What's Your Biggest Pet Peeve?

Plus: Does living with clutter mess up your brain?

Readers, I try to let the little things roll off me. I really do.

But there’s one VERY SILLY thing that keeps riling me up right now, so I thought this could be a good time for all of us to share our pet peeves, even if they feel petty or trite, mainly because I really want an excuse to vent about mine.

My kids usually take the school bus to school, but on days when my daughter has chorus or band, I have to drive her. To drop kids off in cars, parents have to drive up a long narrow road and into a traffic circle. For a stretch of about one-third of that circle, there’s a yellow unloading zone where you can pull over to let your kid out. This zone is maybe 60 feet long. If you pull up all the way up, so that cars behind you can pull into the loading zone, too, your kid winds up being or 40 feet farther away from the school’s entrance than if you pull over near the beginning of the zone. But if you pull over at the beginning of the zone, you effectively stop all the traffic behind you and prevent fewer cars from being able to pull over and drop their kids off.

When I approach the circle and there is no one in the unloading zone in front of me, I pull all the way up so that I can allow as many cars as possible behind me to pull into the zone, too. I feel like this is just common courtesy. It’s fine if my daughter has to walk an extra 40 feet to get to the school, right? We’re talking five seconds.

And yet. Whenever I’m behind a car pulling into the circle, they almost always pull over immediately, presumably because it’s closer to the school. In doing so, they stop all the traffic behind them, delaying parents and kids who are probably on a schedule because honestly, who isn’t on some kind of schedule at 8:10am on a weekday?

I don’t know why, readers, but this DRIVES ME BANANAS. Technically there is enough space to pull around the pulled-over cars to drop your kid further up, but for some reason that is considered an Asshole Move because I did it once and a dad gestured rudely at me, even though he was actually maybe the asshole since he’d pulled over immediately with a long line of cars behind him.

Slow indeed

I know this is silly. I know it’s a first world problem. I know it doesn’t matter. But for some reason, it really bugs me that almost every other parent either a) doesn’t recognize that pulling over at the beginning of the zone delays everyone behind them or b) recognizes it and doesn’t care because they don’t want their kids to walk an extra 40 feet. Or, I guess, everyone’s half asleep.¹

There, that’s my silly pet peeve. Please share yours so that I do not feel like such a petty jerk!

Does Clutter Make It Hard To Focus?

And now for today’s

Today I’m commenting on this Instagram reel from @balancingbeams, which has more than 37K likes:

I appreciate that balancingbeams attempts to reduce guilt and shame in one regard — by reassuring her audience they aren’t lazy. Yay! But I read this and immediately felt guilty for not keeping a pristine house. I don’t mind a bit of clutter — but if it’s affecting my focus and cognition (and maybe those of my kids), well shoot, maybe I should! (Thank goodness, this influencer also sells a de-cluttering guide that you can buy to ease your worries; she doesn’t say in the reel how much it costs.)

But let’s move onto the science. I read the caption for this reel and was pleasantly surprised that it actually included a source for its claim: a study published in 2017 titled “Clutter, Chaos, and Overconsumption: The Role of Mind-Set in Stressful and Chaotic Food Environments.”

After reading the study, my pleasant surprise turned into dismay, because there are two huuuuge problems with this study.