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Marry me, Marie Kondo

Just kidding.

I do not want a permanent relationship with the lovely, gentle, efficient de-cluttering guru of "Tidying Up" fame, but I do want her to move into my home fora long duration.

I would have written to her earlier, but I could not find my desk. I know it is in my office. I've seen it before, but papers, documents and assorted crap-ola have hidden the furniture and files like the snow on Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Maria the wonderful, when advising us how to de-clutter, always suggests we pick up each item in our homes to see if it sparks joy. Evidently after viewing my items I have so much joy I often want a cigarette afterwards though I don't smoke, at least as far as I know.

Would you like to know what ribbons, yo-yos and dental floss have in common? Well, I'll tell you anyway. They reside in the same drawer in my house, all knotted together.

Because of the mess I have never found a rubber band or the missing top to my Pyrex bowl in spite of putting their photos on milk and cereal boxes.

On the other hand, I am prepared for any occasion. If they haven't changed the locks, I possess a key to the Plaza Hotel, circa 1966, on a key chain shaped like a toilet seat. Naturally, I have, just like everyone else, the usual 300 balls of twine - you never know when something or someone needs tying up. I also kept 86 paper bags from the past, before I started bringing my own "I love Trader Joe's" recyclable totes everywhere, including cocktail parties.

For those people who are hobbyists or collectors I offer freely my barrel of 42,000 wine corks, which you may want to "do a wall" with someday as I may not get to it.

To Ms. Kondo's point, though, I am proud to say that I do have a place for everything, but where it is I don't know. Why doesn't every item on earth have its own GPS? I could never find anything on maps, either, as they looked like varicose veins to me.

My recipe drawer, frankly, is obscene. I collect recipes and hyperventilate and sometime get aroused just as you do when reading erotica. It happened today when I learned of a curried gluten-full version of Bengal Tigertail with rosetta-shaped elephant garlic and prairie turnip sprinkled with a touch of rosemary. Is your mouth watering, too?

By the way, did you know that sniffing rosemary clears the mind and help us focus, though, frankly, it truly annoys rosemary.

Someday I'll put my recipes in order. It's been seven years, but one of these days, Alice... This, despite the fact my family members, whom I'm now barely on speaking terms because of their constant complaints, say they are tired of firemen showing up whenever I bake and dispute, in spite of my explanation, that burnt bottoms are a type of cooking style.

Today, I received three registered letters:

1)From Good Housekeeping magazine, where I was awarded the "Certificate of Tsk! Tsk!"

2) From the Marshall clan with a prepaid gift of a lifetime delivery service for fully cooked meals.

3) From Marie Kondo saying she was returning to Japan to an undisclosed location.

- Jan Marshall

Jan Marshall is an author, humor columnist, certified clinical hypnotherapist and motivational speaker.

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