By Lisa Scottoline
The holidays are almost upon us.
Let the game begin.
What game am I talking about?
Not food-shopping.
Not gift-buying.
Not home-decorating.
I’m talking, of course, about Hide-and-Seek.
That’s the game I play with myself, before every holiday season.
Because invariably, people will be coming over, so I want to make the place look clean, and I get busy.
No, not cleaning.
Have we met?
I don’t clean, I hide.
By this I mean, I look around the kitchen and all of a sudden my eyes go automatically to piles of clutter that I’ve been ignoring all year, like:
A stack of bills.
Catalogs.
Sweaters that need to go to the dry cleaner.
Purses shoved in a kitchen chair.
Books to be read.
Yes, books are stacked everywhere in my house.
I actually like that about me.
And what I start doing is taking the piles and hiding them.
This is so that when people come over, they’ll think I keep a clean house.
But I know better, and now, so do you.
Please tell me that I’m not the only one.
Let’s play Holiday Hide-and-Seek!
Yesterday I stuck all the bills in a tote bag.
Luckily I have 327 tote bags, and I think I used up 150 of them.
I moved the stack of catalogs to a drawer, but the drawer was already full of other catalogs.
At least they were in good company.
Have fun, catalogs!
I put the sweaters that have to go to the dry cleaners in the trunk of the car, so I’ll take them the next time I go.
Or more accurately, I’ll forget they’re in the trunk and drive around with them for the next three weeks.
My favorite place to hide things for the holidays is the steps to my basement. This is because I am actually too lazy to take stuff all the way down to the basement, or sometimes it’s too heavy.
Yesterday I actually put two dog cages on the basement steps and they slid right down to the bottom like they were sledding.
How much fun is that?
Another game!
Clutter sledding!
Except afterwards, I realized I couldn’t get down to the basement because there’s too much stuff on the steps for me to get by.
To get toilet paper.
How long can I hold out?
I’ll let you know.
After the holidays are over is when the chaos really begins.
Because when you play Holiday Hide-and-Seek, you can forget where you hid all your stuff.
You can’t find it anymore.
The clutter has vanished.
Or it escaped, like Clutter Houdini.
Or maybe somebody sneaked in and stole my clutter.
I played Holiday Hide-and-Seek, but I ended up playing myself.
And every year, the same thing happens: I start to get overdue notices for bills that went unpaid over the holidays.
I buy another copy of the book I hid because I couldn’t find where I put the one I bought.
Or sometimes I end up with a stack of papers and This Is Not a Bill whatevers, and since they’re completely miscellaneous, I put them away to go through them later.
By later I mean never.
Please tell me I’m not alone in this.
But that’s all a problem for another day.
As of now, my house is clean.
Or more importantly, it looks that way.
Happy Holidays!
Copyright © 2025 Lisa Scottoline