There’s a reason 45-gallon storage totes are on sale this time of year. It’s January, and time for the post-holiday sweep.
“I just need some ORDER in my life,” I wail to anyone who will listen. And then set out on some cockeyed plan that will somehow put everything in its place without too much work.
One year, it was attacking a small area each day until magically the entire house was in order. But somehow, the areas I chose to attack got smaller and smaller. Another, I took on Marie Kondo’s method of eliminating everything I did not love. Unfortunately, I was a woman who loved too much.
This year, though, I’ve hit the mother lode: a method so effective I’d put it on YouTube if I knew how. I just devote 30 minutes a day to clearing the clutter of my choice.
It’s easy. I just tell Alexa, “Set the timer for 30 minutes.”
She answers “Thirty minutes. Starting now.”
This creates a sort of childhood flashback, where I imagine Alexa is standing there, tapping her virtual foot and watching me like my late mother who has just ordered me to clean my room. I am 8 again, and in a hurry to go out and play.
The first clutter of choice is the bathroom cabinet, where I find over-the-counter drugs dating back to 2006. Easy peasy. In a half hour, I’ve pitched a pharmacy’s worth based solely on expiration date before Alexa plays her little Do-Do-Do-Dah-Dahchant and I can happily yell, “Alexa. Stop!”
I can hardly wait till the next day, when I can tackle the shampoo bottle that upended itself around the time the prescriptions expired. It lays sideways in a puddle of hard amber goop reminiscent of a lava ooze. To my delight, a paint scraper lifts it without a trace in under 30 minutes. “Procrastination pays off!” I announce. To which Alexa responds, “Sorry, I didn’t get that.” Just like my mother.
The next day, with little time to contemplate, I have the closet swept of clothes I now decide I don’t love as much as last year.
All goes swimmingly until I hit the book shelves. If I haven’t read them by now, would I ever? And couldn’t I always get them at the library? And shouldn’t I be sharing them with the entire community? But what about things I might have marked in the ones I did read? The debate rages till Alex says Do-Do-Do-Dah-Dah.
If I were making a YouTube, I would be compelled at this point to offer some advice, which is If you get stuck, just move on because that’s what works for me. Searching for a bottle of GooGone in the mistaken belief that the previously mentioned shampoo would still be gooey, I discover a cache of unused cleaning products in the hall closet.
“Set timer for 30 minutes!” I tell Alexa, and I’m off and running, unearthing spray bottle after can after jar of toxic items I do not love and packing them into boxes destined for a hazardous waste center.
Since they share space with enough extension cords, candles and flashlights to illuminate a city, I keep going with donations galore. And since it’s right next to coat closet, what the heck. I donate the ones I do not love. And since the laundry room is right next door, a collection of “just in case” rags go into the garbage.
It is not until I’ve filled two hazardous waste boxes, four garbage bags and a giant donation bag that I notice I never heard Do-Do-Do-Dah-Dah.
“Alexa, how much time on timer?” I ask. To which she replies, “No timers set.”
I’m sure my mother put her up to it.
Copyright 2020 Pat Snyder
