Clutter
Affects Co-workers, Guests
Reprinted
from
The Indianapolis Star
7/7/02
We
hear that one person's trash is another person's treasure. Do we
also hear someone else's clutter is another person's anxiety?
That's a slightly different slant, isn't it?
Both
are true, but only one is a dilemma.
Whispers
among co-workers and departed house visitors reveal that another's
clutter is more than an annoyance. It's a problem.
I find
it amazing that some cluttered people stop seeing the clutter
around them. It's become so much a part of the environment that
it's just not noticed anymore.
One
school principal keeps a well-cluttered office at all times. And
the administrative staff would never leave anything in her office
because they knew it would never be seen again, let alone acted
upon.
They
actually had to devise a system whereby they could get a written
communication or document to her and ensure that she would see it.
They hand-routed it to her and, if they needed immediate action,
waited for her response before leaving.
This
was, of course a problem if a person made a trip to her office and
she wasn't there. In this case, the person would either decide to
risk leaving it on her chair or return at another time.
I've
seen other methods, too. Draping paper over the phone, which is
likely to be seen because the person will have to pick up the
phone receiver at some point.
It's
still risky, though, because that paper can just be picked up and
placed among the other paper covering the desktop, getting lost
for what could be a long time.
One of
the office coordinators took my brochure that read on the front,
"Get Organized," and taped it to her principal's
computer monitor with a note that said, "Urgent -- please
call." That was bold, and I'd like to say brave, except she
left her name off the note.
The
problems a disorganized, cluttered person creates in a work
environment are too lengthy a topic to cover here.
The
problems the same type of person creates for house visitors
usually include things like discomfort, no place to sit and fear
of hidden creatures.
A
friend came to town and arranged to stay with one of her friends
who had a spare room. Under normal conditions, she was informed
that the house is usually more tidy than she found it, but the
home renovations created disarray.
That
was painting a mild picture. The fact was, when she arrived, the
first thing she had to do was move off the mounds of items stacked
around her bed so she could get into it.
The
rest of the areas in the house displayed more than construction
taking place. And making herself a sandwich involved more than
pulling out bread and filling it with ingredients.
When
she came to visit me, she sat in my living room and expressed how
quiet it was. At first I didn't understand that because my dog was
outside the window barking at some passerby.
Then I
knew what she meant. Clutter is noise, and my house didn't have
any.
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