T Minus Two Type Two Diabetes and Other Passions

Two Kinds of “Problem”

There are different meanings for the word 'problem'. It might be interesting to contrast two of them.

In the more commonly used sense, a 'problem' is something in our life we don't like. It could be a bad relationship (or no relationship at all), a job we don't like, our colleague's hygiene habits, or our inability to grow houseplants. Often, we don't really think of these things as anything we can do anything about, even when they're not actually beyond our control. Some situations aren't addressable, but other times we don't really examine them.

In school, a 'problem' is an exercise posed in a course such as math or science. Here, it's expected that there is a solution - the student who understands the material should be able to come up with the answer. The appropriate knowledge, perhaps combined with a little bit of intuition, will provide the needed response.

Do we have problems in our lives that we have in the first category when they belong in the second category?  There are situations we can't change, of course, and also those that we can't change except at an intolerable cost. But is that true of all of our problems?

I have never been able to maintain an uncluttered living space for very long, even as a child. I'm not a hoarder, but I'm usually a long way from being ready for the Queen to drop in for tea. I clean up periodically, but soon find that the clutter has overtaken me again.

I've always thought of my clutter as a character flaw, and I'm sure that character flaw is part of it. But a month or so ago, something got me to think of my cluttered apartment as the second type of problem - one with a possible solution. More precisely, I began to think of it as a series of potentially soluble problems.

Here's an example of what I mean. The top of my bedroom dresser is the place I keep various knickknacks and also where I unload my pants pockets. Typically, the dresser top is a mountain of small clutter - ATM receipts, used eyeglass wipes, bus schedules, grocery lists, and suchlike.  When I (finally) asked myself why I didn't just throw that stuff away as I went, the answer was obvious: because I don't keep a wastebasket there.

Well, duh. I now do have a wastebasket there, and the dresser top no longer accumulates clutter. And it's amazing how quickly that basket fills up.

In my ongoing decluttering efforts, in which I feel like I'm making real progress, I've posed and answered many such questions. My collection of DOC coffee mugs have been repurposed as sorely-needed pencil cups and an instant solution to toothbrush and razor clutter. Buying portable phones has eliminated larger desk phones and snaking phone cords, and more cords have been eliminated by reworking my small home network. The questions go on, some of them coming up again and again.  Do I really need this item, or this many of them?  Is there a better way to store a particular type of stuff?

Of course, I understand that you don't care about my bedroom dresser. But you might ask yourself: are there situations in your life that you might benefit from really thinking about?