When disorder rules the world it helps to put more order close by, as in our own domain. “A place for everything and everything in its place” assumes there actually is a place designated for those things that take up room. The problem is one of limitation. Unless we live in a house of cards, where all you do is add another lean-to, we will run out of room if we keep adding items to our store of possessions.
Obviously, groceries come to mind. The more we shop, the more we add to the limited space in our kitchens and cupboards. Therefore, a plan must be activated to take care of disposal of garbage, recyclables, food consumption and storage.
A container for recycling must be kept handy and monitored so that the next bottle, can or plastic empty gallon can be confined. Once it begins to spill over, it is all over, literally and figuratively. Having a box for empty containers without utilizing its purpose creates a moot point.
Moving newspaper and magazines to the recycling center, clearing them all out weekly prevents having a home that becomes a fire hazard. Paper products take up much needed space on shelves and stashed in corners where clean, calming nothingness is so welcome.
All those fascinating news stories and features so relevant last month are now nothing more than moot points for today’s reading.
Cupboards full of cans and spices never used? Take them all out and check their expiration date. If still timely, create a donation box. Put your spices in alphabetical order and purge what you don’t use. If you have three bottles of ground cloves, don’t buy another until the first three are gone.
I once counted six cans of Pam Spray occupying different parts in my cupboards because I never placed them back in order and always felt like I had run out. This was before I was told that Pam spray is deadly for Teflon frying pans. Now I don’t have any and never buy it.
The kitchen isn’t the only place we retain the stuff of storing. We have an old shed which houses paint cans used over the years. Still in a clear and clean mode, we culled the cans and, with black marking pen, wrote which room paint they contained. All the colors unknown and unloved were gathered for removal – but to where?
The recycling center on Alexander Valley Road had good news. Garrett Hardware accepts old paint cans as long as they have labels and don’t go beyond the number 10. In other words, if you have 20 cans, you must go twice, or have somebody in a second car who won’t acknowledge being related to you at that moment and you can divide the stash of cans between you.
If you are someone who cannot give up any can of paint because you may use it again, then this information is, again, moot.
The overriding thought in my head today is this one of mootness. I read a column in the Washington Post about Hillary Clinton’s emails being declared full of mootness, as, if anybody noticed, the election is over and somebody else won. Yet, today’s news was that two groups still want to drag the email subject into court, occupying time, energy, money – all for nothing. Now this mootness word is new to me and, I find, mildly hilarious. I keep wishing my friend, Gary Thomson was still alive because he once told me there was no such word as “moot.” (He said it was “mute,” and used it like that whenever he said, “That’s a mute point.”
This went on for a long time until one day I couldn’t take it any longer and I said, “Gary! It’s NOT a mute point – it’s a moot point.”
“Moot point? Moot point? There’s no such word!”
“Look it up.”
Well, he couldn’t believe it but there it was. His mute point was muted, annihilated, from that day forward. I can see him today, somewhere in my spiritual space, disgusted with this word’s use in legal jargon.
However, I bet Hillary Clinton is relieved to read that Trump’s Justice Department has declared her thousands of emails just a mere mountain of mootness?
