How? Why?

~ beetleypete

We have a fault with the new cooker we bought last year. It’s not a ‘won’t work’ fault, but the fan refuses to turn off, and comes on of its own accord, even when the oven hasn’t been used all day. Just another of life’s little annoyances, add it the list that grows daily. The small niggles that make me so frustrated with modern technology, I am in danger of biting through my bottom lip.

Luckily, it is under guarantee. Just get the receipt that doubles as the guarantee, contact the shop that supplied and fitted it, and off we go.

Hang on. Where did I put that paperwork? Somewhere safe, obviously. A place so secure that not only would I never lose it, I can be sure of never remembering where to find it, if I live to be 100.

My fault of course, not my wife’s. I dealt with the purchase, I paid for it out of my account, so it’s my job to get it sorted.

Funny thing is, whenever she loses or misplaces similar receipts, that’s also my fault. Because I must have moved it. That goes without saying. It was definitely ‘there’, and now it has gone. The only solution is that I moved it for some reason best known only to me, and now I don’t know where it is.

This doesn’t end with receipts for electrical goods, oh no. Instruction books for things bought but never used, they all disappear too. Attachments for things like mixers and vacuum cleaners suddenly remembered, where did we store them? They will never be found. We already know that, as we begin the fruitless search, and tempers rise.

This reasonably small house has very little storage, or free space. But it is nonetheless capable of swallowing up unlimited amounts of crucial paperwork, and rarely used household implements.

Yet we know full well that we stored them ‘here’, or ‘there’. We can remember it as if it was yesterday. Yet they are gone. For ever.

How does this happen? Is it only us? Are we completely careless and thoughtless? And when it happens, why is our first thought to allocate blame, washing our hands of any responsibility for the loss? Why don’t we stick to a simple system? Maybe we should have one big box where all such things go to live.

We would have to rummage through it, and probably tip it out every time we had to find something. But we would rest easy, knowing it would eventually be found in ‘The Box’.

As long as we can remember where we put the box of course.

83 thoughts on “How? Why?”

  10. We have a gas insert in our fireplace for when the power goes out. It looked as if that would happen in the last storm. My husband had carefully stored the manual not with the other manuals, but in the fireplace. Seemed logical to him, but it’s a good thing I wasn’t looking for it where it BELONGS!

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    1. Ah, good old logic. It just doesn’t apply to household things, unfortunately. 🙂
      Funnily enough, the cooker instruction book is stored in a small cupboard above the cooker.
      I obviously forgot to put the receipt in there with it.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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        1. It is only 6 months old, so still guaranteed. They have ordered a new switch and control panel. But the engineer confessed he had never seen a similar fault, and was rather flummoxed. If the new parts don’t solve the problem, it will be referred to the manufacturer for a solution.
          Best wishes, Pete.

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  12. We hear you Pete! I usually keep good track of the big ticket items, but have gotten a bit sloppier with the others. I do keep files, where I store receipts for purchases but whenever I check it I seem to find only the things I bought 20 years ago which have long since been discarded. Other loose receipts abound here and there throughout the house waiting to be filed away. I guess I better get on it!

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  13. In our unreasonably small new (2016) house, we, too, have lost control, only partly due to age-impaired memories and laziness. Our fault: we knew the risk of detachment and a garden when we bought. Storage space, and usually outside space, are held in contempt by developers. Not, in my apartment-dwelling experience, in Europe.

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    1. We have no storage inside at all, just an airing cupboard, and that’s full to bursting. We have the loft, and the garage, both almost full! 🙂 I think we should build a bonfire, chuck everything on it, then go ‘minimalist’! 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete. x

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  14. I have a filing cabinet. All paperwork is ‘neatly’ filed and gone through every few years to remove out of date ‘stuff’. I also have several drawers where things go to hide. Not paperwork though. I have to be in the mood to sort everything out for filing and on looking around my room at this moment it appears I haven’t been in the mood for a while! Good luck hunting down the receipt Pete!

