When Helping Hands Cause Twice As Much Work

I run this house.  I am Commander in Chief.  Please, stop trying to help me!

Whenever something is missing, lost, unavailable, stolen, or simply unable to be found, I hear, "Mom? Moooooooommmm!!  Where's my...?"

I don't have to move.  I can say, "Did you look (here)?"
Usually an exasperated, "Yes!" follows.
I'd like to say, "Look again", but that's completely pointless, so I usually say, "Look (here) to the left, second one down in the back on the right side." (or something like that).

I always know where things are.  Usually because I'm the one that does most of the picking up.  My family couldn't function without me.  From my husband to my kids, nobody seems to know where anything is.

Unless it's food, of course.  They could hunt out my best hiding places with secret doors and pass codes like a drug dog at the airport.

What I hate is when they try to do me a favor by cleaning for me while I'm out.

I have been looking for the same handful of things for ten years. Each year a new item or two is added to the list.

I don't have an obsessive compulsive disorder, but everything has a place in my house.  I decorated with certain things in mind and those things go where I put them.  I decorate seasonally with a few silk flowers arrangements, wreaths, throw pillows, etc.  So when I gather them up and leave them on the kitchen counter (until the go to their storage spot) or even put them in their place in the garage, someone inevitably decides to organize all by their self...

That's the last I'll see of it.

I can come home from the grocery store, things are missing, and whoever moved it would have already forgotten where they put it in just that short span of time.  I can't tell you how many times I've had to tell people to stop helping me.

Stop. Helping. Me.  I can't say it enough.

Because you're terrible at it.

Over the years it's been pieces of jewelry (some handed down for generations), porcelain pots, paintings, my Christmas holly dishes (the entire twelve place setting), clothes, utensils, quilts my grandmother made, a chandelier (how do you manage that one?), my favorite pair of paddock boots I always left by the door, and various other items that I was attached to that I now realize I'll never see again...