How confident are you that you can find a particular item when you need it?
There’s a direct inverse correlation between this confidence and the likelihood of overacquiring. The more confident you are that you can find it, the less likely you are to buy excess. On the other hand, if you know you have it but you doubt you can find it (or if you’ve forgotten you already have one, or several), odds are you’ll buy another one. You think that from now on you’ll be better able to find it, but it never works that way, does it? Because every time you acquire a duplicate, you make your space a bit more unmanageable.
Overacquiring feeds disorganization; disorganization feeds overacquiring. Which side do you want to address first?
