Do you putter?

Saturday morning. I’m slurping coffee, posting here, watching le Tour, wandering into the kitchen to put dishes away, getting packed for my mini-vacation to San Francisco and Pt. Reyes, cleaning the tub, getting ready to vacuum and do some laundry, going through a few bills…

I wouldn’t glorify this as multi-tasking – it’s puttering. Or is it really A.D.D.?

hit reply. wander into kitchen to wash some dishes. go out back to throw scraps into the to-be-composted basket. give the ComposTumbler a couple of turns. come back into the kitchen, wipe down the counter. return to computer.

Puttering! It’s the best way to spend a Saturday morning, or a Sunday afternoon. Best done on a rainy day with a pot of tea on the stove and something interesting on the radio, or else some good music.

Puttering can be surprisingly productive… eventually, and it’s far less stressful than setting out to Accomplish Things to Tackle Some Chores.

I’m all about the puttering.

yep. Checking email, had breakfast already, wrapping up stuff I sold on eBay so I can put it outside for the mail guy to pick up, need to get dressed, waiting for phone call from pal, thinking of dusting in room, getting ready to list more crap on eBay, looking for day trips I could take, considering a spa treatment. Just messing.

:eek:

Since you include putting dishes away, cleaning the tub and mention laundry and vacuuming as ‘puttering’, I assume you’re female. :o

As a chap, I consider these work (which is why I have a cleaning chap* to do all of them!) :cool:

My school term has just finished, so I’m puttering about in a male nerdy way. This consists of a mixture of:

  • watching Doctor Who episodes
  • playing Civilisation 4
  • writing my next dungeon for my roleplaying group
  • watching West Wing episodes
  • posting here
  • getting ready to see Harry Potter 5 (Order of the Phoenix)

*I’m not as sexist as you think!

Er, that would be wrong. (blonde with an “e” in my user name might indicate that, but it was a typo when I joined, and I decided to leave it.)

Some of my favorite puttering is done while camping. I’m not one to sit back in a folding chair, I’m always getting up to do something or other.

Ah, puttering. I think you hit the nail on the head, Savannah; it’s getting stuff done without stressing. Or not. As the mood or the day takes you. I putter regularly.

I don’t know if there are more female putterers than male; my husband isn’t much of a putterer, but I’m sure there are plenty of guys who qualify as putterers in their gardens, garages, offices, and workshops (or in the house, but let’s be realistic here; women are still doing the majority of the house stuff).

Hmmm – the dictionary definition of puttering has a rather negative connotation of wasting time, but I’d say that in the common usage of “puttering around the house” or “puttering around the garden”, it’s more of an aimiable flitting from one lightweight task to another. In that context, I’m definitely a putterer. I regard it as one or two steps above “goofing off” or wasting time and the same number of steps below “Getting Things Done”.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some puttering to do…

I work for myself. On a typical day I do nothing but putter.

I seem to be psychologically incapable of sitting in one spot for more than fifteen minutes when I’m home. I’m constantly getting up to refresh my drink, get a snack, or “putter” with something. I’ve wondered for years if I suffer from undiagnosed Adult Attention Deficit Disorder since I have to force myself to keep working on anything without getting sidetracked. Particularly if I’m trying to do anything involving books, as I can’t resist the urge to leaf through them and start reading. :smiley:

I could be a professional putterer! My favorite kind of puttering involves doing stuff in the yard/patio. Like repotting a plant here, trimming dead leaves there, all while stopping to pet the cat, drink a beer, watch the squirrel scrapping with the pigeons over the seeds and nuts in the feeder, giving the dogs a few treats, watering some plants, drinking some more beer…

Saturdays were meant for puttering! Nothing better than a cup of coffee, a read of the Saturday newspaper, a quick look at the garden, weeding a few plants, putting some stuff away, getting showered and dressed, cleaning the bathroom, and reading the paper again. :slight_smile:

I putter on weekends such as these, when my buddy from upcountry comes down into town, and we spend the nights in the bars. Puttering and hangovers go together with me, as I can’t seem to focus on any one task for long. Gad, but I’m getting old.

I suggest purchasing a copy of World of Warcraft. If anything can grip someone enough to keep them from moving for hours at a time, that’ll do it. :stuck_out_tongue:

Get off with the World of Soddin’ Warcraft…‘im indoors bought a copy ages ago and I’ve barely seen him. On the plus side, I know where he is for most of the day and night - stuck in front of that feckin’ computer pretending to be a gnome.

So I get to spend my time pottering round the place, amusing myself and fussing the cats.

I’m surfing, finishing laundry, cleaning up my room, making Mum some tea, washing my hair… motor puttering sounds

You misspelt “pottering”

My wife and I putter even when we’re ostensibly engaged in other tasks. Great example was yesterday (a Saturday): We came home from a visit to the local greenhouses with replacement plants for some flowers that had succumbed to summer heat. We pulled the pickup into the yard, bailed out and set to work. I went to the garden shed to get potting soil, on the way discovered Daisy, our yellow Lab, was having trouble getting to her water because weeds had grown overly long in the dog run, so I grabbed a shovel to take care of the weeds, then realized flies were bothering the dog’s ears, so went to my shop where I have lotion (it’s for my hands, but we discovered it keeps flies away, too) and noticed I hadn’t put my good chisels away from the last project, so put the chisels away and also cleared off the toolbench while I was at it, re-arranging the pegboard above said bench for the 837th time, heard Daisy flopping her ears in the dog run so took the lotion and doused her ears, then cleaned out and refreshed the dog waterer, did some more serious weeding of the run, took the shovel to the garden shed, moved the bag of potting soil out of the shed so I could re-stack some bales of gorilla hair mulch, saw the mower gas can and remembered it was empty, so picked it up and took it and the potting soil around to the front and tossed the gas can into the pickup. Razorette, meanwhile, had taken a similar route to finding her gardening gloves and had ended up weeding the cactus garden, setting water on the hedge, hoeing her vegetable garden, fetching two bottles of water for us, setting out salmon from the freezer for supper later and made a list of items we need to get at the grocery store for a housebound relative. We then got the replacement plants re-potted. Just another Saturday on County Road 370 North.

These days I spend most weekends at my boyfriend’s house: I love him and am glad to be here, but I often really miss the puttering that I used to do on Sat/Sun mornings. :slight_smile:

I’m sort of puttering right now: I’ve been up for 2 hours and have walked/fed the dog, checked e-mail and LiveJournal, watched an episode of Ballykissangel on Netflix, am currently hanging around the Dope, and eventually will read for a while and then might watch some more Ballykissangel (my boyfriend is a champion sleeper on the weekends, and it’s entirely possible that I might have another 3-4 hours in which to entertain myself). But it’s really not the same as if I were home, where I would have many more puttering options. It’s impossible to truly putter in someone else’s house.

Oh, yes, I need something else to keep me sitting in front of the computer for hours at a time. I used to be addicted to Civilization and would spend the entire night conquering the world and cursing the way my opponents would get away with trespassing on my territory every other turn while declaring war if one of my scouts so much as looked toward theirs.

Now, you’ll have to excuse me; I’m almost finished with mt (late) lunch, and it’s time for me to go back to finishing building a bookcase. Then while the stain is drying I’ll be re-organizing my DVD collection, probably while watching one of the movies I haven’t had time to watch yet.