I love my honey, I really do. He’s a fabulous organizer; without him, our home would look considerably messier than it does. (He and I disagree: his “mess” is my “comfortable.” Right there we have a problem: we lack a shared vocabulary. More on that in another post.) When he’s bored, he’ll re-organize the garage, the bookcases, the closets and the kitchen. He’s a dream that way.  Mostly I appreciate his considerable efforts to bring order to our lives. He doesn’t organize things like I do—he’s an engineer, for one thing. He takes any mess personally. But one man’s entropy is another woman’s pile, or stash, or clothes closet. Or kitchen.

Don’t Touch My Toolbox

We’ve already had the “don’t touch my toolbox” conversation.  I could find things in my toolbox, but he couldn’t. We agreed that was his domain, so he took it over. I don’t mind; toolboxes aren’t all that big and his system is obvious if counter-intuitive to me. He applied the same rigorous logic to the junk drawer in the kitchen. It is now organized to within an inch of its life and has been renamed the “utility drawer.” I get reprimanded if I slip and call it the “junk drawer.”  I can’t find anything in it but he’s usually around to ask, so I live with it. Then he oh-so-helpfully organized another of my toolboxes, the drawer of cooking utensils under the range top.  I was making pancakes one morning, happily ignorant that the organizational elf had paid a visit when I wasn’t looking. Time to flip the pancakes. The spatula was not where it should be. Now mind you, I have several specialized spatulas: one for pancakes and hamburgers, one for fish, one for eggs. Different shapes and sizes, slotted or not, each specific to its purpose. I’d have settled for any spatula at that point—the pancakes were starting to burn. Couldn’t find any of them. Shouted for the engineer, who was reorganizing his closet again. Somewhat offended, he showed me his new system. This, he proclaimed, would make my life easier. He opened another drawer entirely. Et violá! There were my missing spatulas—and everything else I hadn’t thought to look for—organized by material (wood, plastic/silicon, metal), color and size.

No, Really. Don’t Touch My Toolbox

He ate burnt pancakes for breakfast and we had our second “don’t touch my toolbox” conversation. I tried to explain wood/plastic/metal + color is not how I look for tools. I failed. (it wasn’t logical. Thank you, Mr. Spock.) I got his attention when I said he’d be eating a lot more burned meals if he messed with my tools. I thought we’d gotten that resolved until I decided to make a stew that called for fennel. I could have sworn I had fennel, but I didn’t see it in the spice drawer. I bought a bottle and opened the spice drawer to put it away. That’s when I noticed things looked suspicious: bottles, boxes, and cans were organized by material (glass, metal, plastic), color and size. The organizational elf had struck again. As I reorganized, I realized we had four bottles of fennel, three of cinnamon, no salt (turns out that was stashed in another cabinet across the kitchen), no cumin (a staple in my kitchen), and a bottle of mace I thought I’d thrown out years ago.

The Point Is…

Build a common vocabulary.

• Get stakeholders involved. Understand their perspective. Cook in their kitchen—understand why the spatulas are where they are and the spices organized the way they are. And know that every stakeholder, like every cook, is different.
• Clarify vocabulary. Get definitions. These will often conflict. My microplane is my honey’s rasp; my French rolling pin is his wooden peg. Have you ever asked Sales, Marketing, Operations, Customer Service, Accounting, and HR to define a customer? It’s an interesting conversation.
• Document what you learn. Build a dictionary if you need to. Agree to disagree. Note differences and conflicts. Publish/share it across your project.

Meanwhile, I’m looking for more recipes to use up the fennel and cinnamon.