I'm Allergic to Time Sponges

I'm Allergic to Time Sponges

Who invented the saying: "There's a place for everything and everything belongs in its place?" A masochist? A Renaissance queen? Or a wife demanding that her husband clean up his den?

When things at home are tranquil and boring, my wife and I often play the game of defining "in its place." My wife says, "In its place is where I think it belongs." I agree--sort of. "In its place is where I think it belongs." The big problem is that the two contestants have different definitions of "Where I think it belongs." To make matters worse, we can't find the term defined in our abridged 1901 edition of Webster's dictionary. As Einstein might say, "Everything's relative."

The only time in my life that I knew where everything "belonged" was during my three months at boot camp where our drill sergeant explained his irrefutable concepts. "All our shirts belonged on coat hangers; all had to face the latrine. All buttons had to be buttoned."

Footlocker protocol involved having one place for shaving gear, one place for soap, one place for handkerchiefs, one place for shorts, and one place for sox. Anyone placing undershirts where their sox ought to be ended up cleaning latrines.

During my days as a soldier, drill sergeants represented authority. Trainees who challenged their instructors spent endless hours standing guard duty or washing pots in the mess hall. Being under duress, I tried to comply once my hands grew allergic to scalding water and GI soap.

After leaving the army, I developed a new set of rules based on the "Can you find everything?" question. By definition, anything I was able to find was in its "right place". This approach worked fine as long as I didn't report to a higher authority like my mother, secretary, or spouse. When these civilian honchos became involved, I found it judicious to place things where higher authorities could find them.

My ultimate approach was to have enough drawers in my bathroom and den to hide all my clutter. I developed that ploy while working in a chemistry laboratory. At work, we were alerted four hours before our monthly inspections. Within three hours and fifty-nine minutes, all inactive equipment was properly hidden. The inspectors played fair. They never pried into our cluttered lockers, compartments or cabinets.

Once the inspection was over, we resumed our routines with beakers, chemicals and samples scattered in accordance with the theory of organized chaos. The made-for-show toil produced transient results.

Lab designers must have expected this cleanup routine since our labs always had enough drawers to hide the unsightly equipment. My current home, however, wasn't designed to circumvent monthly inspections. Instead, I depend upon semi-transparent storage containers obtained from the local office-furniture store. I scatter these miniature warehouses from bathroom to den and fill them with all my unsightly "stuff."

Isn't technology great? Thanks to the inventors of storage containers who anticipated my plight, I've achieved the goal of "keeping everything in its place" as long as I get to vote on the definition of "everything in its place."

Will this approach work in your family? Try it. Your wife might learn more about chaos theory than she ever wanted to know.


(c) 2006 Henry L. Lefevre