If you’ll forgive this turn of phrase, the time has come to free us from the twice-yearly tyranny of a completely unnecessary chore: changing our clocks as we toggle between standard and daylight saving time.

It’s coming up again: The switch to daylight saving time is set for 2 a.m. Sunday. That means that we’ll pad through our households on Saturday night before bedtime, trying to track down and change every clock in the house just to be certain we’re on schedule when we wake on Sunday morning.

We always miss one or two clocks. But why does your microwave feel like it needs to keep time in the first place? We don’t need it to tell time. We just need it to pop popcorn without burning the kernels. And what about the clock in your vehicle? You’ll probably notice that you failed to change that clock when you’re driving it next week. Don’t try to change it while you’re driving; it’s harder than you remember.

But why do we have to go through this in the first place? The time change ritual was dubious to begin with, and there’s no reason now for it to continue. Experts increasingly recommend that we cast our lot with standard time, but the main thing now is just simply to do away with the time switch and to cast our lot with either daylight saving or standard time.

Americans have been messing with the clock since 1918, when Congress passed the Standard Time Act to establish federal oversight of time zones. One of the arguments then was that daylight saving time would save energy, but some studies have found that any savings from extended daylight are offset by the need for extra air conditioning.

(As an aside, it is not true, as some believe, that daylight saving time was created for the benefit of farmers; in fact, the agriculture industry lobbied against daylight saving time as early as 1919. In the memorable words of a “Last Week Tonight” segment on daylight saving time, “Cows don’t care what time it is, because they’re cows.”)

Your body, though, cares about the time switch. Evidence increasingly links the switch — in particular next week’s “spring ahead” move to daylight saving time — to health consequences, including an increase in heart attacks, strokes, mood disturbances, hospital admissions and car crashes. In theory, the hour of sleep we lose in the spring we get back in the fall, but it never seems to work that way.

Congress and the Oregon Legislature have taken swipes at the issue in recent years, and it’s about to come up again in the Legislature.

A legislative committee on Tuesday is scheduled to hear testimony on two related bills, Senate Bill 566 and Senate Bill 1038. In essence, both would do the same thing: The part of Oregon within the Pacific time zone (a small piece of eastern Oregon is in the Mountain zone), would be allowed to remain on standard time year-round — assuming that both California and Washington do the same within 10 years. In addition, Senate Bill 1038 would permit Oregon to adopt daylight saving time year-round if Congress allows it — and, again, if California and Washington follow suit within 10 years.

Sleep experts will tell you they recommend a permanent move to standard time; they argue that standard time (with its brighter mornings) is more naturally aligned with the progression of the sun, and therefore with the body’s natural clock. In a nation that struggles with sleep disorders, that’s not a small deal.

But the important thing now is to free us, once and for all, from the yoke of the time change. These bills would be small steps in the right direction.

It’s long past time to end this nonsense. Let’s move to standard time year-round. Cows won’t care, but your body will — if only because you won’t have to remember ever again how to change the time on your microwave.