#019: to store / 收納 (shōunà)
When things are in a good balance of chaos and order, it brings a pleasant sense of calmness and clarity.
Where is my ___, mom ?
You have been looking for an item for days at home and still couldn’t recall where you saw it the last time. Does this experience sound familiar to you? When I was little, I could always turn to my informative mom who knew (and still knows!) where my stuff was. At university, I moved to another county from home. When I forgot bringing something to class, mom would not be able to come into rescue as before. Surely, this was long ago, and I still occasionally left my phones at home. Until one day when I read about the idea of designating a place for each thing in Marie Kondo’s The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up, then it dawned on me why I could not find particular objects from time to time. They had been sent into exile by me. I had not found a home for each thing at home or I changed their homes from time to time.
媽媽，___在哪裡啊？
在家找東西找了好幾天但是還是想不起來你到底上一次在哪裡看到過那個東西的呢？這樣的情境是否似曾相似？小的時候，找不到東西的時候就問永遠知道我的東西放在哪裡的媽媽。到別的縣市上大學以後，東西忘了帶，媽媽遠水救不了近火，就只能自己扛起責任了。當然這是很久以前的事情了。不過其實現在我還偶爾會忘了帶手機。直到有一天我讀到近藤麻理惠的《怦然心動的人生整理魔法》的書裡：為每個東西制定一個地方，我才恍然大悟，明白了找不到某些特定的東西的原因何在了。 這些東西被我放逐了，我沒為他們找個家，或是沒事就幫他們搬家。
Lost and found
A former colleague in Taiwan once told me that a Japanese student did a very interesting oral presentation in class with a concluding remark that Japanese find or see themselves in the art of organising and storing things. This was long before the well-known the KonMari method caught on worldwide. Back then, I was working my way to my master’s degree, renting a sublet room without window at an old apartment in Taipei. I did not have much stuff with me so the storage was not an issue. Back then, I did not understand the profoundness in that ending remark of that student’s oral presentation.
失物認領中
在台灣工作的時候，一個以前的同事曾經跟我說過他的一個日本學生做了個很有趣的報告，結論是日本人在收納分類中找到自我。 這件事情遠發生在近藤麻理惠的怦然心動法則席捲全球之前， 那個時候我在台北唸書時半工半讀，租了一個沒有窗戶的分租房間。當時的我不太了解這句話的深意，我的東西不多，沒什麼需要分類收納的問題。
Organisation Porn
The word, porn, in this context, is similar to that in the phrase “Food Porn”.
“images that show food in a way that makes it look very attractive”
While images of organisation porn have different effects from the images of food porn, these images make the beholder feel somewhat calmer and relaxed with the aesthetic presentation of the neat array of objects. Based on an article on CNN’s website, The Psychology of Organization Porn, the reasons behind these affective responses are multifaceted. One of the reasons is related to the balance these images oozed, between chaos and order. This balance creates a sense of visual pleasantness. There is a comfort when being in the auto-piloting, into a sort of a ritual, and there is no need to think or search for what to do next because it is so routinised into a habit. That’s the beauty of the art of tidying up and storing things well.
整理癖/有序愛好者
「Porn」這個詞在這裡跟「Food Porn」相似。
「以讓食物看起來美味誘人方式來呈現食物的圖像。」
—《牛津學習者字典》
整理癖或是有序愛好者喜歡的圖像和食物情色的圖像所產生的效果不太相同，這些圖像都以整齊排列物品的美學呈現方式，讓觀看者在某種程度上感到更平靜放鬆。根據CNN網站上一篇名為《整理癖的心理》的文章（The Psychology of Organization Porn），這種對於有序的酷愛背後的原因是多面向的。其中一個原因是這些圖像取得混亂和有序中的平衡。這種平衡在視覺上創造出一種愉悅感。 在自動導航模式的時候有一種慰藉感，類似一種儀式感，在當中無需去思考或尋找下一步要做什麼，因為一切都成了規律的習慣了。這便是收納整理的典範例子。
References
The title of this program is not called How Things Are Made, but How it’s Made. Check out their Youtube Channel.
https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/this-is-your-brain-on-tidiness/index.html