Originally Posted by
catherine
"I Don't Know" boxes in the basement or garage and they never got touched again. And I had a LOT of "I Don't Know" boxes going back to the 80s.
Just to clarify: The "I Don't Know" boxes I'm talking about are for things that "I Don't Know What This Is Or Why I Have It" not "I Don't Know If I Want To Keep This".
IOW The "I Don't Know" box is a short-term holding area for things you don't recognize or you're not sure where to put them. By it's very nature it stays in an easily accessible place so you can add or remove things. Once you label a box as "I Don't Know If I Want To Keep This" without a definite "Open Me On..." date, all hope is lost.
This is what David Allen said about it:"If someone had to call Organization Paramedics for you because you’re so out of control, they could simply bring in a big box labeled “All the Stuff I Don’t Know What It Is or What to Do with It.” They’d scour your whole environment and throw everything in that box that fits in that category. In an hour you’d be totally organized—if you didn’t know where something was, you’d now know where it was! The best part would be that the totality of the rest of your world would not have any of that “stuff” in it, and a fresh breeze would be blowing through your psyche."