Monday, October 26, 2009

My Life of Entropy: Broken by a LUMP of Peanut Butter

I am doing the same chores over and over and over. I move things downstairs that end up upstairs: shoes, recyclable containers of shampoo, dishes. And then I take things upstairs that end up downstairs: clothes, pillows, books. I pick crayons up off the desk and put them back in a big can, knowing they'll just get dumped out again. I carry things to and from different rooms no matter how many times they sneak back. Every week I hang the same twenty pairs of shoes on the back of the hall door, sweep the same dirt and leaves out the door that just come in with the next herd of children, put the same games back in their cases, and vacuum the same crumbs that sneak back out of my vacuum to reappear one morning when they get up before me. I do the same laundry that will just reappear in a pile on the bathroom floor the next morning. I wash the same dishes that will end up under the couch cushions. I spend at least 2 hours a day "cleaning" the same things I cleaned the day before and that I'll clean tomorrow.
It would seem to me that I'm fighting against some universal rule. That everything in my home tries to become disorganized and that I am expending a lot of energy trying to keep it at a level that it does not naturally like.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in a closed system (my house) everything runs from hot to cold (from organized to disorganized). This says it all (from a University of Idaho paper on entropy): An ordered entity requires a quantity of energy to create and maintain itself as an entity. Once it reaches an ordered state, it will, without further infusions of energy, gradually become disordered.
This should also, however, include a clause about the energy infusion going on strike and the DIRE results of pissing it off and causing it to resign itself to watching the disorganization to occur unchecked. Who am I to fight against the natural state of things? For example, I am sure that that tablespoon sized lump of peanut butter belongs on the floor beside the trash can.

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