It started out as a way to help me decide what to keep and what to get rid of, in the way of physical things. Because 2022 is my year of clearing out.
I’ve been aware of the Eisenhower Grid for years. It’s a time management tool that encourages you to put tasks in one of four boxes. Important and Urgent, Important, but not Urgent. Not Important, but Urgent. Not Important, Not Urgent.
This tool has never been the best for me. For whatever reason, the words ‘important’ and ‘urgent’ give me anxiety. I start to feel like everything is both important and urgent. And my brain starts to kick up every important/urgent thing it can come up with.
Next thing I know, I can’t breathe.
But I like the concept a lot. Because anything that removes emotion from things like this and helps me to see what’s obvious is a good thing. So, when I was trying to find a way to help myself make decisions about what to keep and what to . . . um . . . rehome . . . I changed the words.
Love and Need
I actually doodled my love/need matrix with a Sharpie on the back of my editorial calendar. Clearly, I’m a closet artist. Right?
Not so much.
But, I ended up with a visual of the concept that I think will make a huge difference in this, my year of the Great Curate.
There are four possible choices:
Love and Need
Love and Don’t Need
Don’t Love and Need
Don’t Love and Don’t Need
Each of those quadrants of my matrix triggers an action.
If I love something and need it — I keep it.
If I love something, but don’t need it — I have a choice to make.
If I don’t love something, but I need it — it goes on the replace list.
If I don’t love something and I don’t need it — it gets dumped in one way or the other.
So I ended up with four words that become like buckets I can mentally place everything into: Keep, Choose, Replace, Dump.
Keep
If I love a thing and I need it, then obviously I’ll hold on to it.
My beloved little collection of thrift store Le Creuset pots and pans are a good example. I adore them. Every one tells a story of where I found it. What I did to restore it. It gives me a thrill to use a $300 Dutch oven that I found at a Savers in Las Vegas for $17, carried back on the plane with me, and then cleaned with salt and lemon until it was useable again.
I love these pots and pans and I need them. They’re keepers.
Choose
If I love something, but I don’t need it, that’s not an automatic keep or an automatic dump. I have a choice to make.
I ask myself a few questions.
If I keep the thing, will it hinder my enjoyment of the things I actually do really love and need?
Will getting rid of it make it easier for me to use those things?
Do I need to resist the urge to have more than is ideal?
Let’s go back to my kitchen.
I have a pretty enameled berry colander. It’s vintage and it makes me smile every time I see it. I don’t actually see it that often, because it’s stored under my two regular colanders (a big one and a small one) and I just rarely take the effort to move them to get to it.
In fact, I use my small colander the most, because it’s right there on top.
I love that vintage berry colander. But I don’t need it.
When I thought about it, I decided to keep it. It stores easily. And I have a feeling that once I curate more of my kitchen, I’ll find a place for it where I’ll actually use it more often.
This bucket is the toughest, by the way. Because it’s less clear cut. I teach my students about an editing concept called Resist the Urge to Explain that came from a book called Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.
The idea is that when you repeat yourself in your writing, you actually weaken all of ways you’ve written the information. No matter how well-written they are.
The same idea fits for this, I think. No matter how much I love something, having too much diminishes everything.
Replace
Sometimes you need something, but you’re not in love with it. You’ve got to hang on to it, but maybe at some point you can find something that will do the job and also be a thing you can really enjoy using.
Back in my kitchen, my pot holders come to mind. They’re ancient and kind of ugly. But they do their job. They keep my hands from burning. When I curated the cupboard above my oven, where I keep them, I kept the least offensive and got rid of the rest.
And then put ‘pot holders’ on my replace list. I’ll keep my eye out for some I really like.
Dump
Back around to a no-brained. If I don’t love something and I don’t even need it — then it’s easy to see that it can move out.
There was a giant lidded frying pan taking up half my storage space — for TEN YEARS. I even moved the stupid thing from Nevada to PA with me, even though it must weigh ten pounds.
It was a gift and I felt guilty every time I saw it. I’ve only ever used once, when the person who gave it to me came over for dinner right after Christmas.
