The other day, I had one of those moments where I realized I had been going about something the “wrong” way. In my “how did I never see this before?” smackdown on myself I realized the whole thing was pretty funny. So I give you, a moment of [epic] duh!

I tend to rush around in the morning before going into work. I get up pretty early (6), but then I go to the gym or exercise, so my getting ready for work stuff is compressed into the time between exercise and when I need to be out the door (say 8:30). Getting up earlier than 6 really doesn’t work for me, so I’m always trying to find shortcuts that save me time. Like I try to put all my food for the day together the night before so that it’s ready to go.

But, things throw me off…getting sucked into a story on the Today show or deciding that something isn’t going to work about my outfit, meaning I need to change again. One of my personal favorites is when as I’m getting ready to go, I hear the tell-tale hacking noises that indicate that strivingcynic cat is about to lose his breakfast. I drop everything I’m doing to clean up and give him a few reassuring pats while telling him that it’s “no big deal (happens to everyone, little guy).”

Then there’s the other thing that slows me down. I make coffee in the morning, and throw out the filter after I’m done. But, for as long as I’ve had coffee makers, I’ve always thrown the filter out like this:

lifting out the wet, drippy filter

Yes, I pulled the filter out of the machine and threw it in the trash. When I lived in my apartment, there were several feet between the coffeemaker and garbage, and at my place now, there’s a smaller distance. All the same, picking up the filter meant risking dripping, slippage or “integrity failure” of the filter….all of this meaning wet coffee grounds on floors and other surfaces (since momentum would lead them to cabinet doors, appliances, etc.). So, I then had to stop and clean up the mess. Coffee grounds aren’t the most cooperative substance to clean up.

The other day I was about to do the coffee filter, but I could see it was already in precarious shape sitting in the basket…an edge had folded down and grounds had swirled over the edge and settled into the basket grooves. So, I decided to do this

hey, I bet this basket comes out for a reason!

to transport the filter to the garbage. And that’s when I realized that that is exactly what I should have been doing my entire adult-coffee-drinking-at-home-in-the-morning-life (about 15 years). All those freaking messes I could have avoided if it had occurred to me to pick up the freaking basket and dump the filter when it was *over* the trash! Duh! And not just Duh! Epic Duh!

Have you had any Duh/Epic Duh! moments that you’d like to share? How are you at getting out of the house on time?