Put It Back

I don’t know about you but when I am through using something, I try to be a Nice Guy and put it away so someone else can find it. I’m just wired that way. It is so annoying to be on the job and co-workers finish with tools or products and just drop them down where they happen to be finished with them. Then they wonder why they can’t find something when they need it. Even more aggravating is the fact that now I can’t find it. When I can’t find something the usual thought is that we are running low and I need to order more of whatever somebody misplaced. Now we have an excess, or, I figure that it is just misplaced and I do not order it, that is when we will run out. Put things back, it is not that hard.

Same thing with in the home. When we can’t find something in the house it probably was not put away. Just like at work, finishinh the job is basically what the answer is. When the dishes are done, put them away, don’t stack them up for someone else to do it. Laundry can be just as aggravating. Take another ten steps to the closet and put things away.

As a landscaper I used to see it there too. People would try to do the job by themselves and leave 13 piles of leaves, or sticks and branches or piles of dead grass all over the lawn. It gets wet and kills the grass and makes more work for the lawn maintenance guy. Pile landscaping is what we used to call it.

Piles everywhere. Piles of towels at work or towels hanging on every conceivable object, piles of pots, pans and dishes waiting for someone to finish the job, and clusters of clean laundry hanging from doorknobs and drawer handles. It is too much. Be a Nice Guy and put things away, don’t leave them for someone else to care for when they have finished their work. And with regards to the pile landscaping, you are just killing your grass. We show up two months after your work of art and by then it is too late. Bag it, burn it or haul it away but don’t leave it there as a monument to the incomplete job. I am not perfect. I still have a panel in the garage that has not been put up since I started working on it five years ago. I keep looking at it but it is the last piece and does not want to be reasonable. I know I will have to improvise to get it up there but right now I am going to leave it rather than get frustrated and break it. That is different. Right?