Dear Evelyn, I hope you can help because I’ve genuinely run out of people to tell. For six weeks now, every Tuesday night — and I mean every Tuesday, regular as the bin lorry — I wake up around 3am to a faint clicking and sliding sound from the kitchen. By morning, every tin in my pantry has been reorganised alphabetically. Artichokes through to tomatoes, perfectly ordered. It doesn’t touch the jars. Not the pasta, not the biscuit tin, nothing else. Just the tins. I’ve checked for a logical explanation: no mice could manage this, and my husband Derek is a heavy sleeper who has never once alphabetised anything in thirty years of marriage. I want to be clear that my pantry has never been more organised, and I’m not entirely opposed to the results, but I am not sleeping properly and I think I deserve to know what’s happening in my own kitchen. Gratefully but blearily, Margery

I’ve received quite a few letters this week, and Margery’s arrived in an envelope that smelled faintly of tinned peaches, which I took as a sign to address it first.

Margery, I want to reassure you immediately: nothing about your situation is cause for alarm. What you’re describing is, in my experience, entirely consistent with a Domestic Orderer — a low-level presence, generally harmless, that becomes attached to a specific category of household objects and cannot help itself. The Tuesday consistency is the real tell. They are, if nothing else, creatures of rigid routine. The fact that it ignores your jars is not arbitrary; in my experience cataloguing these interactions over many years, Domestic Orderers have a strong and frankly quite principled aversion to anything with a paper label that might peel. Tins are their preferred medium. Derek’s continued unconsciousness through all of this is also completely typical — they produce a very localised, very targeted calm around sleeping household members, which is considerate of them, even if unhelpful to you.

Now, two pieces of practical guidance.

First, and most importantly: do not reorganise the tins. I cannot stress this enough. Undoing the work is interpreted as an invitation to escalate — I have heard from readers who shuffled their tins back to their original positions only to find their entire spice rack sorted by region of origin by the following Thursday. Accept the alphabetical order. You may find, after a few more weeks, that it settles into a comfortable rhythm and you stop waking to the sound entirely, simply because the anxiety of not knowing has resolved. Margery, you do know now. That helps the nervous system considerably. I’d also suggest leaving a small, flat object — a coaster works well — in front of the artichokes on Monday evening. Not as a barrier. Simply as an acknowledgement. It will be moved by morning, but the gesture registers.

Second — and please write this down — on the next Tuesday night, place an opened tin of something savoury on the middle shelf before you go to bed. Leave the lid resting loosely on top, folded back. Do not ask me to explain the mechanism behind this; I will simply tell you that it works as a kind of punctuation, a small signal that the pantry is considered settled, and that the presence may begin to visit less frequently. It will not stop entirely for several months, but the Tuesday nights will shorten.

I should mention — briefly, because it is not directly relevant but it does bear on the tin question — that my own herb garden has been experiencing something similar this autumn, though with the terracotta pots rather than tins, and I’ve found the coaster method entirely effective. I mention this only so you know I am not speaking theoretically.

The broader point, Margery, is this: the helpful ones are still an imposition, and you are entirely within your rights to feel that way. Gratitude and disrupted sleep are not mutually exclusive. Your feelings are valid. Your tins are also, I concede, beautifully organised.