Perfectionism vs. entropy: is reasonably good good enough?

I just finished renovating the bathroom. Well, I didn't renovate it all by myself, the workmen did most of the job, but I got to finish it by doing the ceiling. By finishing, I mean that I finished doing any work on the bathroom for the moment. I tightened the last screw, put away the tools and sat down for a while, marveling at the beauty of it.

Then again, there's still some very minor things to do, which I'll do later. Like attach the handles to the cabinet beneath the sink. So, actually, the bathroom isn't perfect yet. And even if I actually manage to attach the handles tomorrow, from experience I know that something will break relatively soon. Even if the bathroom would somehow manage to get to the state of perfection, it would not remain there for long, provided that the family is going to use it.

I am, in some sense, a perfectionist. I find it hard to stop doing things that I've started to do, until they really are finished. But then again, I've become aware of the effects of entropy. By entropy, I mean that things tend to get less organized over time, if something is not actively done to prevent that. Take, for example, the bathroom that is considered perfect just now (July 24th 2010, 21:40 CET). Suppose that I remain seated in this chair before the computer for three days, and then go upstairs and inspect the bathroom. There will be specks of tooth paste in the mirror, hairs in the drain, scratches on formerly immaculate surfaces and dust on the windowsill. And in a longer period of time, there will be more and more faults, until the bathroom will inevitably be completely renewed again in 20-30 years (at most).

In theory, I could prevent the entropy, by devoting my life to the task of keeping the bathroom perfect. I could clean it twice a day, repair any damages as soon as possible, and spend all of my free time standing guard in the bathroom in order to prevent all passing persons from doing any inadvertent or intentional major damage. This would, however, affect every other aspect of my personal life in a damaging way. I wouldn't be able to work and my social life would probably cease to exist. The rest of the apartment would become horribly disorganized. My family might complain somewhat. Therefore keeping the bathroom perfect can't be seen as a feasible solution to the whole entropy problem.

Every new thing is going to get scratched before long. Therefore I can't have perfection. I can't stand much disarray either. I'll have to settle with accepting compromises, mediocrity, fuzzy logic then. What is perfection anyway? Technology tends to improve, so a pristine bathroom built in the 80's couldn't be considered perfect according to the standards of today. Even the best circle that I could draw with the best tools available would be imperfect on the molecular level. Human science doesn't have a complete understanding of quantum physics yet. Therefore perfection as defined by humans is inevitably an approximation.

The perfect bathroom is still basically impossible because of the lack of sufficient technological sophistication. I'll just contend myself with the rustic models avalaible today. There are, however two inventions conceived by mankind that satisfy even the perfectionist:

1) Gardening. Nature achieves perfection by being naturally wild, uncontrollable and unpredictable. Therefore a garden can be perfect without being totally in order according to human standards.

2) Bicycle. The bicycle is such a good invention that it hasn't changed much in several decades. It hasn't needed to, because it was good enough already. The bicycle continues to evolve all the time, but slowly, because there isn't much to improve.