The omnipresent and little-heeded "they" advocate a place for everything
and everything in its place. They have obviously never visited my house. In my
world there is an infinite variety of things and an infinite assortment of
places where they might be. All of which makes growing older less pleasant, as
my once-infallible instant recall has become not only much slower, but also far
more fallible. When someone (who shall remain nameless) used to complain that
we were out of pickle relish, I could snap out "Top shelf, far right, on
the turntable next to the sour cream" with barely a moment to think. Now
the response is, "Oh." And the next time I'm at the store and
remember the conversation, I pick up a jar--which joins the one in the
refrigerator that was there all along--and the two in the pantry that I forgot
I'd purchased.
It should come as no surprise, then, that I've been giving
the problem some serious thought…and have been making some observations. I find that I seldom put
anything away directly. A jacket will spend a day on the back of a chair before
progressing to the tree in the dining room, where it will stay until a critical
mass of coats forces removal to a closet upstairs. Magazines and mail percolate
on the kitchen counter until someone pays the bills, reads the article they
were saving the magazine for, or decides unilaterally to throw the stack away. Even dishes
from the dishwasher find temporary homes on counter or table or shelf. No
wonder I can no longer find anything. Everything is en route.
It isn't as if it requires a lot of effort to put things
immediately in their proper places. I've just lost that habit. It's easier to
stack newspapers on a chair than to walk them out to the recycling bin. It's
easier to put dirty dishtowels at the foot of the stairs, rather than walk them
up to the laundry basket on the second floor. It is easier to leave something
where I have been using it than to make the effort to put it away when I'm
done. I am, in a word, lazy. This way lies the sad spectacles that we see in
"Hoarders"…
So, starting today, I am picking up that rubber band on the
kitchen floor, and, instead of tossing it on the counter, am putting it on the
doorknob where I keep stray rubber bands. I am kicking the Kik-Step into the
kitchen and putting away the plastic containers on that shelf that I can't
quite reach. I am organizing my spice cabinet so I no longer have to remove
everything to find the cinnamon. I am taking all the coats upstairs and hanging
them in their proper closets. The chargers for the phone and the iPad and the camera are all again confined to their box o'electronics. The silver that I used for brunch two weeks ago,
that I washed and dried and put on the sideboard in the dining room is being
restored to the silver chest--and the china I used with it has been returned to
its cabinet after enjoying two weeks of fresh air, stacked on the buffet.
Things are migrating slowly back to where they belong, and I am firmly resolved
to put things back, all the way back, where they belong, instead of leaving them
in interim locations. By reducing
the number of possible places of residence, I hope I will be able to have room
in my aging brain for a discrete number of hiding places to search when something goes missing. So…Cell phone! Glasses! Purse! Pen! Checkbook! Address book! Keys! You are officially on notice. The
days of hide-and-go-seek are numbered.
Olly, olly, oxen free.
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