How To Deal With Motor Vehicles & Other Clutter: Change the Default

Virgin Pacific Airlines had a sign at the gate ridiculing their own passengers who haul too much stuff around. Apparently they were able to get away with it because it's such great advice.

Mom advised the same and that was one time when I could really be compliant.. I mentioned the John Updike novel _Travel Light_ she put on my reading list decades ago but she claimed to not remember it.

As one novelist, maybe not Updike, put it, the more it the less we/me.

Same goes for writing. "Omit needless words." -- Strunk & White

Same goes for walking or cycling vs cars.

The more cars clutter up the roads the less we/me. This certainly includes the motorists.

Same goes for eating too much food.

It took several years to figure out I was eating too much on trips, if not at home. You save money not eating so much food.

https://dariusforoux.com/declutter/

Obviously if a friend or a stranger "gifts" -- the most horrifying verbed noun, even worse than "verbed" -- , you pretty much have to accept it to be polite. In _East of Eden_ the 2 brothers presented the pretty girl with a dead rabbit. She took the rabbit then tossed it as soon as she thought she was out of sight. They saw it anyway. Someone is always watching in Steinbeck.

Even a cat will take possession of pet bed or towel you give him but it's not 100% certain he uses the item because he really likes it or is just trying to humor you.

One solution to clutter is a slow moving or periodically moving conveyor belt desk that dumps everything on a weekly or monthly basis into a bin where the stuff is held for another week or month. Each week or month you get your PDA, wallet and the other stuff you want out of the bin and put it on the upstream end of the belt. The rest gets tossed. Get some celebrity interior types to give the thumbs up to shelving and garage floors.

The now recognized mental disease of hoarding might be curable with conveyor belt living room floors. It changes the default to less is more for those too lazy to de clutter on their own.

Twitter already does that with writing although it's gotten worse. To some extent airlines do that by charging more for baggage. Geo taxation / road space user fees could help with personal transportation.

Any ideas that would change the default on food? You'll get on the short list for a Noble.


Bret Cahill


"People don't own possessions. Possessions own people."

-- Euripides

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.�

-- Steve Jobs