A friend who loves to take notes and make notes asked me this morning how to manage her beloved scraps of important insights, so that she doesn’t feel like she is living in a well-lined birdcage. Good question—and, with universal implications (i.e., not just papers). I even came up with a new catchphrase to answer it! Are you ready? (Spoiler alert: It’s in the title itself.) ACCUMULATE, THEN CURATE.

We are all familiar with the “accumulate” bit, me included. Listen, I’m telling you: YOU GET TO HAVE THINGS. It’s part of material existence! It’s pretty much unavoidable. Just make sure that those things are serving a purpose for you. That’s the “curate” bit—deliberately, intentionally selecting what gets to live in a particular space in your home, because it supports you.

By curating periodically—and you get to determine what period of time works for you!—you will ensure that you are not overwhelmed by your things all the time, in addition to having the satisfaction that your things are relevant to the person you are and/or want to be. There is no extra—there is just true you with a side of aspirational you. As for schedule, you could do it seasonally (i.e., it’s hot out, time to put the winter gear away!) or situationally (i.e., that pile of _______ is looking precarious, it might fall on me). Up to you!

The only requirement is that you DO IT.

Because speaking of my catchphrases, another one is THERE IS NO SYSTEM GOOD ENOUGH THAT IT WILL DO ITSELF. Here’s the perhaps disappointing secret: YOU ARE PART OF SAID SYSTEM. You have to participate or the system will die. (And/or you may become buried under that pile of ______).

Here is an example of an area in my home that currently needs curation. (Also, note to self: Do this.)

I am originally from Michigan, where the weather WILL TURN ON YOU LIKE THAT and now I live in the PNW where damp cold prevails. My sister once said that cold in the midwest/east coast is like having your extremities gnawed on by rats, whereas cold in the PNW is like being submerged in frozen cheesecake. CAN CONFIRM. I’m pretty much always cold and I have Reynauds, so I need a lot of effing coats and other ways to get warm. I wear coats! inside! my house! And then also different coats are for different activities!

Soooooo, you can see why my mudroom coat hooks look like they do (see Fig. 1 ). It’s a little? out of control insofar as nobody else can hang up a damn thing. TIME TO CURATE, Y’ALL.

What to leave on said hooks? (Or, in other words, how do you know what to curate/keep?) I consider:

Is this item relevant to me for the foreseeable future? Does this coat do what I need it to do given my activities and the weather? If not, away it goes—either to a different storage spot, or, if I’m energetically done with it, I can let it go. Further, if I want to be aspirational, I can consider which coat I would wear to go for a run, then put it front and center to nudge me to go exercise.
Is this the best spot for it? Could there be a better/truer one? Another one of my catchphrases is PUT THE THING WHERE YOU USE THE THING—I put on any number of coats before I leave the house, so it makes sense for the bulk of them to live by the door, provided they meet the above criteria. My VEST collection, which I wear wherever, whenever, could probably be stored in my clothes closet.

It’s only November and so I’ll likely be cold until next Juneuary so I probably won’t curate my coat hooks deeply until July, other than being considerate of others’ coat-hanging needs/not being a hook-hog.

To summarize: Curation as a framework can be applied to many different things—clothes, papers, spices, tools, toiletries, toys, you name it. The main components are:

NOTICE that you are overwhelmed/overrun by a set of items.
PARTICIPATE IN THE SYSTEM by diving in and combing through those items—if you are very overwhelmed, you could start small, like JUST this sock drawer, not all my clothes.
DECIDE WHAT IS RELEVANT TO YOU NOW—what to keep where it is, what to store deeper, and what to let go of.
REPEAT on a variable, relevant timescale.

Happy curating!

Accumulate, then curate. And repeat!