What I have learned today:
- Keep the tool cupboard sorted in an orderly fashion. Always, at all times, forever. This is nearly as important as caring for your teeth, and the consequences of neglect are almost as soul-destroying.
- Ensure that the containers holding tiny screws, tacks, picture hooks and little-things-that-came-off-something-and-can't-be-thrown-away-till-you-find-out-what have lids that don't fly off without warning and scatter a million tiny screws etc all over the cupboard floor.
- Ask yourself 5 years ago, rather than when packing to move, if those last few feet of insulating foam will really come in useful one day? Ditto that towel rail whose fittings got lost 20 years ago. Ditto the old bath plug and chain. Ditto the 4 floor tiles from a floor long re-done. Ditto the rusty saw. Ditto, ditto, ditto.....
- Don't let a cat come and help by clambering over the teetering piles of wildly-assorted stuff. Cats love a bit of mayhem; they can't concentrate on matching blades to craft knives or pushing bits into the impossibly-tight niches in drill bit boxes. They do like to knock a drill bit around the kitchen for a while though, until it goes under the dresser.
- Wear stout shoes because it is certain that something very heavy will fall on your foot. Lump hammers are not well balanced, and favour falling onto soft surfaces like feet.
- Don't buy multi-layered tool boxes from DIY stores. Nothing will fit inside them, and the clips holding the lid shut will fall off anyway. And they're bright yellow, shouting 'amateur' to the world.
- Examine your soul: the old plastering tools, now - you've had them since you were an optimist, and you've never learned to plaster. So....?
- Don't keep paint tins for longer than a century unless they are full and unopened.
- Don't encourage people to pop in for a cup of tea "to give you a break' from the tool-sorting. You will only snarl and snap at them, and feel bad afterwards. And if you show them your bruised foot, hoping for sympathy, they will only show you their holiday bites from when they had that otherwise perfect trip to Greece.
- Don't stop to write a whiny blog post. It will be very hard to go back to that cupboard again....
11 comments:
Some would say that meditation is the answer.
Me - I'm afraid it would be the bottle!
The only thing I keep really organised is my jewellery. Such as it is. It's colour co-ordinated and in litttle boxes. Everything else is just a melee. I have periodic bouts of reorganisation but it's a team thing, and not everyone is onboard.
CUPBOARD! NOW!
(only if you realy want to...)
I should send Malcolm round - he is forever organising his stuff in the garage. (I only organise my studio when I trip over the piles on the floor, all the chairs have stuff on them and I'm working on a corner of the table, as it's covered in half-finished projects!!)
Tidiness is unnatural . If , however , you are plagued by one of those rare urges to regiment your disparate belongings , remember to wear steel-tipped boots .
Just think how good you feel when it's done though.
I feel your pain. Frankly I should print out and pin up your advice, I'm in need of it myself.
This too shall pass.
Jan x
We are just tying to fit a sink to the wall that should have been done 18 months ago. Can we find the fittings? Can we get hold of new ones? Should we have fitted the sink at the time and, or at least put the fittings tidily away in a box until we were ready. Of course we should. Instead we are kicking about in boxes and bags blaming each other and moaning about how unhelpful they are at City Plumbing!
Hahahaha... what a sense of humor you have!!! very well written ..
Oh I wish I was that neat and organized.. I can really sympathize though.. sorting is a task that is never over soon enough!! take care and mix something stronger in you Tea...
Ouch, lump hammer on foot not good. I recommend a break, or a glass of wine, or better still both.
TOOOOO funny! been there, done that, am still trying to do it! Looks like you're doing a teriffic job.
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