Cliches and Seam Rippers

I read a sentence the other day that completely justified my lifestyle. Having been disorganized for most of my life, I took delight in it:

"Organized people are just too lazy to look for things."

Not that I need justification. I am an adult. I have outgrown the need for other people's approval. (Until, of course, a visitor needs to use my bathroom and I find myself trying to explain my disorganized piles of organization.)

I recently bought a pewter-colored turtleneck sweater. It is soft and cozy and it matches my gray hair perfectly. But, when I put it on, the tag at the back irritated my neck. Really irritated my neck! It was sewn on with monofilament (clear, almost invisible) thread that scratched my neck even when I didn't move. After several hours of irritation (read patient, not lazy...), and waiting for, I don't know, my body heat to soften the plastic thread, I decided it was time to cut out the tag.

I recently moved. Yes, this is March and my official move-in was November, but these things take time. ANYWAY, I still have a box of Goodwill donations and a few other unpacked boxes stacked in a dark corner of my bedroom. In one of those boxes is a sewing kit left to me by my industrious, seamstress mother, from whom I did not inherit her crafty, textile gene. I offer as proof: I once stapled the hem of my son's too-long tuxedo pants for a choir performance and hot-glued another son's Dracula cape at Halloween. In a nutshell - I do not sew.

I sat for a moment, looking at the neatly stacked, unpacked boxes, wishing I had thought to label them when I moved (Hindsight is 20/20), and trying to guess which one held that rarely-used sewing kit that I know holds a little instrument meant for cutting threads and ripping out seams. Oh, yeah, it's called a seam ripper.

I moved to the other side of my bed (where the lamp is) and thought for a moment. There on the nightstand, reflecting the light, was my makeshift letter opener - a steak knife. Inspiration struck! In a most inventive spasm of ingenuity, I retrieved from my desk an inkless Rapidograph pen. This type of pen has a very fine, almost needle-like point. I put the tip of the steak knife carefully under one of the stitches and cut it and then used the pen point to pick out the rest of them all around the label. It worked! I was very proud. More proud, even, than if I had dug through all those boxes and found that silly seam ripper.

They say that "Necessity is the mother of invention", I say, "Hey, whatever works with the least amount of effort." Same thing.

But, considering the phrase I mentioned in the beginning, "Organized people are just too lazy to look for things", it begs the question: If I'm disorganized AND too lazy to look for things, what does that make me?

Well...I prefer to think of myself as creative, innovative, and an 'outside-the-box' kind of thinker!
(Yeah, well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!)