Simple Things

For the longest time, we’ve had our silverware (cutlery for all your Canadians) in this four slotted tray in our kitchen. It’s a pretty decent looking as far as storage trays go. We’ve had it for years, probably since we got married. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work the way we needed it too.

Our current set of silverware has five different pieces: Big Fork, Little Fork, Big Spoon, Little Spoon, Knife. Pretty common arrangement. But the tray only had four slots (discounting the horizontal slots which store other things). This forced us to combine something together, which ended up being the Little Forks and Spoons.

Every time I would put the dishes away this would annoy me. They would get jumbled together and just look cluttered. For years this went on. While it bothered me, it wasn’t enough to do anything about. Because as soon as the drawer closed, I didn’t think about it anymore.

Then one day recently, my wife came home with a new tray and switched it out. This one has five slots so each piece has its place. She also got another tray for all the other odds and ends that go in the drawer. Both cost under $10.

So for years, we had an insignificant, but daily, annoyance that could be solved for less than $10 and less than 5min of effort. But we didn’t. It was an insignificant annoyance. Now, every time I put dishes away, its the opposite, a small spark of “yay!”.

It got me thinking, how much of life is made up of those, individually, insignificant annoyances that could be solved easily? Why don’t we address them? Laziness? Lack of time? These aren’t the things that keep us up worrying at night. But unlike those things, these are things we can actually fix. But we usually don’t.

Maybe its that we only really notice the benefit when we let it fester for long enough. Would I have cared at all about this if we had changed the tray years ago? Probably not. How many things have I addressed just today, that if I let sit for months, would feel good to address? Maybe it’s a mental health strategy. Our minds say, “this bugs me, but not very much. I can deal with it later and feel good about it then.”

Nah, probably just laziness.