Things I've Lost Lately

I'm usually pretty bad at keeping track of things, but lately it's been particularly bad. I've never been a neat kind of person. Quite the contrary, in fact. Finding two shoes that match on a daily basis is a challenge I have yet to master. The other day I actually had to change my whole outfit because I couldn't find any two matching brown shoes. So I had to find an outfit that went with black shoes. This is not fun for poor Nick, who sometimes has to go through multiple clothing changes because I can't find the matching pieces of his outfits.

When I was a little girl, all of the other kids would get free time on Fridays, and Melissa would get her desk dumped out on the floor and have to clean it. Often the other children would point and laugh. I've never figured out how to organize tangible things. When I taught 6th grade, I'd have some of my girls come in to school early and organize my desk for me. I miss that; I only move piles nowadays. The messiness, especially at home, has only gotten worse since my little man has started crawling around and moving stuff.


Stuff keeps disappearing. Part of the problem, I think, is that I don't put things away immediately, and my husband puts things away very quickly, but not in a consistent manner. He cleans daily, and he'll just take piles of paper and random objects, and dump them in rubbermaid bins or on top of my desk. Greg cleans like I did when I was nine and wanted to go out and play; he dumps everything in the closet or in a box and calls it clean. He also takes any paper in the house and puts it on my desk in the living room.

Don't get me wrong; I'm grateful that he cleans, and he is the only reason I have a clean coffee cup every morning. (Thank goodness for that.) But I organize in a unique way. I sort things into piles and then figure out what to do with them. Unfortunately, I don't usually get to finish sorting my piles, and then Greg just dumps them onto the desk and I have to start all over again. You can see the stack of junk on top of my desk; I haven't seen the surface of this desk in literally months. I'm going to have to tackle it soon; I can't find the ComEd bill. Sigh.

So here's just a sampling of what I'm currently looking for. This is by no means everything I've lost recently, simply the items I haven't given up on yet. I have lost: tweezers, baby nail clippers, two packages of stickers, at least twelve single baby socks (yes, there's one lone sock on the table; it's partner is missing), three pairs of shoes, a glue stick, q-tips, photo paper, a magenta printer cartridge, two memory cards for the camera, my gray thumb drive, a bottle of astringent, two brand new hand soap refill bottles, my last box of checks, three baby pajama tops (I have the bottoms for some reason), my neti pot, a package of mechanical pencils, my brown purse, a push-toy I bought for Nick, five pairs of adult Fiskars scissors, my spare car keys, Yum Tummy Tickly (one of Nick's favorite books), a bottle of Flintstones Vitamins, the shapes that go with Nick's little kitchen, the comb I use to brush the kitties, eye makeup remover, one pearl earring, the cloth I use to clean my glasses, and fourteen binkies.



Wow. I guess I hadn't realized quite how bad it is. I'm at the stage now where purchasing new items is way easier than finding the missing ones. I only find these missing items when frantically looking for something else.

I was trying to organize things around the living room tonight when I got distracted by a silly baby who wanted to play. I'm always looking for a reason to stop cleaning, so of course I played with him for a good hour and never got back to the organizing. Tonight he was fascinated with his turtle toy; he pushes a button on the top and it plays music. Then, Nick dances. Not a bad night, all in all. Although I never did find the ComEd bill. . .