Beware of cloaking devices!

In honor of the new Star Trek Movie that opened last week, I thought I'd use a Trek theme for my posts this week! Yes, I was a Trekkie (fan of the original series) and a Trekker (fan of the Next Generation series). For a special treat on Friday, I'll post the "All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned on Star Trek" wisdom!

Today however, I'd like to talk about plastic bags. Those nasty white things they foist upon you at the grocery store (or department store) when you have forgotten your eco-canvas bags.

Beware of them...for more than ecological reasons!!!!! They all contain the Klingon Cloaking Device and anything you put in them (or decide to leave in them) will be invisible to you forever. The bags themselves will become invisible to you.

To update your Trek knowledge for a moment here, let me explain the Klingon Cloaking Device. We first came upon it in the original series. The Klingons were a race of people who were, shall we say, just plain nasty. Like they all were having a bad-hair-day every day. Warrior types that went out looking for a fight. Somehow, even though they had not evolved like the logical and peaceable Vulcans, they had not only developed the technology for space flight, but were the only ones in the universe to have developed a way to make their ships invisible. The "cloaking device" (Such an archaic term for such a futuristic technology, huh?) used a lot of energy, and they couldn't fire their weapons with it on, so they had to use it judiciously. But it meant they could sit in the middle of space and wait for another ship to come by to pounce on when there was no planet to crouch behind.

Anyway, back to present time. I was reminded last night just how plastic bags can render anything invisible when I went looking for some soda that I thought my DH had put away. I checked the counters, I checked the fridge...no soda and I was hot and needed a caffeine fix.

When I asked him, he simply said, "It's in the fridge."

"I looked in the fridge. I didn't see it."

"Oh, I just put them in there in the plastic bag."

"Oh...that's why I didn't see them...."

Sure enough, I went back and found them. Now, I don't normally put ANYTHING in the fridge IN a bag, so the bag itself should have stood out to me. But no. These bags have special powers.

Why oh why am I going on and on about these bags?

Because I see them all the time in my clients' homes. (OK, so I must have special powers only when I wear my "CPO-CD" pin, I guess–it renders their powers useless!)

Time after time, while sorting and purging, we will come across many, many of these bags, open them and my client will exclaim "Wow, so that's where that is! I remember buying that (last week, last month, last year, when my married daughter was in diapers...) and I haven't seen it since!"

These bags can pile up so easily, hide food, crafts, clothing, gifts meant for loved ones...their power to conceal is endless.

My only advice is this: when you bring something home in a plastic bag, take it out of the bag, and set the item(s) on the counter (or wherever they need to go) and put that bag in another bag to recycle it at the grocery store when you have a collection of them!

This simple act will defeat the Klingon Cloaking Device without a single shot fired!