Gave at the Office/Friends Lost

Here’s a video explanation of a concept called the landing pad. What’s interesting about this is that it’s not so much a video about a particular space in your house as it is a video about a particular space within a woman’s mind. Like a voluntary tumour or a chunk she donated to her retarded brother. I do appreciate the rather large concession though, the allowance of temporary clutter. You can see her blood pressure rise as she begins to talk about what happens when the landing pad doesn’t get processed.

And she goes one beyond to suggest that it become like a “task driver” where anything on the pad that pertains to you is a task you must perform or an item you must process. That’s some pretty forward thinking. That’s the cutting edge in terms of accountability when you think abou– oh wait, we do that here at the office. Employing business practices at home is not revolutionary, it’s out of place. A business functions because its people are both masters of their domain and accountable to the product they put forth. Children are neither.

I used to have a landing pad in my old apartment, it was called the kitchen. Then I had a landing pad for clothes that were in flux between clean and dirty, it was called the entire bedroom. These were more permanent residences than temporary landing pads though. I loved clutter. Clutter was my roommate. Clutter always had my back. Because of clutter, shit was right THERE when I needed it, right where I had put it down (a convenience seldom enjoyed when living with a woman). Picking clothes to wear was easy because clutter ensured my entire wardrobe was always within sight. Me and clutter made some pretty cool discoveries every now and then too, like, “The fuck is that smell?” and “There that shit is!” When I went to sleep at night I knew clutter would watch over me, which was comforting, except that when I tried to walk around in the dark clutter always seemed to be sleeping right in my path. Clutter ensured that doing the dishes was slick and easy because clutter soaked them for a couple weeks. Me and clutter used to laugh at people who were such neat freaks it got to be counterintuitive. “Like when you sit down to turn on the TV only to realize the remote has been ‘put away’ – on top of the TV!” Clutter would say and we would laugh and laugh. *SIGH* I kinda miss clutter. We were tight. Clutter will always have a special place in my heart.