Simplicity is the key

Can I just start off by saying that I struggle to keep things simple at times; for some reason my brain loves to wallow in the deep end of the ocean rather than keeping a birds eye over view. I have this dream of having a larger house than I do now, and having it look beautiful with lots of space, clean lines and a fabulous combination of neutral colours and rich textures with homey touches that will ensure it doesn’t look like a hotel. And I have a passion for storage. When most people get the Ikea catalogue I am sure that they spend hours looking at lounges and beds and maybe tables. Me? I wallow in the section on storage – be it the wardrobes, the different boxes and containers for the Expedit shelving or even the canisters for the kitchen. I love it.

But the reason I love looking at storage is that it is they key for making something look simple when it is, in fact crammed full of all the stuff I cant bear to get rid of or secretly hiding my latest passion for ink pads, or coloured markers or, heaven forbid, handbags. You see I want it to look simple but I want it to actually be complicated. When I got through my wardrobe and send garden bags of clothing to Vinnies, I am not doing it to simplify my wardrobe – I am doing it so I can fit more stuff in the space I create. When I buy something, if I can get two for the price of one, I get the two – even though I might only actually need the one.

This leads to all sorts of strife with Kelvin. He is a master of simplicity. In fact when he is stressed, he finds clutter and mess inherently distressing. He cant stand the kids toy boxes to be filled to the brim and he will periodically decimate them in a vain effort to reduce the amount of ‘stuff’ that crowds our house. The big book case in our playroom is filled to capacity with my scrapbooking stuff. There are boxes of paper, cartons of pens, inks, stamps, tapes, glues, paints, punches – I could go on for hours. And what I find comforting and delicious, he sees simply as clutter. It’s a battle neither of us can win, so we compromise and I agree to keep the clutter tidy and he agrees to squint his eyes and pretend it doesn’t exist.

Yesterday I had an online meeting at work with the providers of our new CRM system and a massive project that my Director and I are going to do is to document our business processes. The guy from the CRM was explaining how we should start off with a very simple big picture view; a concept that Mark and I both struggled with initially – wanting to ignore the simplified picture in favour of delving into the detail – finding the bottlenecks, obstructions and redundancies in what we do and wanting to fix them. The CRM guy kept having to gently bring us back to the concept of starting off with the simple stuff. Getting us to recognise that unless we truly understood and respected the big picture that we would be Neo taking the red pill and falling into the Matrix but with a zero chance of getting out again. The Simple View will be our ship in the Matrix, the trusty vehicle to keep us on the right path whilst we are out there in the detail.

The only thing that concerns me is that my bosses name is Mr Smith….