BoP - Bits of Paper

[loveofreason]

Perhaps more than anything, this passage convinces me of INTP-ness

[FONT=Tahoma,Helvetica]When an object is put aside, not to be returned to for a while, it will lie fully ignored until used again. Objects which lie unmoved for more than about 48 hours usually become invisible to the INTP, until such time as he has a use for them again. For other temperaments whose need for tidiness and order in a house is strong, this lack of concern in this area may seem despairing. For the INTP, however, no problem exists. Corners of rooms, table tops and cupboards may become cluttered with objects, but while they don't move they remain effectively invisible and are unimportant. Indeed, less mature INTPs have a reluctance to move objects at all, for the desire to remain detached and not physically interact with the world can be strong. The one thing that will force an INTP to tidy his home radically, even when alone, is when the clutter eventually gets in his way and hinders some activity. Often, however, the offending objects will merely be moved into another corner where they can spend some more weeks being invisible. [/FONT][FONT=Tahoma,Helvetica](from http://intp.org/intprofile.html)

It still makes me laugh after reading a dozen times. *pauses typing to pass fond eye over the invisible clutter on desk. sigh...

well, what's the point? I decided to sell my house. I am actually having to clean up and find a place for everything. How impossible can it be!? How do other types maintain neat, tidy homes? I break into a sweat just trying to imagine where I might put all the loose papers on my desk that doesn't actually involve making a pile of them in some other corner. Sure I have a filing cabinet, but it's full. And if it were to be used properly that would mean assigning some memorable, consistent and logical catagorisation procedure to all my bits of paper.

Now I could do this, and would find ultimately that each bit of paper is unique, and worthy of it's own catagory, and linked to all the other bits in an organic spider-webby kind of way. The way things are stored in my head, with random leaps to be made between topics on odd occasion because of some bizarre overlap of texture. So, I could do this, but it would become my life's work to design the perfect system of information storage because I wouldn't be satisfied with anything less. But I don't want to devote my life to devising a better system of information storage and retrieval - I already have my brain and a kind of chronological mental map of where in the pile a specific paper might lie. I can visualise the last known location of any given bit of paper. But once something is stuffed in the filing cabinet I forget it ever existed - the filing cabinet is for "dead" ideas. Anything current must remain in potential sight, even if that means buried three months down the stack of scrawled-on-the-back-of envelope notes.

I know someone who refers to this as the "geological strata" filing system. The resident INTJ laughs at all the geological strata on my desk (and every other stationary surface in the house...) I just refer to it as chronological order.

What about your Bits of Paper?
[/FONT]

 

[Ermine]

I just let my ESTJ mom take care of that. She's been in charge of the whole operation since we started preparing the house for showing in order to sell it later. I have no idea if I'd be able to do that by myself. I don't care about having a clean room until it inhibits my normal activities or if I have to clear a path through the clutter.

 

[loveofreason]

I tell people that I missed out on the housework gene - my mother has is, and my sister, but somehow it missed me.

I simply have no aptitude for it - having me keep the house tidy is like having a blind person keeping track of the bids at an auction.

What gets to me though, especially in this situation where there's a real estate agent and "normal" people casting a critical eye over my mess, is that I must appear lazy. The sheer enormity of keeping a clean and tidy home in the eyes of others overwhelms me. There's not enough time in the day for all the things that matter to me, let alone anything as unexciting as drudgery.

I think every INTP should be assigned a housekeeper at birth.

 

[farlda]

I must admit, it's very comforting to find the clutter is another INTP trait and not just laziness on my part! I'm one of those who never moves anything until either the object or space is needed, which is why I get rather angry when I find people have been in my room and disturbed my perfect mess.
There is usually random clutter everywhere in my room, with a few foot-sized patches I use to navigate.
I agree with loveofreason - housekeepers for all!
Incidentally, this makes me want to find which type it is that has the greatest aptitude for order. I think several of my friends are/have it, they're usually appalled at my comfortable chaos.

 

[Vrecknidj]

My wife is an INFP and is even worse with her S function than I am. Our house is a mess. We're forever apologizing to others for it.

I used to know where all my stuff was, but I've often lost things (i.e. from invisible to non-existent). Sadly, I wish this weren't the case, and I'd keep a tidier environment except for two things: 1) my default setting and 2) I work three jobs.

Dave

 

[mm1991]

Oh wow. That describes my cleaning habit perfectly!

 

[Wisp]

Cleaning habit? I have a cleaning habit? My room looked like I battled a windstorm and the windstorm won...

 

[Cabbo Pearimo]

I'm printing this out and taping it to a wall.

 

[Wisp]

It can join your own BoP collection!

