Day 199
We expand to fit the space available to us. This is a truth I know. I have titled it THE ENLARGEMENT PRINCIPLE. If any of you are physicists out there, you have my permission to launch a full up scientific study. We can split the Nobel Prize.
I give you the example of the purse, backpack, messenger bag or murse– Please insert your own “carryall” term here.
My summer bag is diminutive and is always crammed full of necessary items. It has to be—it’s small. I have been known to get my hand stuck in the tight space between my wallet and cell phone while searching for my keys. (OK, not really, but you get the point).
Much like the rest of my winter wardrobe, my cold weather purse is much larger. So for a day or two after the switch each year, I have a veritable cavernous pocketbook. It makes me feel orderly and slightly smug. Although, somehow, I will still often be searching for my keys frantically with my left hand, only to discover I am holding them in my right.
Then a few days will pass and I will realize that my supersized purse is suddenly quite full. See, THE ENLARGEMENT PRINCIPLE in action, or selective amnesia, because I sure as hell don’t remember loading up those additional items.
I find the same principle to be true with homes, cars, clothing and dinner plates. Think about moving into a new (often larger) home. At first, you might have a couple empty or sparsely furnished rooms, then a fortnight* passes and suddenly you are tripping over piles of excess stuff.
And what adult doesn’t fill their plate, and then clean it (just like mama said) regardless of diameter? Anyway, you see the pattern.
I am finding that this year, I have to practice a sort of active resistance to THE ENLARGEMENT PRINCIPLE.
The bottom line is, I go to lots of thrift stores and garage sales. I do this primarily to find the few things on my list that I really do need like printer ink and a pencil sharpener. The danger is that I also spy many things I want and HAVE THE SPACE FOR, like say…a Jack Lalanne Juicer, which I bought and a table saw, which I didn’t buy.
I guess you win some and you lose when tangling with THE ENLARGEMENT PRINCIPAL. But, I think there is something to be said for living in and taking up smaller spaces. I just don’t have any practical knowledge of it—yet.
Instructions included
*I don’t even know what a fortnight is…I just thought it sort of sounded like the right about of time. I would probably have to fact check that before submitting this groundbreaking article to the scientific journals…but not if I was going to use it in a presidential debate.
I love this principle. I mean, not what it does to us but I like it having a name. We recently moved from a 1100 sqft hose to a 1900 sqft house. The difference is driving me crazy! We got more stuff to make it look furnished but now, I’m considering giving away half our stuff and only living on the bottom floor. Does that sound crazy? Hubby says it does.
A tip for your keys: I clip mine to my purse handle with a D ring. Now j never lose them in the abyss 🙂
I could use that table saw, I’m in the market 😀
Since it’s just one day before the election, I won’t bother fact-checking either and simply throw out there that I think a fortnight is one month….
A fortnight is two weeks 🙂
Yes! It’s two weeks.
A fortnight is a night spent in a pillow or blanket fort.
When we travel, we rent apartments and we get to experience living in much less space than we do in the States. Each time we do it, we love it. Granted we don’t have all the regular stuff of life but the apartments do come equipped with everything you need to cook, clean, even iron. We always come back saying “Why?”
Oh, my, I love it! The enlargement principle…and it’s so true! I keep trying to explain that we need a smaller house, so that it won’t fill up with as much stuff, so that I don’t have to spend as much time cleaning. And people think I’m nuts! But in the summer, on our tiny boat, housework takes me 5 minutes. It’s so hard to keep a larger house from being overrun with possessions. We definitely must resist the enlargement principle as well. 😉
I do the same thing and everyone says, “Ummm, I don’t think that’s how it works.”
But it is! We had everything we needed in a two bedroom apartment. We now have a 4 bedroom house and there’s stuff everywhere. “We” (as in ” I”) am thinking that we should move all 5 of us into an RV and take only what we must have. My Mom can use our furniture ( and store our one Tupperware of family photos ) and everything else can go! And, yes, they tell me they think I’m crazy too.
I think this might be true with clothes too. If you have the larger size, you expand to fill it! The opposite is not true. As for the dinner plates, years ago we started using the lunch/salad plate for dinner. Our plate looks full but it is with less food.