I was in high school when I got my first car, an '84 Toyota Camry. Being 16, I treated it as a bigger, portable version of my school locker. Stuff accumulates, windshield flyers put into the car never make their way out, and books and all kinds of junk find their way into a less than watertight trunk.

All in all, it's a bad deal.

In '97, eight years and two cars later I finally bought my first new car, and hit upon a new philosophy: the wind test. As any convertible owner knows, an object at rest tends to stay at rest, unless it's in a convertible on the freeway with the top down. Well, with a sunroof and two passenger windows, I wanted the same freedom, which means thinking of a car not as a locker, but as a backpack. Not that backpack you took around junior high, filled with crap and that apple you forgot about two weeks ago, but the backpack you carefully pack before going hostelling overseas. Only hopefully with a little more room. The gist here is that everything should be deliberate, and if it's not, it should be gone.

So (and I apologize for all the rambling) I'm taking the wind test principle to my apartment as well. I'm sure part of it has come from owning a cat that likes to get into everything (and at this moment is meowing at me to help her down from a shelf she managed to get up to herself) and part is from looking at too many home furnishings catalogs and design mags, but they just never seem to have clutter, and rather than spend thousands imitating the furniture in the room, I'd rather spend hours recreating the state of the room.

I've heard the same advice from three organizational specialists, so I'll repeat it here in case it helps even one person:

There are three rules to organization:

1. Everything in the space should have a place where it belongs.
2. There should be only one place that each item belongs.
3. That place must be easily accessible.

If any one of these three rules is absent, it gives an opening to entropy, and entropy is all bad when you want organization.

Well, I'm still working on getting my apartment towards passing the wind test, but I suppose I should take a break. I'm taking the GRE on Monday, and I've still got some studying to do.