The Key Tray Philosophy Saved My Life
A note on a psychological savior, messy existential poison, and time preservation.
I started using a key tray after watching A Perfect Murder (1998) several years ago. The film is an uptown delight with some downtown raunch. Gwyneth Paltrow plays Emily Bradford Taylor, an elegant, monied trust-funder with a refined, self-made, seemingly successful older husband, Steven Taylor (Michael Douglas). The fashion, by costume designer Ellen Mirojnick, has been Tumblr’d and Instagrammed to death: Emily’s Kelly bag that she hauls to the United Nations, her cashmere turtleneck, the Cathy Waterman jewelry, and a glinting Cartier Panthère. But the real star is the key tray. When Emily goes home, the keys do a Pavlov’s Dog clang into the key tray. It’s an ear-perking chime that Emily is always on time! Prompt! Organized! Scheduled! Not a hair out of place. The Perfect Murder key tray is symbolic: The art of not rushing. The art of keeping it together. The art of habit. The key tray is a microcosm of Emily’s meticulously perfect life. Without the damn key tray, there would be no film!
As writer Rachel Tashjian pointed out to me, there is the French word vide-poche, which means “empty pocket” but refers to an object used to hold everyday things, like keys. Well, there was once no vide-poche for me. Before my A Perfect Murder key tray, I was always someone who frequently lost keys. Some were stuffed away in the butt pocket of my jeans, only to be discovered, cold and wet, in the washer at the laundromat. I remember one time when I found my house keys nestled in a suitcase that I only decided to fully crack open weeks later. While moving apartments, I found a handful of single keys underneath my bed, alongside stray socks and random receipts. Keys were stuck behind couch cushions, deeply mashed into the crevices, like a squirrel had burrowed them into a black hole of oblivion. I knew nothing of what I now refer to as the Key Tray Philosophy.