Lebensraum

When I moved into my house last summer, I made a bold statement before I began the process of packing. "I will not label any boxes 'Miscellaneous.'" It was hubris; I know that now. Aside from a box labeled "Miscellaneous", there was another labeled "Miscellaneous Kitchen" and one labeled "Books and other Rectangles". The task of categorizing anything inevitably leave outliers; no amount of store-bought box labels and hours spent reading Wikipedia articles on set theory can avoid this precept.

But I kept trying. When I started unpacking, I foolishly declared a "no junk drawer" rule for the kitchen. Ironically, I don't have a silverware drawer, but the far left drawer is still filled with batteries, twist ties and half-empty blister packs of cold medicine.

Since my initial remodeling period bled more or less seamlessly into the holiday/overtime season, I've only recently had the time and inclination to revisit the arbitrary organizational decisions I made when I moved in. Chief among my decisions has been to steer into the skid of the Inevitable Junk Drawer.

Every room in the home of any well-adjusted includes a light dusting of "stuff that doesn't go anywhere." It can't be stopped. It's like the tide. So, I decided flood control strategies were in order. I gave up trying to stop the flow in favor of just redirecting it. In several places throughout the house, I have a low-profile plastic bin where "everything else" goes. That means when I'm looking for something, and it's not in any of the places it should be, I'll know it's in one of the designated holding ponds I set up to catch that kind of overflow.

Or, when I have some time to devote to it, I can just pick one of those boxes and dispose of (categorize or discard) the extraneous junk at my leisure.

I was complaining that I didn't have anything to write a blog about, and that this topic seemed really boring, but now that I've written it out, I realize that it's not so much boring as it is an obvious allegory for the Final Solution.

Home ownership is weird, you guys.