What Goes Missing In Your House?
Maybe it’s just our house?
I’m not the tidiest person in the world, and our house is undeniably cluttered but I usually know where most of the important things are.
DH and the kids know they can come to me and ask ‘Have you seen the XYZ?’ and often I’ll be able to say ‘Oh, it’s downstairs , in the kitchen, under the pile of papers on the left-hand side of the radio.’
Of course, to do this I need to have
a/ seen the object and
b/ registered that it’s important to someone.
It helps if I actually pause and think ‘ Oh, that’s DH’s/DD’s/DS’s and s/he’ll be looking for that later.’
If the lost object looks like any of the other hundreds of pieces of paper floating around this place, or has been stuffed down the side of the sofa for some inexplicable reason known only to the child responsible, then I’m afraid my super-mummy powers won’t be able to help.
And sometimes I just wish people would actually look properly before asking me. 90% of the time, the object they are looking for will be right under their noses; they just need to pick up a few other things and look underneath them.
There are some objects that go missing on a regular basis. The TV remote controls, toenail clippers, sellotape, pens, DD2′s piano book, the dog’s lead. The repeated loss of these things really annoys me as they are things that are used regularly and they actually have a proper place. The trouble with Proper Places is that they only work if people put the object back there in the first place.
And then there are the ‘disappearances’ that are all my fault.
This morning, 8:20 rolled around and it was time to put shoes and coats on for the school run. The girls came back with their shoes on, muttering they couldn’t find their coats.
I rolled my eyes. Their coats are ALWAYS on the coat rack but perhaps they were covered by something else or were on the unreachable top rack. I snarled a bit at my USELESS children, and went to look for the coats myself. They weren’t there.
Then I remembered I had had an unexpected burst of super-mummy efficiency yesterday after school. I had noticed how filthy everyone’s coats were, so grabbed them and stuffed them in the washing machine. And I hadn’t remembered to take them out.
Oh dear.
So I had to rush around and find everyone’s coat from last year; luckily the bags hadn’t gone to the charity shop yet. No one is going to freeze to death today, and the wet coats will be dry by tomorrow; it’s all good.
Being a Mum is hard work sometimes. Especially when you have to come up with solutions for the problems you cause, as well as everyone else’s.
Strangely this morning in my head I came up with the idea of a ‘clutter bucket’ every morning I’d run around the house, then I count up the clutter from each person and at the end of the week the least clutter person got some sort of reward. With the hope the most cluttered person improved.
My flaw to this plan could be me as I might be exposed to being the most clutter leaving person!!!
Today it was the tooth brush hunt, again my fault for letting the kids walk around when cleaning there teeth. A habit that I do, I get bored of just standing there (!) but least I end up back at the sink for the final spit out!!!
I am very strict about staying in the bathroom for teeth brushing for that very reason!
I like your clutter bucket idea. I have seen people mention they have a box that every thing left ‘out’ goes in at the end of the day and no body gets anything back until Sunday night. I don’t think DH would be happy going along with that!
It’s definitely not just your house! I’m convinced my house swallows things deliberately to drive me crazy! It’s usually shoes, books or some vital piece of paper. Yesterday morning saw me digging my eldest daughter’s school pinafore out of the washing, frantically scrubbing various yogurt stains with a wet wipe and then putting it on her, as the alternative pinafore (which I was SURE I’d washed) had vanished. It later turned up on the radiator behind the sofa. Of course.
Ali – I like your idea and may well try it!
We have enough school uniform for all ours to have a complete change every day for 6 days. They have to wear cardigans for more than one day though and I’m often frantically dabbing at those.
I usually know where everything is, simply because no one else EVER picks up or moves anything.
We’ve lost a CD case with all the Wii games in and have no clue at all where it’s gone. It’s now been gone so long that I can only assume it got mixed up in a pile of papers and recycled (I think this because we lost hubby’s wallet on holiday in Spain in a similar fashion – how to waste 2 days of your holiday in one easy move). Alternatively it may just turn up one day either in a fiendishly original hiding spot (whenever we return from holiday it takes me a few days to recall where I’ve hidden the cheque books) or in a completely obvious place.
On the up side it’s not the worst thing to lose – one of my friends has lost their pet python. It’s been at large in their three storey house for a couple of weeks with no sightings….
Eeek at the lost python. A client once brought a cornsnake in that they hadn’t seen for 3 years. It had been living in the loft and was a foot longer than it had been when they lost it!
Huge pet peeve. If my husband asks where his slippers are 1 more time, so help me… I have enough trouble keeping up with MY things not to mention the possessions of 2 (absent-minded in the extreme) children. That’s all I can do. Btw my suggestion to “look in the last place you saw it” isn’t just snarky – it’s also really helpful!
I say that too! Along with ‘why don’t you lift something up and look underneath it?’ DH always takes this the wrong way!
What gets me is everyone assumes I’ll know where everything is, yet the second I don’t everyone blames me for losing it! x
Yes! Even the kids do this! It really pisses me off!
Were you in my house? That all sounds very familiar.
No, I’m afraid all these tales come from my house. It’s nice to know you aren’t alone though, isn’t it?
For me it is hair clips. Where do they go? Do my children EAT them? I have lost count of the packets of hair-clips I have bought this year!
Oh yes, hair clips! And hair ties! And lately school ties!!!! Grrrr.
everything goes missing here. even my clothes, either my husband is cross dressing or someone is coming in and taking them!
Hmmm, I not sure which is the better option with the missing clothes! Probably a cross dressing husband?