You think you’re running on empty? My toilet duck has just Snapchatted me for a refill

“A top-up here, if you don’t mind, old thing.”

Oh, not again. It’s like being a waiter at a rugby club night out and being asked to serve the beer in champagne flutes. I orienteer my way through the mountainous landscape of unpacked cardboard boxes towards the kitchen, using an app to locate the thirsty caller-in-distress.

‘Open wide” I sing, unnecessarily, having popped open the stopper from the jerrycan and tilting it towards the damn fool’s stupid gaping orifice. I stand there motionless, helpless, for a good minute as the liquid makes its way down with an ugly glug-glug-glug. No-one tells me when to stop: the only indication that I’ve poured in a sufficient quantity is when the overflow begins spilling out the sides. A few seconds later, a bright green ‘F’ glows on my smartphone. Yeah, F you too.

This is the third time I have been interrupted while trying to watch Henshaw, the new Nitflex miniseries based on the college years of would-be air traffic controller Johnny Henshaw-Jacobs. I have only got up to the part where his Origami professor invites the class on a shopping trip to Penny’s.

Each time I have to pause and rewind when I miss a bit because my immediate attention is demanded elsewhere in the house. This is itself a challenge because the remote control has trouble connecting with the set-top box which, as its name implies, is located underneath my TV. It seems to have a pencil-thin line of sight corridor and, as I mentioned earlier, the lounge is stacked high with cardboard boxes.

Yes, the boxes: I’d better explain those first. Last year my broadband supplier announced it was “adding value” by automatically signing me up – at no extra expense! – to a further internet video streaming service. I already had Nitflex, of course, but now I am equally a member of Amazak Prune.

There’s nothing on the free membership of Prune that I want to see but hey, I thought, it costs nothing sitting there minding its own business so I can ignore it. However, Prune then announced that its members would automatically receive “added value” subscription benefits which – at no extra expense! – are delivered to my door every fortnight in cardboard boxes.

I unpacked the first shipment of cardboard boxes: it was a consignment of flat-packed cardboard boxes. No doubt they’re great for storage but I have nowhere to put them.

Since then, I have left each delivery untouched and ready for collection as unwanted goods, falsely believing I could stop them being delivered by unticking this added-value feature on my account page. What actually happened is that Prune continued sending me its unwanted benefits in cardboard boxes on spec anyway, but additionally began sending me even larger cardboard boxes into which I am supposed to pack the unwanted deliveries already received so they can be returned.

The problem here is that when I ask the delivery man to take last fortnight’s stuff away, he apologises and says his van is already full of cardboard boxes – which he then stacks on my doormat, along with a set of larger ones with their ‘Return’ label already affixed, before fleeing.

There might have been a time when I’d be thrilled at having so many cardboard boxes to play with. I wasn’t so young, either, when such an opportunity arose in my student volunteering years. For reasons lost in the mists of Alzheimer’s, we found a room in the Methodists’ hall where someone had stacked loads of large, used cardboxes ready for disposal. Team leader conjured up some sticky tape and Sharpies before project-managing us into building an indoor cardboard city, complete with skyscapers, for the Sunday School kids (currently bored stiff singing Fishers of Men in the other room) to drive around in their buggies and tricycles.

Having so many in my own living space when even my own kids are too old for that sort of thing is less fun. It’s obscuring the walls too, which is annoying because I spent a great deal of effort making sure the wall colour matched my TV.

Colour-matching your interior decoration to your consumer electronics is a thing, you know. I was inspired to repaint my walls by the launch of Samsung’s ‘LivingColour’, six hues of emulsion that are threatened to be just the first of a line of Samsung interior paints.

Scoff all you like. LivingColours are bold and cheerful, and certainly nothing like the ‘moulding magnolia’ or ‘nicotine blanche’ that the man at the DIY shop recommended. Of course, if you’re looking for something more intense with a bit of gender-political kick, you can always opt for Pantone Period, which is a very bright and very literal menstrual red.

The boxes tend to get in the way while screencasting Zoom meetings to my TV set but that’s not such a bad thing I suppose. I tell people I have packed all my books into boxes “for a move” and what they’re seeing is effectively the same as their own nice bookshelves but with a kind of under-bridge homeless-hobo chic. Having the boxes obscure my lower half has the additional benefit that I am less likely to do a Toobin while unaware the webcam is still on.

Right now, though, I’m still lingering in the kitchen just in case it is necessary to feed or water any more animals. Well, not exactly animals. Not humans, either. Not even machines.

I’m feeding the containers.

Stay with me, here. Some boffinous young researchers at the University of Washington have been bashing their heads together and discovered – get this – a practical use for IoT. Not a heating solution with an idiotic brand name such as Hovel that lets you switch on your bathroom radiator in Southend while you’re having lunch in Tokyo; not a complex network of interconnected gadgets that enable you to dim a lightbulb using a smartphone app by uploading instruction signals to a server in St Jose and back to the lampstand in front of you via five other continents.

No indeed: they came up with the concept and practical means for unpowered devices being able to call you for help. Essentially, they found you can 3D-print a simple batteryless chip into any disposable product, which can then be set to reflect or not reflect a Wi-Fi router’s signals to trigger an alert.

Sure, you can have a fridge that tells you when there are no more eggs in the egg-rack, but this way you can have a milk bottle that tells you it needs replacing or – let’s be environmentally progressive – refilling. The chip needs a tiny weeny flash of current to change the state, so this is converted from energy supplied by kinetic means, such as unscrewing a cap or squeezing a handle.

I liked the refilling idea a lot, cutting down on plastic and all that, so now my washing machine liquid and fabric conditioner bottles let me know when they’ve almost run out. Then I got a bit carried away and now the dishwasher tablet box, along with its good mates the bottle of rinse-aid and bag of salt crystals, have begun bleating at me. The floor cleaner is getting short-tempered, the shower gel squeezy dispenser is particularly antsy, and my underarm deodorant has handed in its notice.

Empty, empty – everything and everyone’s running on empty, it seems. Isn’t that a summary of our times?

‘Last orders!” I call while rattling a spoon in a tin can I fished out of the recycling sack. My smartphone is now alight with ‘me-please!’ emojis sent by more containers under the sink. Let’s get this over with.

Righto, then, I must dash. I have to go back to the supermarket and buy dozens of more plastic bottles of various cleaning products and bathroom toiletries so that I can use those new plastic bottles to refill the old plastic bottles back at home. If that doesn’t stop the Arctic melting, I don’t know what will.

Oh, and toilet paper. I don’t need IoT to tell me I ran out days ago.

ALISTAIR DABBS is a freelance technology tart, juggling tech journalism, training and digital publishing. Not everything he has written above is true. If you hear him talking about “Wi-Fi backscatter”, it has nothing to do with running out of toilet paper, which he hasn’t. Yet. The Second Wave is still young. He hopes you have also found him at The Register.