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        1. It is working well as a cooker, Jude. It’s just that the fan didn’t go off the other night, and was still running at 11 pm. Now it comes on as soon as you operate the oven, even if you don’t select the fan option. 🙂
          Best wishes, Pete. x

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  15. I buy everything online so that I can keep the receipts in my email because I am useless at paper. If you need manuals and you know the make and model number you can usually google them and then download them from the manufacturer.

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    1. Thanks, Abbi. I also buy lots online, but occasionally like to support some local shops. Luckily, they kept our details on their computer, so are sending someone to look at the oven tomorrow. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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    1. It is all -electric here, as we have no gas. The heating is oil-fired. I don’t mind turning the cooker off, except for having to reset the flashing clock every time I switch it back on. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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      2. Here in Germany there are still so many relatives and acquaintances of politicians. All have yet to be well employed before the administration is implemented without paper. The next generations will then be allowed to service the pension entitlements. I hope that Germany does not want to get the money out of other states, as they did in the times of Prussia.

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  21. I have an ‘everything drawer’. Trouble is there are now several ‘everything drawers’ and it’s difficult to remember which was assigned to store what. (And there’s a box. I went through that recently to move stuff into a new box and most of it was ancient and irrelevant to life today.)
    I used to live in a big house with more places to store stuff. Now I live in a tiny place and it’s harder to find where I put things. Back then, a storage drawer could be kept as a storage drawer. Now, wherever it is is probably at the back of something over-stuffed because daily life has filled it in the meantime

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    1. That sums up my experience, Cathy. When I had a fairly large house in London, I could ‘dedicate’ space for ‘things’. Now we are in a bungalow, everything has to share limited space. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  24. Same scenario in our house, Pete. And it got worse when we had the new kitchen fitted because we lost ‘the drawer’. You know, the one which stored everything from takeaway menus to instruction booklets, loose screws which mysteriously appear from who knows where and, of course, receipts? I like Arlene’s suggestion to photograph warranty receipts. Great idea.

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    1. We have a drawer just like that. Special screws, irreplaceable nuts and bolts, tiny screwdrivers, etc. The one thing you can be certain of is that they will no longer be in that drawer, when you go to find them. Glad to get more confirmation that I am not alone, Mary. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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      1. Don’t ever get rid of that drawer. I thought by doing so, everything would be put in its proper place. Of course, none of those items has a proper place so they are dispersed around the house, probably never to be found again.

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  26. It isn’t only you, for sure. I found many things that had been missing forever when I sold the house and moved back to Barcelona, but now, with the mix of my mother’s things and mine, it’s getting complicated, even if I didn’t bring a lot of stuff. And then are the thing that I’m sure I brought home but seemed to have disposed of… (I’m a big believer of having a place for at least certain things, but there are always good reasons why you didn’t put that thing there…). And blame… Yes, I thought that was part of the fun! I hope you manage to sort out the cooker. (One wonders why they make simple things so complicated…). Have a great week, Pete!

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  27. I figure the things I cannot find are in the space that eats socks from the dryer…..and since I bought the dryer it is my fault also….finding these things is a mystery of the “Brain Fart”….good luck….chuq

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  28. Same here Pete, even small appliances come with a warranty of a least a year and in case of electric fans, there is a lifetime warranty. The receipt serves as the warranty itself so what I do is to take a photo of the receipt which overtime is erased. We are really getting on in years.

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    1. I have had one like that for years. It’s red, and in the office. But it’s already full of stuff we are sure we cannot ever throw away, so new stuff gets lost. (Plus we can never remember what’s in the box file, so have to go through it every time) I think I’m just hopeless at organising. 😦
      Best wishes, Pete.

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      1. Dear lord Pete! Surely a man of your calibre is capable of labelling some file holders and putting the relevant paperwork in them!! It’s not rocket science 🙄. Have a good sort out and then keep on top of things. You and Julie need a kick up the bum if you’re losing receipts and guarantees for expensive items like ovens, get a grip people! 🤣

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