I think we’ve all got petty annoyances in our lives that we put up with simply because it never occurs to us to do anything about them. We put up with them thinking they are just a fact of life. Such was the case with our kitchen rubber gloves.

My husband has large hands and so needs large rubber gloves. I have small hands and for twenty-four years my little hands have flopped around in large gloves while I did the washing up. I must hasten to add that as I cook, more than half the washing up is done by my husband, so it’s only fair the gloves fit him.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, but a couple of weeks ago it struck me out of the blue that there was nothing to prevent us from being a two pairs of gloves household! Accordingly, I got myself a pair of small rubber gloves and now washing up no longer features the annoyance of floppy gloves. It may seem like a small thing, but those gloves – now marked with a large S, to distinguish them from his gloves – provide me with great satisfaction.

I’ve started to look around for other sources of annoyance. One of these is the fact that whereas my car has a nifty little mobile phone holder so I can easily see where I’m going on Google Maps, his car does not. Every time I drive his car, I must transfer the little gadget from my car to his. It’s now occurred to me that I could buy him a little gadget too, as he has expressed admiration for mine. It’s only a little thing but it would avoid another small annoyance.

Small annoyances build up. Enough of them, or the wrong annoyance at the wrong time and they can totally spoil your day. If floppy rubber gloves made me drop and break my favourite mug, for instance; or if I forgot the change over the gadget and got lost because I couldn’t see my phone. Those would make me feel terrible.

Some of our annoyances cannot be so easily fixed. Some of them may take more money to fix than we have available. Some of them may depend upon the behaviour of others. If others refuse to change their behaviour, or you feel it is inappropriate to ask them (for instance, asking guests to put down both parts of the toilet seat), then you will just have to put up with it. Accepting things as part of life does change the resentment into tolerance.

There are still, however, many small annoyances that can be easily fixed, if only we notice them.

So, I would encourage you to be on the lookout for them. Notice these small rubs of discomfort and judge if you can do something about them. If you can, then brilliant, do that something as soon as possible. If not, then learn to tolerate them as a fact of life.

Mary

A Moodscope member