Have you ever wondered why it seems to take SO much longer to get out the door and into your car than it used to? For a long time, I thought it was just me — probably a function of age. But lately friends have made the same remark. It may not be a universal phenomenon, but it surely does appear that a lot of people feel it takes longer to leave the house as the days go by.
Puzzling about this the other day, I decided to list all the things I had to do one morning before I climbed into the car and drove out of the garage, and then compare them with the routine I had say, 30 years ago: back in the day when I could grab my purse, jump in the car, and be gone! Here’s what happened, with the new stuff classified by “Security,” “Age,” “Burdens of Too Much Stuff,” and “Changes in living arrangements or habits.”
1. Locked up the computer
Security. Also probably Stuff. In the good old days, we didn’t have computers and so we didn’t have to worry about having our entire lives go out the door if one was stolen.
To secure my computer hardware, I have a solid-core door with a hardened lock on my office. Whenever I leave the house for more then ten or fifteen minutes, I lock that deadbolt. This has the same effect as a set of stairs to a second storey: whatever you want is always on the other side of it.
2. Unlocked door, went back in office, retrieved a pair of bifocals for driving and label reading. Relock door.
Security: See above in re: the door hassles.
Age: As a young woman I wore contact lenses and never needed reading glasses, even if I was wearing regular distance glasses. When you get old, contacts number among the many things you don’t want to be bothered with anymore.
3. Took out the garbage.
Changes. Security. The beloved old house had no fence, so I would step through the oleanders into the alley to toss the trash. Later, the gate in the fence we installed had no lock. To get out to the garbage can now, I have to unlock the latch, wrestle the gate open, wrestle it shut, and relock it.
The old house’s kitchen was big enough to accommodate a garbage can, so I didn’t have a trash bag in the sink collecting garbage and starting to stink forthwith. So, I didn’t necessarily have to take out the garbage before I could leave the house.
4. Locked eight (8!) doors and secured two sliding doors.
Security. Changes. It never entered our minds to install iron security gates with drill-proof locks on all the hinged exterior doors. We didn’t have sliding doors, so there was no screwing around with those things, either.
5. Unlocked two front doors. Tried (and failed) to unscrew an irrigation sprayer so as to get a 90-degree model to replace the 180 degree number that waters the front door every time the water comes on.
Changes. Whoever heard of an irrigation system in a residential yard?
6. Chased the dogs back in the house. Relocked doors.
Changes. Security. My German shepherd did not have to be chased. She came when called.
7. Washed the silver that can’t go in the dishwasher, by hand and on the fly.
Changes. My old KitchenAid dishwashers actually worked, if you can imagine. And they did not tarnish the silver.
8. Remembered to retrieve empty propane tank.
Stuff. We did not have a propane grill. Are you kidding? Gimme a break!
9. Unlocked three (3!) doors to get at the propane tank.
Security.
10. Relocked three (!) doors.
Security. Who is it, really, that belongs behind bars???
11. Loaded propane tank into vehicle.
Stuff.
12. Went back into house and checked that dogs are safe indoors.
Security. Changes. I never had little dogs that were vulnerable to coyotes and drowning.
13. Relocked door, got into car.
Security.
14. Unlocked door, re-entered house, walked back to bathroom, applied lip stuff.
Security. Changes. Age. Did we include “forgot” among our list of causes? I always carried a tube of Vaseline, a stick of lip balm, or lip gloss in my purse. Another item that comes under the late-life heading of “don’t wanna be bothered with it.”
15. Poured ice and water into car mug, carried it into garage. Relocked door.
Changes. Security. People didn’t carry water around in the car with them, except for a jug of water always in the trunk in case of emergency on the open road.
16. Drove away.
Eleven of 15 pre-driving hassles are security-related! Of course, we did worry about burglars, muggers, and rapists back in the Day. But we didn’t live constantly under lock and key. On the other hand, if I’d run in and out of the house to deal with things I’d forgotten or felt needed to be done, I’d never have gotten out the door. And also, on that same hand, I didn’t have to wrestle with a locking interior door.
The difference, I think, has to do with the possession of computers. That and other kinds of junk we didn’t have then.
