The Case of Decorative Pillow Pile
A household maintains a daily ceremony of removing and restoring objects whose only purpose is to require removal and restoration.
06:52 , bed making
06:54 , decorative pillows arrangement ideas
06:55 , how many throw pillows is too many
[Results: seven to eleven, depending on bed size. Subject has nine. This is within range.]
06:57 , subject places all nine pillows on the bed in the established arrangement. The arrangement took three weeks to develop. It is now performed from memory in ninety seconds.
22:14 , subject removes all nine pillows from the bed. They are placed on the floor, the chair, and the small bench at the foot of the bed, in a distribution that has also become standardized over time.
22:15 , where to put throw pillows at night
[Results: the floor is acceptable. A bench is recommended. Dedicated baskets are suggested. The subject already has the bench and the floor and does not have the baskets.]
22:16 , subject gets into bed.
Reconstruction: The pillows are placed on the bed each morning. The pillows are removed from the bed each night. This has occurred every day for eleven months. Total pillow-handling operations to date: approximately six hundred and seventy-four.
The governing rule: once a decorative pillow pile acquires a daily workaround, the workaround becomes the official storage system.
The workaround is the bench. The bench exists to receive the pillows at night. The bench was purchased in part because of the pillows. The bench now has a purpose defined entirely by the pillows it holds.
Outstanding question: Whether the nine pillows make the bed look better. The subject believes yes. The subject's sleeping partner believes the bed looks the same with four pillows as with nine, which is a view the subject has been unable to fully disprove and has stopped attempting to address directly.
The arrangement continues.