A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place

 

     "A place for everything and everything in its place." An old homily that gives advice as to how to organize within one's life. But, do we often have a place for everything? And IS everything in its place?

     Let's suppose that we are wonderfully organized and we have a place for everything and everything is in its place. what are the benefits of that? Presumably, it will be easy and efficient to find things that we want to retrieve. It will also be easy to know just where something should be put after we have finished using it. Note that this is the ideal of this situation. Having a place for everything is of no use if people do not put things into those places. Around my household, we end up repurchasing things quite (much too) often because things are NOT put back into the place where they are expected to be found.

     And, on the other hand, if there IS a place for everything and the item is not where it should be -- then that organization is useless. "A place for everything and everything in its place" gives a structure that can help in organization, retrieval, and storage -- but the structure has to be actively used and maintained to be of use. Every six months, or so, I organize our pantry. I group canned vegetables together, canned fruits together, sauces, surplus "backup" supplies, and other stuff grouped together. I also examine "use by" dates and discard those items (usually not zero) that have expired and put older items towards the front to be used first. Obviously, we do not all make use of the structure consistently -- otherwise I would not be re-organizing every six months.

     So, the structure is helpful -- but only if consistently used. But what if we are unable to create this structure? "A place for everything." Having extra space should not hurt as long as it is not used in such a way that finding things becomes more difficult. But most of us do not have enough space for everything. There cannot be "a place for everything". The best we can do is "a pile for groups of related things" from which we must sort when we try to retrieve. This situation is improved by one of two methods: obtain more space or reduce the amount of stuff we have. In the US, obtaining more space ("upsizing") is the direction most often approached. Note that this sometimes means off-site storage facilities.

     Reducing stuff -- following a simplification, or minimalist, route -- is becoming more popular but fights against the general culture. There are people who are able to help with this. Since the stuff is not theirs, there is no emotional attachment and elimination of excess, unused, things is much easier. But the final decision as to what is to stay or go is still yours and you have to be willing to make such decisions.

     Once the goal of having the proper amount of space has been achieved, the next step is organization so that things can be placed, and retrieved, easily and quickly. Once again, there are people who are fantastic at organizing and can help you with this task.

     With a goal of downsizing into a smaller, single-level, retirement domicile in the near future, we are working to reduce, reduce, reduce. It is not easy. Over the course of a lifetime, memories become attached to things. Elimination of things is kind-of-easy. elimination of memories (or triggers of memories) is much more difficult.

Entropy : or why is my house a mess?

   Physics is basically a bunch of descriptions (called "laws", "theories", "postulates", etc.) that allow us to predict how energy and matter (something that can be touched by other matter -- like a chair or oxygen or water) will be affected by other matter or energy that is applied to the original system. Note that, with special relativity (the old famous Einstein equation of E = mc**2) it is recognized that energy can be converted into matter and matter can release energy if broken into less complex units. (As usual, it is easier to break something down than to put it together.)

   One concept is called entropy. This is a measurement of disorder. It applies to the melting of an ice cube. It applies to the complexity of atoms -- with entropy increasing when fission occurs breaking a uranium atom into smaller atoms. It can also be used for everyday things -- such as a tidy room becoming messy. In each case, the situation of order moving towards disorder is called entropy.

   Local entropy can be reorganized. This often requires putting in energy -- but not always. The free flowing molecules of liquid water are less organized than that of ice which has a static configuration and form. In order to create ice from water, it is necessary to remove heat (energy). Because there are different ways that order is created from disorder (or disorder from order), there are considered to be different types of entropy.

   Notice that I say local entropy. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the overall process of entropy cannot be reversed. If you leave something alone, it will eventually break down. In a house, everything will get covered in dust. A moving part will wear and break. Radioactive particles will continue to convert into non-radioactive masses.

   So, whether one believes in creationism or the big bang theory, everything started in chaos, order was imposed, and everything keeps trying to make its way back to chaos. We can clean the dishes but they'll get dirty again (even if we don't use them, dust will settle).

  Next time you look into your house and say "didn't I just clean this up the other day?" just tell yourself -- "Oh yes, entropy".