It’s lovely. It’s like new. But I don’t love it (not hating it isn’t the same thing as loving it) and I don’t need it. I have pans that I truly love and that take up less space.
This pan can go. Someone else will love it.
Non-Stuff Stuff
I’m still working on the logistics, but I don’t see why I can’t use my decision matrix to curate — everything.
How I run my business.
I love blogging and I need it as a form of communication with my students. It stays, even thought it doesn’t make me the kind of money it used to.
I don’t love marketing, but I need it. It’s on my replace list. Someday, I’ll have the money to hire someone to do it for me.
I love our morning sprints, but we rarely have more than 25 people at them. I love them, but strictly speaking (business-wise) I probably don’t need them. So I get to choose. I get so much of my own writing during them that they’re a definite keeper.
I don’t love copyediting for other people. I also don’t need it. It’s not a good fit for my business. So, I don’t have to feel badly about not pursuing it as an income stream.
How I Write
I love editing. Sometimes, I only write so I have something to revise. And I need to edit. This is a keeper. I don’t think I’d ever hire out my early editing.
I love starting new projects. I have 36 ongoing projects at the moment. Thirty-six, ya’ll. I don’t need any more new projects. Period. But I love it. So when I get an idea, I need to choose whether or not it makes it past the ‘brewing’ stage.
I don’t love writing first drafts of books, but I need to if I want to be a novelist. I struggled with this one. Because I’m not sure how I can ever ‘replace’ it. But then I realized that there are parts I can replace. Like trying to write first drafts without plotting them first. Or writing first drafts of books I don’t love. I can replace those with well plotted stories I really want to tell.
I don’t love writing poetry. I’ve never been able to, no matter how much I’ve tried. And I don’t need to write poetry. So I don’t have to, unless it someday moves up to one of the ‘love’ categories.
How I Spend My Money
I love travel, but I don’t need it (strictly speaking.) So it’s on the choose list. I’ll travel, if it doesn’t hinder my experience of the things I do love and need.
I love my rambling old Victorian house and it needs some repairs. So — no brainer. Those are expenses that stay in the keep pile.
I don’t love paying a car payment,but we need our car. So it goes in the replacement list. We’ll chunk extra money toward paying it off, so that we don’t have to make payments anymore.
I don’t love overspending on groceries and we don’t need to. So, tightening up that part of a budget means dumping overspending.
How I Spend My Time
I love cooking. My family needs to eat. Cooking is a keeper.
I love fresh-baked bread. But I don’t need it. I have to choose, on a case-by-case basis whether I’m going to take the time to bake bread or not. Will I enjoy it at least as much as something else I might do with that time?
I don’t love putting away my laundry, but it needs to be done. It goes on the replace list. And there it will sit until I either break down and hire someone to do it for me or technology gives me an automatic laundry hanger-upper. Who knows? Maybe just being on the look out for solutions will help.
I don’t love doing the dishes, and because I’m super lucky and my husband actually has it on his ‘keep’ list, I don’t have to do them. And I don’t have to feel bad about it, because I do all the cooking, which is on his ‘dump’ list.
Even Self-Care
I love reading and I need to read, for my mental health. So it stays, even if every minute I read there are about eleventy-billion other things I could be doing.
I love eating chocolate. It makes me feel good. But I don’t need it to feel good, so I need to choose if it’s going to actually be good for me in the long run. Sometimes it is. Sometimes not.
I don’t love going to bed on time, but it needs to be done. When I don’t get enough sleep, the rest of my self-care slides right down after it. Sleep is at the tippy-top of my self-care playbook. So, obviously I can’t replace sleep. But I can replace my bed time. Or my nighttime routine, so that I don’t struggle with going to bed on time so much.
I don’t love meditation and I don’t need it to relax, so I don’t have to worry about it. I can do what works for me and let the idea of meditation (at least the way it feels like it should be in my head) go.
I’m not sure where this is going.
Except that I already feel less scattered and more focused. And the process of curating is centering me in a way that I really feel in need of.
I’ll keep you posted.