It’s time to pick up your stuff

PICK up your stuff and put it back where it belongs, this is my advice for 2020. These two very simple suggestions will make your life immeasurably better.

The trick is the ‘belongs’ part. Establishing a place where something belongs requires attention, and during the long journey of avoiding that decision, there will be countless frustrations and accusations, aimed at yourself, your partner, and any other poor fecker who lives within your disorganised orbit.

Your attention will be required to focus on each item before you put them down, and you’ll have to say to yourself ‘will I be able to find this, the next time I need it?’ If the reply is yes (from yourself ) then you can thereby deem, This will be where it shall live! With time, this technique will become rote. You will find yourself becoming impulsively aware, and before you know it, you will be able to make snap decisions on where things should live.

Warning! Under no circumstances are you to begin throwing things in the drawers again.

The time you will save, will give you more time to pursue salacious pleasures. You will sail around the house like a swan, picking up things at their appointed place and knowing where they should be returned to!

If you need a pen, it’s in that huge mug by the window. If you would like some marmite, it will be in the short shelf on the fridge door, where you will also find the marmalade and mayonnaise (low cal). If you need a safety pin to change your sym card, it will be in the pin-cushion.

Also if your internet should go down and the Asian Lady on the phone, who has had you on your knees for the past half hour, casually assumes that you have a pin at hand to fit into that tiny reset hole; the new you, will simply walk on your knees over to the corner behind the couch where you now keep the sewing kit that your mother left you (and that you never ever use, but will hold on to forever) and find a pin.

Your mobile rings, its on the table in front of the television. And if you’re not at home, it’s in your right hand pocket, or the first zipper on the side of your handbag. You use reading glasses, there are four of them, and they all end up under the bed. With this newfound world of found things, your glasses will have a home! Right next to your mobile! Wherever it goes, they go. The two flickers for the TV have totally disappeared. You reach down the side of the sofa, and under the armchairs. You move the furniture and unveil old pens, and tumbleweed fluff, but the flickers seem to have left the house.

This will be avoided also, and you won’t miss the beginning of the football match, or the Great British Bake Off, because the flicker too will live on the table by the TV.

I know this approach seems impossibly simple. Your mind will have begun protesting already I’m sure. It will take two approaches to combat these annoying improvements. One; it will suggest that you are already doing this, as far as you can see. And two; that it’s not your fault; someone else keeps moving your stuff around. Your mind may even lash out at me, and tell you never to read my column again!

But these are the occupational hazards of imparting priceless wisdom. Put this paper back whe re you got it!

You will sail around the house like a swan, picking up things at their appointed place and knowing where they should be returned to