Luxury and Mess
In his book "The Design of Design" Fred Brooks Writes: "The critical thing about the design process is to identify your scarcest resource". An abundance of such scarce resource will create a feeling of luxury.
In the first 10 years of my life my scarcest resources were my parents. They were always busy working, learning and partying. That's why Saturday mornings felt so luxurious. They both were home. We made home-fried potatoes for breakfast and ate them at the tiny table that could fit 3 plates and nothing else.
We lived in Kiev in a studio apartment, filled with Mom's jewelry, Dad's art projects, their clothes, books, vinyl records, wine bottles, coffee cups and cigarette butts. It was perfect. Everything in my little world smelled, looked and sounded like my scarcest resource.
But my parents felt different. Every couple of weeks they would catch a neat-picking bug and would start cleaning. "I hate this mess! I can't live like this! " - they would say bitterly, trying to re-arrange furniture or organize their belongings so that coffee cups go into one drawer and art project into the other. But soon mom and dad would run out of steam and would shove things into drawers randomly, just to be done with the cleanup project. Mom's stockings would end up in the freezer and wine bottles would fill up the entire balcony. The mess would clear from the surface of our tiny apartment and would go deeper, into every storage space available.
20 years later , my studio apartment in Brooklyn had a view of Verrazano bridge and the same square footage as our Kiev apartment. When I unpacked, the walk-in closets and drawers swallowed my belongings and left the apartment full of luxurious emptiness , as if have never moved in. My scarcest resource was space and I was not going to give it up. For a couple of months I did not buy any furniture and even slept on carpeted floor to keep the space empty.
Then I bought a bed. Wife and kids followed shortly.
Fast forward 10 years. Now our house can fit 10 studio apartments but just like my parents we are drowning in mess. Every couple of weeks we catch a neat-picking bug and start the big cleanup, only to resort to random re-distribution of everything everywhere. The mess crawls all over our house and leaves layers of fossils in our closets. It winks at us from under the sofa and jumps on our heads from the tops of the bookcases. I'm sure to my kids our house is perfect, but I have a different idea about luxury. I want space and order. I want purpose and elegance. I want tasteful minimalism with perfection on top. And I want it now.
How do you approach such a project? You make your kids do it. We started with toys. For each iteration we dedicated one drawer for my daughter, one drawer for my son, one box for charity and one
wastebasket for everything else. After finishing the big toy cleanup we have sent 10 boxes of toys to charity, and left the playroom sparkling clean, purposeful and elegant. And we plan to keep it this way.
Because in doing this project I found a recipe for living a life of spacious luxury.
Yes , of course you need a space for toy cars and a box for toy soldiers and a drawer for doll furniture and a suitcase for artwork. But also you need a mess drawer. An empty drawer to fit a mixture of dolls, cars, guns , artwork and toy soldiers. So that big cleanup becomes as simple as throwing all the mess into a mess drawer. And when the mess drawer is full, you do a small cleanup of the mess drawer.
And having a mess drawer is the luxury you can afford.
In the first 10 years of my life my scarcest resources were my parents. They were always busy working, learning and partying. That's why Saturday mornings felt so luxurious. They both were home. We made home-fried potatoes for breakfast and ate them at the tiny table that could fit 3 plates and nothing else.
We lived in Kiev in a studio apartment, filled with Mom's jewelry, Dad's art projects, their clothes, books, vinyl records, wine bottles, coffee cups and cigarette butts. It was perfect. Everything in my little world smelled, looked and sounded like my scarcest resource.
But my parents felt different. Every couple of weeks they would catch a neat-picking bug and would start cleaning. "I hate this mess! I can't live like this! " - they would say bitterly, trying to re-arrange furniture or organize their belongings so that coffee cups go into one drawer and art project into the other. But soon mom and dad would run out of steam and would shove things into drawers randomly, just to be done with the cleanup project. Mom's stockings would end up in the freezer and wine bottles would fill up the entire balcony. The mess would clear from the surface of our tiny apartment and would go deeper, into every storage space available.
20 years later , my studio apartment in Brooklyn had a view of Verrazano bridge and the same square footage as our Kiev apartment. When I unpacked, the walk-in closets and drawers swallowed my belongings and left the apartment full of luxurious emptiness , as if have never moved in. My scarcest resource was space and I was not going to give it up. For a couple of months I did not buy any furniture and even slept on carpeted floor to keep the space empty.
Then I bought a bed. Wife and kids followed shortly.
Fast forward 10 years. Now our house can fit 10 studio apartments but just like my parents we are drowning in mess. Every couple of weeks we catch a neat-picking bug and start the big cleanup, only to resort to random re-distribution of everything everywhere. The mess crawls all over our house and leaves layers of fossils in our closets. It winks at us from under the sofa and jumps on our heads from the tops of the bookcases. I'm sure to my kids our house is perfect, but I have a different idea about luxury. I want space and order. I want purpose and elegance. I want tasteful minimalism with perfection on top. And I want it now.
How do you approach such a project? You make your kids do it. We started with toys. For each iteration we dedicated one drawer for my daughter, one drawer for my son, one box for charity and one
wastebasket for everything else. After finishing the big toy cleanup we have sent 10 boxes of toys to charity, and left the playroom sparkling clean, purposeful and elegant. And we plan to keep it this way.
Because in doing this project I found a recipe for living a life of spacious luxury.
Yes , of course you need a space for toy cars and a box for toy soldiers and a drawer for doll furniture and a suitcase for artwork. But also you need a mess drawer. An empty drawer to fit a mixture of dolls, cars, guns , artwork and toy soldiers. So that big cleanup becomes as simple as throwing all the mess into a mess drawer. And when the mess drawer is full, you do a small cleanup of the mess drawer.
And having a mess drawer is the luxury you can afford.