 

[Cabbo Pearimo]

BYOP, Be Your Own Pet. Damn. Went to see them, bastard bouncers wouldn't let me in.


Oh, and honk if you hate swearing. Because I doubt anyone here really minds it.

 

[Wisp]

Wait, went to see who?

(No, I don't mind swearing with a little moderation...)

 

[Cabbo Pearimo]

I just wanted to make sure because I said bast... you get the idea.
I went to see Be Your Own Pet, but the bouncers wouldn't let me in.

 

[Wisp]

Oh! cogito! ( I understand)

 

[Cabbo Pearimo]

They're a punk band. From tennisse (or however it's spelt. You know - trailer trash? I'm sorry. I don't mean offence)

 

[Ermine]

Tennessee.

 

[Wisp]

Thar we go... the Irish have luck, but no spelling facilities.

 

[Zero]

I laughed all the way through that description. I have so much junk eventually it gets cluttered on my bed and I get asked how I sleep with all the clutter. To me it's like... As long as I know where things are. Important things usually have general designated spots. I'll purposely organize something or place something in a "good" spot, which effectively hides it from me. If I actually make an effort to hide something from sight the chances of me finding it again are pretty much zero.

When the object becomes important I begin to look for it in an absent-minded fashion. Which eventually leads me to give up and then when I go looking for it again I repeat the failed pattern of finding it.

In addition I do ignore stuff for a while. I had a huge collection of empty water bottles in my room that I was too lazy to take to the recycling bin downstairs. Instead of taking them downstairs I made a tower out of them and some of the magazines from the pile of junk at the end of my bed. I did get rid of the water bottles. But still I'll leave stuff undone for longer than any rational person should/would. I do go about ignoring thing for a long time as well.

 

[Linsejko]

I was going to start a thread that was a poll, asking-

"Is your room/house (house if you are the home admin) messy right now?"

A) Yes
B) No
C) It isn't, but it's currently in a state that can be described as "a rare exception."

But this thread kind of supercedes that.

I have an entire wall lined with small piles of crap. I have a table filled with piles of books and papers and random bits. I have two board games and a laptop right in front of my bed- I have a pillow on the ground. My minifridge is covered with stuff. I have another random multi-layer 'surface', wherupon is more 'stuff'. All around me, stuff. I pulled a trashbag up here two weeks ago to do some general cleaning- I filled the bag up.

That bag is sitting behind me.

My guitar is on one wall, My cello on another, a home-ade mountain dulcimer on the one right next to my desk.

I recently shoved a bunch of stuff off my desk (was making a small collection of Snicker's bite size wrappers, from the mini fridge), and already the pile is attacking again.

Further, though, I've taken over the middle room, and spewed crap all over that, and as well as an apartment room in the garage downstairs. I have a constant battle with the house to keep it from overflowing to the living room & dining area, and occasionally the house loses.

A little bit like Vegas, really.

I clean up to a reasonable degree about once every month or two.

My mother used to think I didn't love her, because I couldn't obey this simple desire of hers, to keep the house clean.

Caused much dissention. She's a naturally very messy person also (Extreme ENFP), but it distresses her, because she grew up with a strong feeling of social obligation/need for other's approval.

I consider it worthless, and thus have a hard time convincing myself to clean what I do not see.

Same with the yard.

I remember reading that paragraph a while back, when I first found I was INTP- fit perfectly.

.L

 

[Olba]

Being in the second-to-last term of my second year of secondary education, I tend to receive a lot of paper, whether it's exams, wordtests, information sheets or essays that I've written. Currently, I have two drawers filled with papers. One contains older papers along with pictures of myself that were taken by the hired photographer in our school. The other, which is right next to me, contains more important papers, such as my timetables, papers related to work and different manuals from electronical devices ranging from television to mp3-player.

I don't really think I have any kind of an organized way of keeping them, other than that the most important ones are on top. Also, if I have a certain collection of papers, I would prefer to have them on top of each other for easy reference. But other than that, it's pretty random and disorganized, just as my desk.

Even if I tried to organize them, I would just end up storming through them eventually and messing up the order, so I don't see any reason as to why should I bother organizing them in the first place. So I don't.

 

[Wisp]

Yep, if I need them, they'll be in one of my "important" places...

 

[loveofreason]

Is that like the "someplace safe" that I put things I specifically don't want to lose, moments before some cosmic singularity swallows up the "someplace safe" coordinates and all its contents to deliver them into some kind of alternative reality from which they can never be retrieved?

Somewhere beyond this universe is an incredibly neat room, filled in a very orderly manner with every important document I've ever lost. I'm convinced of it. That's where my wallet went too that time I lost it for days before it eventually reappeared in my chest freezer.

