life with roommates

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A post somebody else made about clutter reminded me of my old roommate. When we moved in together she had all these little wicker baskets which she put all over the house. I assumed they were for flowers or something, but instead she used to use them as kind of a general garbage disposal. Whenever small objects were lying around She would throw them in the basket instead of putting the stuff away. Quickly they filled up with her loose change, paperclips, screws, elastic bands - everything she found lying around. Trouble was she would just leave the stuff there. So any time we needed anything we would have to buy it new and she would put the leftovers into the wicker baskets and then we would need something and not be able to find anything and so buy it new... eventually every flat surface in the house was covered in these little wicker baskets full of crap. I got tired of them. I could never put anything down because every space was taken up with them. I thought they looked terrible. And I could never find anything. So one by one I went through all the baskets and sorted out the contents. Labelled the keys according to what lock they went with and put them away. Sorted out the screws and nuts into labelled containers and put them with the rest of the tools. Put the elastics and staples into the office. Rolled the coins and put them into the fund for grocery money. And then I took all the empty baskets and put them out on the sidewalk and somebody in the neighbourhood picked them up. It was wonderful. For a week our place didn't look like a ratan factory had exploded on it. Then one day my roommate came home with a shopping bag and a pleased expression on her face. "Look waht I got at the dollar store!" she said. Opening her bag she pulled out a dozen little wicker baskets....