I wouldn’t call myself a neat housekeeper, but some things do have places to be and it distracts me to no end when they aren’t in them.

A recent example was the old metal dustpan that normally rests on the floor beneath the broom that hangs on a post at the bottom of the cellar stairs. One afternoon when it was too hot to be outside I decided to clean up the grass seed mice had dumped on the cellar floor after getting into the pouch I had left on a shelf. 

That old dustpan would be just the thing to use to scoop up the seed. The only problem was that it wasn’t there. The broom hung on a nail in its usual spot, but there was no dustpan resting below it. I looked around the cellar and tried to think where it might be. 

I tried the garages with no better luck. 

We had cleaned up the patio earlier this year. Maybe we had used it there. I looked, but saw no sign of a dustpan.

By this time I had lost all enthusiasm, if it could be called that, for the cleanup job. My thoughts were on the missing dustpan. Perhaps I just wasn’t seeing it?

My next-younger sister took a look with no better luck. 

A week or more went by. I had moved on to other things, but periodically wondered about the missing dustpan.

Then, one morning, a new mystery appeared.

Actually, I heard it before I saw it. There was a clattering sound in the early morning hours. I had one ear in the pillow and wasn’t sure if the sound came from indoors or out.

When I stepped into the kitchen that morning, I spotted a rectangular piece of tan-colored plastic on the floor and picked it up.

What in the world?

It was sort of cream colored on one side with sticky stuff on the back to attach it to something. But what? I looked at the cupboards, the towel rack, the paper towel holder, but everything was intact.

It was difficult to focus as I went about my morning routine. What could that thing be, anyway? And, for that matter, where was that stupid dustpan?

My sister stopped in.

“What’s this?” she asked, picking up the mystery item from the counter.

“I have no idea,” I said and told her about the clatter I’d heard and how I’d found the plastic piece that morning.

We ate lunch and headed for the grocery store. Back at the house, we sorted the groceries and she prepared to head for her place. She happened to glance up toward the ceiling.

“I know what it is,” she said. “It goes to the light.”

She wasn’t sure why she had looked up, but she noticed the piece that should have been on one end of the fluorescent light fixture was missing. 

I recalled that my niece’s husband had used duct tape to fasten the piece when it wouldn’t snap into place after he last changed the fluorescent bulb. He had expressed uncertainty then about how long the improvised fix would hold.

That evening I stepped into my mother’s old bedroom and took note of a couple of tools we’d left there weeks ago when we were removing some floor tiles. Then it hit me. Could it be …?

Yes. We had used the old dustpan when we were sweeping up the dust and debris and there it sat, right next to the scrapers.

I returned the dustpan to the cellar. 

Now I suppose I have no excuse not to tackle that cleanup chore.