THE ADMIN OF LIFE IS KILLING ME

I’m suffocating under ‘the admin of life’ at the moment.

Behind my sofa there are three carrier bags full of mail awaiting shredding, accumulated over the past year. I keep putting off doing it as the noise of the shredder goes straight through me, and, no matter how patiently I start the process, it’s not long until I’m repeatedly fishing out clumps of half shredded paper after ramming too many pieces in at once.

I’m in the process of planning a holiday. I’ll get a better deal if I book it myself rather than through a travel agent, but I’m getting so confused with all the possible options. No matter how long I spend on research, I’ll always wonder if I could’ve got a better deal if I’d just had a bit more time: ‘Maybe there’s another hotel a smidgen closer to the beach.’ ‘Did that B&B have a DVD player?’ ‘What if I got that flight and then a bus from the airport instead?’ By the time I come to book anything, my heart will be pumping madly and I’ll have an overwhelming fear that I might mess up my card digits or click the wrong button, and either have to start the whole process again or make the wrong booking.

And then there’s the recycling. I try to recycle but there isn’t really enough space in my kitchen for one bin, let alone the five my parents and brother deem necessary. So, I’m trying the one bin for general purposes and one for paper, plastic, glass and metal approach at the moment. But I know that every now and again I, my husband or a guest will, without thinking, chuck a snotty tissue or a food soiled piece of kitchen roll into my recycle bin, leading me to question whether my effort is in fact destroying the cycle rather than starting it off again, as I pour my bin’s contents into the communal recycle bin. I suppose I could go through the contents of my bin before or as I empty it. But, is that really what life has come to?

Something that has almost pushed me over the edge recently is that my local supermarket has cut down on its number of manned tills so drastically that, if I want to get home at a reasonable time, I am pretty much forced to scan my own shopping. Gone are the days of mindless daydreaming after a hard day’s work, as the beeps fade into background noise. I now have to be completely on the ball and fully cooperative with yet another machine, or else a stern woman’s voice will shout out, rather embarrassingly, as if to alert the entire store to a potential thief; ‘ATTENTION. UNRECOGNISED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA.’

I’m not even allowed to be skint in a recession any more. The internet gives me no excuse. What am I doing having a cup of tea and a chat when I could be selling random belts on Ebay or old college books on Amazon? Or perhaps setting up an online franchise to sell hair products? I can’t even sit down and relax in front of the TV without being told that I should be growing my own vegetables (and drugs) and making my own chilli oil, while learning to dance the Cha Cha.

One day, we’ll look back nostalgically on the days when we spent our time living: when we had just one bin, someone scanned our groceries for us (and sometimes even packed our bags) and someone else booked our holidays for us. Our grandchildren will be open mouthed in disbelief. To commemorate the passing of this era, I’m off to put a finished loo roll in my general purpose kitchen bin, while I legally still can…

Posted 09:47 PM on Mon Mar 30 2009

By Barbie

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