An app for everything, and everything for an app

Last week, I decided to get a bit more organized in the hall closet.

Sick and tired of pulling out armloads of mixed up scarves, gloves, and caps and sorting through the mass of everything every time I have to head out, I thought I’d get a few storage containers. So I’m now the proud owner of a tub full of scarves, a tub full of hats, a tub full of gloves, and a tub not so full of umbrellas.

Oh, I suppose there would have been other ways of organizing things – by color, by frigid-weather level – but I chose a pretty basic approach.

It works for me, and now I know – and can remember in my own little brain – where my outdoor accessories are. With outdoor accessories at my fingertips, I hadn’t thought that I also might want to have information about the whereabouts of my outdoor accessories at my fingertips, too.

But if I did want to know exactly what was stored in each of my clear plastic tubs, I could have downloaded the free Homz Smart Storage app. (That is, I could have downloaded it if I had a new-fangled iPhone, rather than my retro Blackberry.)

I suppose that there are people who really do need an app to tell them where everything they own is stored. But those would be folks with a lot more stuff on their hands than I have, and a lot more places in which to stow it than the paltry 1240 square feet I call home.

Sure, I sometimes do lose track of my stuff – as in when I discovered a few months ago that I owned eight pie plates. Given that I might bake a pie once a year, this was quite a revelation. I solved to surfeit of pie plates pretty easily by donating four of them – okay, I didn’t exactly donate them; I left them out on trash day in an open bag and someone picked them up – and have the remaining four where I can keep an eye on them. Just to make sure that they don’t go replicating themselves again.

But mostly I know where things are.

When you don’t have all that much room, there’s a place for everything and everything has a place.

Anyway, there is at least one major benefit to having not all that much space: it’s just plain tough to keep acquiring things. (Pie plates aside, I’m pretty good about getting rid of stuff I don’t need. Mostly. I still can’t part company with a batik quilt I got 40 years ago, a quilt I loved even when I was watching Charlie’s Angels one night and saw that one of the angels had the same quilt (only she had the all-blue one, rather than the much more sophisticated,  interesting and attractive brown-blue one) on her bed. I think it was the angel that Jacqueline Smith played. Or maybe Farrah’s sister. And there are a few other things I could definitely part company with. Maybe I’ll give everyone a door prize on Christmas Eve…)

In any case, even if I did have an iPhone, I don’t think I’m quite at the stuff level where I need to keep tabs on everything I own with an app.

I’m not anti-app by any means.

But the apps I could really use don’t seem to exist.

How about an app that could find – and fetch – the juice oranges (vs. navels) I prefer for my orange-chocolate pound cake. None to be found at Shaw’s or DeLuca’s. Off to Whole tomorrow…

How about an app – a press button app – that I could press to my forehead and, based on some sort of app mind-meld. pAnd immediately – in real-time, as they say - df’s with design specs for my do-over kitchen and bathrooms would spring forth.

Which, of course, suggests another app that I could really use: the line up the contractors to get the kitchen and the bathrooms done. I’ve got a great painter and a great electrician – at least I did a decade back when I last used them – but for a really big job that entails pulling up tile and sledgehammering cabinets that were completely cool in 1979, I need help. Is there an app for that? And I don’t mean Angie’s List of Yelp. I just want it done. Pick out the appliances while you’re at it, why don’t you.

How about an app that will polish up my scratched up furniture. Sure, shabby is chic, but…

If there’s an app that’ll take about ten pounds off if I put it under my pillow, I’ll even buy an iPhone.

But I really don’t need an app to tell me that the Liberty shawls, the wool infinity my sister Kath made me, and anything else that goes on the outside of the coat, are in a clear plastic tub in the hall closet, while all the indoor scarves are in drawers two and three in the tall chest in the bedroom.