Entropy in Real Life House Clearance

There are many things that students of chemistry learn about entropy. One of the more famous equations is the Gibbs Free Energy Equation: ∆G=∆H - T∆S. Essentially, this says that things are more likely to happen when you don't have to put effort into them and you just let them degenerate.

This applies to house clearing and spring cleaning too. If you just keep records of how much mail is received by a single (especially, academic) household, you will realise that in a finite time, the house will be full of old mail.

This mail of course has an expiry date; special offers and coupons run out, magazine subscriptions expire, magazines themselves are no longer current. But if the household does not acknowledge these sensible boundary conditions, the mail accumulates, becoming more and more useless and taking up more and more space.

It is a spontaneous accumulation of stuff within the little universe of the home. But it isn't actually a good example of entropy because the system isn't closed. There are, after all, garbage collectors and offspring who will help get rid of stuff. There are rag-and-bone men, there are house-cleaning services. For a little outlay, which is not quite the same as energy, you can get it all cleaned up for you.

What is more worrying, I think, is the idea of entopy. I define 'entopy' as running out of space before you run out of anything else. The state of ultimate or relative entopy can be called 'entopia', I suppose.