A word about instruction manuals

Can we please stop this?

The best remedy for the January blues is cleaning up. I think I lift a garbage bag out of my house every day and I have become a habituée at the thrift store where I drop off toys that my girls have outgrown.

One of the things I find in just about every drawer is the instruction manual. Because when you buy something substantial (a washing machine, a microwave, a new dishwasher), you standardly receive a stack of papers with it, usually packaged in a plastic wrapper. It all seems terribly important and before I know it, I have shoved it into a drawer under the motto: you never know.

Meanwhile, our old house groans under the amount of instruction manuals I have kept. Why do I keep them? And why are they made? Does anyone ever look at an instruction manual? And do you read it in seventeen languages? The package is so thick because you often receive the complete world variant including Swahili, Chinese, Hindi, and Russian. Moreover, every instruction manual can be found online, often with a super handy video included. So I have thrown them all in the paper bin and I hereby make a plea to all manufacturers of appliances: please stop this nonsense. The planet, the trees, my old little house, and the overcrowded paper bin around the corner will thank you.