The Five Types of Piles

An exerpt from the book "Let Go of Clutter" by Harriet Schechter . . .

As we continue to be bombarded with an infinity of information, the piles get denser, larger, and more prolific. Piles of paper seem to breed faster than fruit flies. According to my many years of research, there are actually five types of pointless piles:

1. THE GROWING PILE. It keeps growing bigger and bigger, especially when fed a steady diet of unopened mail, catalogs, and reading materials that never get read.
2. THE STAGNATING PILE. This starts out as a Growing Pile, but its growth becomes stunted after it is hastily shoved into a bag, box, drawer, closet, or cabinet (usually after a panic-stricken cry goes up: "someone is coming over!").
3. THE DIMINISHING PILE. This is the pile that shows progress: it gets smaller and smaller because you're actually dealing with it instead of adding to it or hiding it away. Unfortunately, this pile invariably becomes . . .
   
4. THE DISTILLED PILE. This pile has gone through the previous stages only to grind to a halt when its contents have been sifted down to sediment, which is composed of "pile germs"-- those last few hard pieces of paper that seem impervious to the decision-making process. These are the papers that get shuffled and reshuffled endlessly because you feel you "just can't decide" what to do with them, and you're never ready to just throw them out. Pile germs lie dormant until they reach the Distilled Pile stage, whereupon they begin to breed. (Important note: Pile germs must be killed to stop a pile from breeding. For emergency pile-germ-killing tactics, see The Five Ws of Clutter Control later in this chapter.)
5. THE DOUBLE-DISTILLED PILE. This pile is formed when there are several small, dormant Distilled Piles lying around and, in an effort to "clean up," you combine them, thereby creating one monstrous pile that seems completely impenetrable, because you've already touched the contents hundreds of times and have just about given up on ever figuring out what to do with them.