 

[Cabbo Pearimo]

I don't have a 'someplace safe'. With the slight, and so far unused, and also wholly fictional (because I'm in that mood today) exception of the safehouse in germany.

 

[Wisp]

Fully equipped to survive a nuclear winter/mass famine, Iassume?

 

[Cabbo Pearimo]

Oh no, I had to skimp on that because of tax increase on nuclear shelters. Go figure. I think they're planning something. But they don't know about the one with the bear, so we're all right.

 

[Reverse Transcriptase]

Somewhere beyond this universe is an incredibly neat room, filled in a very orderly manner with every important document I've ever lost. I'm convinced of it. That's where my wallet went too that time I lost it for days before it eventually reappeared in my chest freezer.

I once wrote the beginning to a short story called "The God of Lost Words". It was about a graduate-student & part-time librarian's conflict with "The God of Lost Words". The God of Lost Words lives up to his name- whenever words have been lost he is allowed to read them, and redeposit the scrap of paper back into the world, if he chooses. The protagonist needs a lost diary for her PhD research. She knows it existed, but has been lost. The God of Lost Words of willing to give the protagonist the diary... but only if she makes more lost words, by burning down the university archives!

*ahem*
back to Bits of Paper.

I've never been into file cabinets, and that could be because I'm likely to forget about them. But there is a time when the current things I think about stop being the current things I think about. I store them away, but a few months later I usually want to get back to them.

Every few months I try to learn lojban for a week or two. At first I would throw out the lojban notes I had made, or put them somewhere I'd lose them. Now atleast I acknowledge that I am done studying lojban for the time being, gather the lojban notes together, and put them all in one place. That way next time I get the drive to study lojban, all my notes are already together in a somewhat-memorable place.

Whenever I move I have to go through all the pieces of paper in my room. It's a really cleansing and reflective process, because like most of you I keep the most random notes. A lot of it gets tossed, and some of it gets organized like the lojban notes, to be "on reference". But the rest of the bits get put into a large envelope. I have a few of these envelopes now- the collection of the bits of paper that represent my life for a certain time period.

 

[Gorgrim]

I end up panicing eventually when I feel like theres too many papers lying bout.


I have a huge folder for my notes/info for all classes.
Or ofcourse, they are thrown out, drawings, or random weirdo notes that are ugly and useless.... o.o

Ultimately I wanted a folder for each subject in school, but i havnt got around to that yet.
ther pesky papers such as bank notes.. Get thrown in the pile of "i'll problably have to read it one day pile"
there are also redicolous papers from my earlier life, they are in the basement, though..

In regards to not living in a mess, I've just discovered PLENTY of things I thought i didnt have, because of systemizing all my stuff or getting rid of it. Plus, maybe my floor won't collapse down into the neighbour downstairs.

I problably need to keep some stuff on my desk and such. Some stuff to keep me busy, now that all the other stuff is hidden away in order and neatness... it feels wrong, and yet feels right to have cleaned and put things in order. I
t is important for me to know where my school stuff is lately though, because i want it all to go well, thus I am making sure i sort all my notes and papers, and my books.

 

[Chronomar]

Cleaning? Moving items on my desk into a more orderly fashon? What!?!

This discribes my system (or rather lack of system) of organization. It reaches from how I organize my mind, my schedule, and my room. I have always had a tendency to collect and hold onto things (and forget about them for a long time).

I have a...

rock, fossil, marble, leaf, flower (pressed), old book, new book, art, interesting things, coin, paper money, old school work, interesting words (written on slips of paper), sea glass, newspaper, magazine, old stuff, key, glass doorknob, sand, seashell, bone, dried fungus, feather, and computer parts collection mounting in my room/basement work area currently.

These collections have been forming since I first (at 11 months or so) held my first yellow quartz pebble given to me by my grandfather (I still have it, it's in my rock collection). Of course, I've never really catagorized nor labeled any of this stuff. I just have books where I can look up the information of what fossil, rock, feather, fungus or whatever it is I've collected (see "book collection") and whenever I happen to find a piece of my collection again (it is currently burried in my own geological strata) I just look it up and find enjoyment in rediscovering the information.

It is exactly as the passage originally posted discribes it. Strange. But not as strange as all the stuff I have collected in my room right now.

 

[Chronomar]

I can't do my homework in my room because I get distracted by re-finding some book or another from my collection that I want to read, sitting, and reading five or so books, not getting anything done, and ultimately, waking up from my self-induced book coma and realizing the mountain of work I have left....too bad, but I'm not doing anything about it .