After watching a video with my mom recently, we started talking about anthropomorphizing.\u00a0 My observation of the video was that the animals were being credited with some human characteristics.\u00a0 She agreed and commented sometimes we go out of our way to avoid recognizing \u201chuman\u201d characteristics in animals and shared an experience she\u2019d had.\u00a0 She observed some elk sliding down a hill, front legs splayed in front of them while their haunches was on the ground.\u00a0 Now, even that is cute, but after they got to the bottom of the hill, they jumped up and ran back to the top and did it again.\u00a0 They were sledding, it was play \u2013 this served no other purpose.<\/p>\n
Yeah, so what does this have to do with organizing?<\/p>\n
Anthropomorphizing isn\u2019t limited to animals.\u00a0 We can view our belongings with a certain amount of personality.\u00a0 We might be reluctant to throw things away or even give them away.\u00a0 This always makes me think of The Velveteen Rabbit, where a toy can become real once it\u2019s owner really and truly loves it.<\/p>\n
What we tell ourselves about our stuff affects how we deal with it.\u00a0 Some people throw things out easily once they\u2019ve lost their usefulness while others have a hard time parting with them at all.\u00a0 And this is just talking about when the things might need to leave \u2013 what about how we treat our belongings while they are in our possession?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s another argument that a certain amount of anthropomorphizing could be helpful.\u00a0 If you loved your keys and cell phone, you be less likely to misplace them.\u00a0 You\u2019d be conscious of them and where you laid them down \u2013 mindful of how you treated them, maximizing their chance to be useful.<\/p>\n
If you valued your things as if they personality, or maybe more that they had a job to do \u2013 to help you \u2013 you might want to help them accomplish this.<\/p>\n
Show your things your compassion and care so they can help you \u2013 the give and take that relationships require.\u00a0 And even if we think of it differently, we do have relationships with things, so let\u2019s nurture that.<\/p>\n
Once your things have stopped helping you, it\u2019s time to let them move on.\u00a0 If appropriate, moving them onto someone else who can appreciate what they have to offer.\u00a0 What better blessing that gifting that usefulness to someone else?\u00a0 If they\u2019ve outlived their ability to serve, then simply letting them go.<\/p>\n
If our things had feelings, I imagine they\u2019d be sad to become clutter since they served us so well, that\u2019s not what they would want.\u00a0 If you want a more magical approach, in The Velveteen Rabbit, although it looks like a dire end to a well-loved toy who sheds a real tear as he\u2019s about to be burned (the boy had Scarlet Fever), the Nursery Magic Fairy comes, kisses him, and makes him a real rabbit \u2013 who the boy sees romping in the wild and thinks of his old toy.\u00a0 Even with things, it is still a relationship \u2013 what would you do to treat that relationship with care and respect?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Relationships happen with things as well as people, though we might disregard this aspect. If we think about how we treat our things, are we showing them the care and respect we both deserve?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,8,19,5,9,22,17],"class_list":["post-1081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-organizing","tag-behavior","tag-discipline","tag-hoarding","tag-household","tag-motivation","tag-productivity","tag-spaces"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-hr","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1081"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1083,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions\/1083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}