Today’s Tool for Tuesday was inspired by Gretchen Rubin’s terrific twitter that if you can’t find something, it means you have to clean up.
Where did I put my keys? Where did I put my phone? Where did I put my glasses? Would someone pleeeaaase help me find my wallet?
Sound familiar? Of course it does!
How many seconds and minutes of our lives have been spent looking for lost things? My sister said that if she added up all those moments, she has probably spent the equivalent of three whole months of her life searching for missing items. (This doesn’t include the time I spent looking for my daughter, Libby, who was lost at a ski area when she was four!)
Wouldn’t it be great if everything had a tracking device like our cell-phones? You call it and it rings, answering happily. But our keys our silent. So is our wallet.
Just like people shouldn’t go homeless, neither should things. Everything needs a place. Everything in your house needs a spot it calls its own. Your belongings need to belong somewhere.
Didn’t you set up a password for your email account? Set up a place that you remember for each thing. Hang your car keys away from the front door but don’t throw them on the counter. Put your handbag on a shelf. Give your glasses a nose. (I use a branch that happens to look like the perfect proboscis.) Make a list. Save time and useless anxiety playing hide-and-seek with inanimate objects.
How to change your life today? Change your seconds. Improve each minute. Give your things a home so you don’t waste precious moments looking for your things when you could be doing something new, exciting and different.
DIANA BLETTER 