You know, if somebody had ripped off my house in, say, 1980, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. My dissertation notes were handwritten on notecards and sheets of paper; the manuscript was typed on paper — no one would have stolen that junk. Our checkbook register was exactly that: a real checkbook register, not a Quickbooks or Excel page. But today my whole life is on my computer! If a burglar stole even one of my computers, I would be screwed every which way from Sunday. It would be a real catastrophe to have a bad guy take a device that contains all my financial information, all my business records, all the projects I’m working on, and all my connection to the Internet. Absolute disaster. Hence layer after layer after layer of locks and gizmos to secure every entry into the shack. Layer after time-consuming, ditzy, annoying layer.
Only one or possibly two interferences relate to age: having to wear a special pair of glasses to drive and navigate the world beyond the house, and (possibly) forgetting to oil the lips before leaving the shack.
No wonder I run late all the time! If each of these nuisances took just 30 seconds on average, the combined bunch of them would make me run 7½ minutes late getting out the door. If they averaged one minute apiece, they would make me 15 minutes late.
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You’re right, it DOES take longer to get out the door these days! This has been in the back of my mind for years, but I thought it was just me.
I think it’s a real, objective phenomenon! We all think it’s in our imagination…but apparently, not so!
We call it the house’s gravitational field that keeps sucking us back in! It’s tough to break out of sometimes. =)
I think you live in a far scarier neighbourhood than I do 🙂
Also you have a LOT more doors in your house – I have only 3, two of which remain closed and locked by default, so there is generally only the one to deal with when leaving.
To leave the house in the morning, I grab some food from the fridge for work lunch. Put my shoes on, grab my phone and bluetooth headset off the charger, grab my bag and keys. Go out the front door, lock it behind me, and leave.
The biggest slowdown in the morning was looking for my keys – I solved that by nailing a cute hook (elephant head) to the wall in the entry way – my keys now have a home, and I don’t spend 5 minutes in the morning trying to find them.
Yeah, a “place” for the keys is a life-saver…assuming you remember to put the keys back where they belong every time you return home. 😀 One nice thing about the office security door is that I leave my keys hanging in that lock whenever I’m home. Sometimes, though, when I’m in a hurry or distracted I’ll carelessly set them on a counter or (worse by far!) drop them in the basket with the dogs’ leashes, which gets stashed atop the refrigerator. Ha ha!!!! First time I pulled that stunt I had quite the little flap around the Funny Farm!
It’s not just gathering up things to depart….it’s everything takes longer and seems so much more complicated. I spent the better part of a day getting receipts put away….balancing check books….and auditing CC bills. My file is packed for the year and this for just 10 months. I long for “the good ol’ days” when we were just starting out and our receipts for the year fit neatly in a shoe box … Those were the days…..
Yes. That is entirely true. The SHEER QUANTITY of paper that pours into the house defies belief. Every piece of it has to be handled, if only to toss the junkmail in the trash. (Sorry for the all-caps. This WP template doesn’t allow HTML for italics in the comments section!)
First you have to try to distinguish real mail from trash advertising.
Then you have to open each envelope, throw out the envelope, and sort the urgent from the not-so-urgent.
If you’re using Quickbooks, you have to go online and compare your online accounts with the paper (or each instituion’s online statements) to ensure nothing is amiss. Then you have to wrestle with the bank’s online pay system or physically write a check and mail it. If you have incoming checks, you have to wrestle with the bank’s online deposit system (which can really be a time-consuming bi*ch) AND enter the deposits in Quickbooks or Excel.
Really. It was much, MUCH simpler when all you had was a check register and a monthly bank statement. My arithmetic was never up to balancing a checkbook (I will say that Quicken’s old resident-in-your-terminal program used to be a joy for that purpose), but at least I could compare the statement with my check register and confirm that whatever was deposited or paid out actually cleared.
I don’t even know that you CAN balance a checkbook with Quickbooks online. It has so many bells and whistles — among them, automatically importing debits and credits to your records — that you can’t really figure out how to work it in any simple, relatively hassle-free way. These days, I pay my accountant to do my bookkeeping. I do record checks and deposits in an Excel spreadsheet so she can see who those were written to or came from and what category they fit. But really: Excel or a paper spreadsheet would do that.