a surprise to nobody, all this cleaning has made me give some thought to my cognitive arrangement. Usually I have a really hard time finding anything after I've cleaned, because the places I think to look for something when I need it generally have no relation whatsoever to the places that I think would be sensible to put it when I'm cleaning. On the other hand, when I'm being messy and just drop things when I'm done using them, they are generally to be found in the first place I think of.
Importantly, this is not a place that necessarily makes any sense at all. I first started thinking about this when determining what order to put my office keys in. No matter how rational they may seem, or what heuristics were used to arrive at them, certain key sequences are just impossible for me to keep track of, whereas others are much easier to remember, even though they frequently do not involve any clear pattern of which I'm conscious.
For the same reason, I've resigned myself to keeping hydrogen peroxide under the sink rather than in the medicine cabinet, just because my mind is utterly stymied by the idea of looking for it in the medicine cabinet. The weird one, though, is the bottle of mucilage that goes next to the hand soap. It always seems to find its way there, and I really want to move it somewhere less ridiculous, but I know that if I ever have to find it, I'll be all "dammit where is my mucilage and why isn't it next to the soap like God intended?"
posted by Evan at 7:26 PM
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