A few years ago I heard a story on NPR about Mise en Place as a way of life. I fell in love with the idea. I’d always been a cook, the idea of having the ingredients ready and setting things up neatly is a theme that I have embraced and try to apply to multiple areas of my life. As a principle, it’s hard to argue with having what you need at hand to tackle a task. At least until the mise en place becomes the work itself.
It could be advancing age. I recently turned 55 but lately when look around my house I feel like I’m a bit haunted by mise-en-place. Or to borrow a term from the software development world, I feel like I’m looking at an overwhelming backlog—pantry ingredients, wood shop tools, books. We live in an era when it is very easy to acquire things. It is much harder to direct our time and attention.
The backlog, this is a concept that comes from software development. I didn’t know about “agile” until I joined Consumer Reports and was expected to run projects that way. The core idea: schedule three weeks worth of work into something called a sprint, and then what you don’t do is left in the backlog to complete in a future sprint. From time to time, the team engages in a painful process called “backlog grooming” which is about as fun as it sounds. How do you groom a backlog? One feature request or bug at a time. It strains memory. What was that thing that didn’t quite work? Does this problem affect enough people to invest the time and effort in fixing it? Now I look around and see backlogs everywhere–and they’re definitely not groomed.
During the pandemic, I decided to redo my spice cabinet—which wasn’t a cabinet at all so much as a collection of bottles, jars, bags and tins acquired over years of trips to cities where I’ve taken cooking classes. I wasn’t leaving the house very much but was cooking dinner for our family every night. I found a YouTube video of someone who built a cabinet with pocket screws. A friend helped me with the mortise and tenon joints for the door which also features a chalkboard. All of the spices went from their bags, tins and bottles into small Ball jars. (There are a few items that my wife has prohibited me from buying any more of—Ball jars, like kitchen towels are on this list.) I have about 65 different spices that reflect decades of cooking experiments. I regularly use about 15 to 20 of them. Backlog, ungroomed.
Books—let’s talk about books. It’s never been easier to get them. I can’t see the digital backlogs. They’re conveniently hidden away. 413 books and 120 audio books. There are the cookbooks in the kitchen (culled to about 25) and then there are shelves of physical books (not on the official spousal do not buy list) but perhaps on the “discouraged” list? I have a shelf of books that have been given to me that I want to read, and then there are the ones that I have bought for myself on Thriftbooks. There are the ones that I’ve read and would read again. But sometimes I think I’m just curating a personal knowledge museum. For many of these books, they are topics I’ve studied in the past: Quantitative Methods for the Social Sciences, Statistics for Managers, Taking Ethnographic Field Notes, The Interpretation of Cultures. And then there are the ones I want to read: Robert Caro’s Working, Rushkoff’s Team Human, Defoe’s Moll Flanders. It’s not that I never read, it’s just that I can’t read as fast as I can put books on my shelf. A few minutes to click, hours to read. Inspired by friends, I set a goal recently to read about 50 books a year. I stay on track with that goal and yet feel perpetually behind my ambition of being well-read.
And then there are tools. As a semi-handy person, my general rule is that if I can buy a tool and learn a skill, I will try that before calling a person who is more handy and has the tools and probably has the skills. So I can snake a tub, wire simple electrical fixtures, and even make some very simple practical purpose driven home items (surely every kitchen pantry needs a rack for aluminum foil, parchment paper, and assorted bags, right? Didn’t you see that bit about mis en place?) These tools, the miter saw, table saw, sander, they all come in handy when I have a project to do—like say, reframe an exterior doorway or build a closet interior (above my skill level, but doable with the help of a more handy friend) but most of the time these borderline pro tools sit in my basement unused. I tried putting “shop time” on my calendar for a while but I find that my energy levels in the evening are not up for furniture making. As I sit here writing I see the space where I’d love to build a desk. I’ve sketched it out a few times. I’ve measured. You know what I haven’t done? Built one.
There are times when I know that I am procrastinating and then when I finally get around to the task I realize that it takes a lot longer to do it than I had expected. I am going to call this nonconscious rational procrastination. That simple spice cabinet from the YouTube video with an 8 minute run time? I want to say it took me about three weeks by the time I got all the stuff, built and finished it. I did stop allowing myself to go to Harbor Freight. No more tools until I clear the backlog.
And what about my personal backlog? Ungroomed. Mise? Definitely not en place. Mess in place. How’s that for a new approach? Life. full, abundant.
I will probably always fantasize about doing less better—trimming down to 100 essential items. But what would I do without the museum of me? Maybe instead of looking at it with a bit of overwhelm and despair perhaps I should see the backlogs as signs of hope, curiosity and possibility.
As Oscar Wilde once said, nothing succeeds like excess.
Maybe.
What’s in your backlog(s) and what does it say about you?