Staying picked up v. other fun

When we come home, the house is neat.  For a few hours, it gets steadily more scattered and littered. It is surprising little bits and pieces get all over the place.  It is still cold out and a good wind on an overcast day.  So, hats, gloves and jackets have to go on when we leave and be removed when we return.  If we are going to leave again in a little while, we often put the clothes in a chair instead of taking the time to hang them up.  Old newspapers don't get put on the shelf right away but linger on the kitchen table, the living room coffee table and the sofa.  Mail is lying here and there.  Some pieces might be of interest to the other person if not the addressee and should be left out.  Some pieces are bills and need to be paid.  Quite a bit is recyclable and needs to be torn up and put in the special trash cans for recycling.  Of course, if clothes are dirty, put them in the dirty clothes baskets but some are not dirty and there is no use laundering clean stuff to death.  So, on a chair or clothes tree, for now.

We can go around the house a couple of times a day and spot things that need to be put away, hung up, tossed in the trash.  Whenever we do something, a little waste is produced and a little disorder is created.  So meals and working at the computer and filling the birdfeeders and getting the cars fueled and having the oil changes all make for things moved out of place, sales slips to be tossed, keys put where they can be found.  The cord that can be used to connect an iPad to some tv's is still in a bag and not hanging behind the main tv, where it belongs.

The small amount of disorder can be put right without too much effort and there is a payoff of feelings that come with the straightening.  How neat we are now and how virtuous!  What an orderly house!  How nice to know that things are where we keep them, waiting there for the next use.  It is fun to take a walk, to go off shopping, to read a good book such as "All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation" by Rebecca Traister.  But it is fun to put things where they go, trash what needs to be dumped and get the house in order.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby