The Disappearing Portable Phone

Hands up who has a portable telephone handsets and teenagers?

I can see about 50% of my readers with their hands in the air! (Good imagination here!)

Alright – in my house, the bloody handset is never in the cradle, never on bench, in fact I don’t recall the last time I actually used it. We have an ‘old’ handset – you know the one with the cord that keeps you tied to the same location with 1m to roam, and it seems that is the only phone I’m allowed to use.

The handset disappears into the depths of the teenagers bedroom and remains there. Never goes on charge, yet doesn’t need charging, yet they spend all day (and night) yapping on the bloody thing.

The last time I tried to use it when I found it – it was flat, I’m not just talking beeping flat, I am talking dead flat. The screen was dead.

We are lucky – we have two landlines into the house, left over from when dial-up was the only internet service we could get (only 2 years ago) and I’ve not bothered cancelling the second line. This means that we have multiple phone socket connections throughout the house (not in kids bedrooms though!) and so a phone is never far away.

I am sick of chasing the handset though, I feel as though I am entering the Amazon Jungle every time I have to go through the door of the teenagers bedroom, it’s a completely different world and climate to the rest of the house. It scares me.

How do you stop the phone migrating into the mess known as the ‘teenagers’ bedroom’ without disconnecting the handset?

Ideas please!