If You Want a Tidy Apartment, Buy a Crap Computer

Or, how I learned to stop stressing and do the chores

Responding to ‘not responding’ (Image by ACWells from Pixabay)

The home in which I grew up was generally a tidy place. The living room was always spotless, and my mother was a stickler for washing the pots right after a meal. Her assiduousness, however, doesn’t appear to have rubbed off onto her offspring. The bedroom I shared with one of my two brothers was often an eyesore that let the side down badly.

It was the usual childhood wreck; toy cars awaiting recovery on the carpet, Lego blocks strewn around, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that had been spilled several days earlier and spread about by passing feet. Items of school uniform mixing with bits of football kit. Throw in a few dirty cups and a plate on which repose the stale remnants of an earlier Welsh rarebit, and you have my childhood habitat. Call me Oscar Madison Junior.

But the situation would only be allowed to deteriorate so far before my mother or grandma would epitomize the word appalled and bark an order that we clear up the mess instanter!

Joseph’s Law

I seemed to outgrow my slovenliness in adulthood, but only until I moved into a house I shared with two friends. Free of parental checking, my friends and I took our lead from The Young Ones. Of course, we did…