Organization not an option (02/25/08)

It's birthday weekend again. I am giving my brother a photograph. Not just any picture, but one of the farm where we grew up. I happened across it when I was looking for something else. It seems that is the only way I can find anything these days. If an object knows I am looking for it then it will hide in the most obscure place in the house and I'll never find it.

The only way I can locate anything is to start cleaning in the general vicinity of where I think it should be. That way something gets cleaned even if I can't find the object of desire. Sometimes I get distracted by a book or whatever and forget what I was looking for in the first place. That's how I found the photograph.

I'd like to blame this inability to find things on general disorganization or age but I have always been this way. It doesn't matter if the house is as neat as a pin and everything has a place and by some miracle everything is in its place; the one thing I am seeking will be nowhere to be found.

My husband can't find anything any more than I can, but . . . a spouse's function is to have someone to blame. Can't find something? Then your spouse must have moved it or perhaps thrown it out. Children can serve the same purpose as far as responsibility is concerned but they tend to be more expensive than spouses. It's a little more difficult, but still possible, to blame this sort of thing on the cat or whatever pet you happen to have hanging around the house.

After I once spent an embarrassingly long time searching for the car, I started parking in the same aisle all the time. I tend to visit the same stores routinely so this works. Of course, it usually means I have to park at the far end of any given parking lot but I tell myself the exercise will do me good.

I just read that the US News and World Report has found that the average American spends one year of their life looking for lost or misplaced items at home and in the office.

I don't believe this statistic for one minute. Several hundred people would have to lay their hands on an item the second they realize they want it to offset the time I spend. In fact it took several minutes of searching to find the information in the last paragraph.

The chaos in my life seems to be typical of a great many people. Otherwise there wouldn't be a plethora of magazine articles telling us how to get organized. Closet organizers and the makers of plastic storage boxes capitalize on this phenomenon.

It used to be that people didn't own enough stuff to worry about finding a place to stow it. It is a sign of our wealth, as a county, that we have so much that we need oodles of plastic boxes and even self-storage units to hold the overflow.

Plus, the excess of home improvement shows has convinced a huge percentage of the male population and even part of the female population that anybody can do-it-themselves. Therefore, houses are in a constant state of upheaval to accommodate all the remodeling projects. This gives things even more places to hide in. It also gives me a reason to want to make a voodoo doll of Bob Vila and stab it with some 10-penny nails, but that is another column.

The upside to all this is that once in awhile when I am looking for something I will happen upon a photograph of a simple country road and be instantly transported back to a different time and place.

The trick is to be happy with the discovery of a long-lost photo and to not worry about whatever I was looking for in the first place. If it was really important then I wouldn't have gotten sidetracked so easily. Now where did I put that . . . um, what was I looking for again?[[In-content Ad]]