The Four Categories of Organization

These categories of organization are outrageously simple to understand, but invaluable for lucid living.

When you organize yout life belongings, four distinct and immutable classifications of organization arise:

1. Utility
2. Memorable Worth
3. Financial Worth
4. Garbage

Whether you're sorting through old belongings, heirlooms, or possibly junk you never threw out, you simply need to make the decision as to if each belonging falls into either of the first three categories. If the item can be used, it has utility and should, therefore, be saved in close proximity to the site of usage. If the item has memorable worth, it should be classified as valuable memorabilia, and stored in a clustering of like items. For example, old letters have no financial worth and no utility, but can be ranked very highly in terms of their memorabilia, so they should be put into a container clustering all other saved letters. Clustering solves the all-too frequent problem of having scattered memorabilia. So you really only need to decide on those two categories, then the item defaults to being in categories Three or Four.

If the item doesn't fall into categories 1 and 2, but has financial value, obviously it should be put into the financial worth category and resold or philanthropically given away. If the item doesn't have financial or memorable worth and serves no direct purpose (utility), it automatically goes into the "Garbage"category and should be discarded. It's very simple, but very complete. Every item falls into one of those four categories of organization, and can be classified simply by deciding whether or not it serves a financial or memorable purpose.

Everything starts with a decision of action. People develop clutter in their lives by not going through this simple decion-making process. You can add years of clarity to your life be simply going through this process.