My home is a mess

YORKSHIRELASS

Oh Emm, I can relate to that empty drawer thing. We have just bought some beautiful wall cupboards from ebay for £20 for our utility room to replace the one silly tiny cupboard that has been there for the last ten years since we moved in.

Empty cupboards ladies, how exciting, what to fill them with??!!! Well maybe all the clutter that is lurking around everywhere else in the utility room would be a start!

Glad you have been introduced to your neighbour Emm. One of mine called around once and I didnt invite her in because of the mess. Afterwards I really regretted it and its hard now the moment has passed. She probably thought I was a bit rude leaving her standing on the doorstep while we chatted!!!

Love the story about your house Bearcub, what a cheek to knock on the door and expect you to still have their stuff!! My brother had this with their house and it really wasnt nice having to bin someone elses c**p.

Right, off to do a bit of tidying before tea and ferrying DS2 to cricket practice!

Emm-in-a-pickle

Morning Messies!
Bearcub, I knew I got on fine with the `new` neighbours way back, but as YL said, broaching the `come in for a cuppa` thing
when you feel bad about the state of the house is hard.
When the old neighbours were leaving I got them a `new home` card but on impulse I bought 2 the same, and put the 2nd card through the letterbox when they`d gone, for the new folks to find. The house was empty for weeks, then for a few more weeks it seemed folks were moving in but not staying there yet, and when I did meet Mrs Next-door I met their dog. THAT`s when I knew for certain I liked them!! He`s a Rottie/Dobe cross, looks quite fierce till he starts rolling over and slobbering - and she was at great pains to reassure me that he`s a total softie, (chases butterflies and is terrified of cats!) which is why he was rejected by previous owners and rescued by next-door.
As it turns out, she`s been feeling grim about their place too, as they downsized from a big old house with more nooks & crannies and a lot of their stuff that wasn`t clutter there would be in this house, so is still in storage in their garage! And she`s working extra hours because his job contract went pear-shaped after new year. He cooks and gardens and DIYs, but doesn`t do the `homey stuff` she`d want to do if she was able to do less hours at work.
Funny, when you get talking to people, how you realise we assume things quite wrongly.
There was she thinking we`d been here so long we must have got the place as we want it...whereas entropy has occurred slowly and we`ve let it slip by hardly noticing till a stranger comes in and we see it from their view.
And there was me thinking how the old neighbours had got the house ship-shape when trying to sell it, so the new folks just come and settle in with a lovely clean slate, offspring grown & flown....whereas she still can`t find stuff, has a menagerie to look after (everything but a cat!)and still hasn`t time to do a proper un-pack & sort-out, and he sometimes has a go but leaves a trail of havoc!!
I`m sure if I went round there right now I`d think their house was just fine - but it`s how SHE sees it, and how I see mine that formed the barrier. I`m so glad we`re over it!
YL, look out for any opportunity to ask that neighbour of yours to call round again, Mess or no Mess! It`s the first hurdle that`s the highest. And if she doesnt like i she needn`t come again!

sonastin

Re the empty drawer thing. When I lived alone in my first house, I got my loft boarded out for extra storage. My colleague warned against it because he said it would become a dumping ground for stuff that should really be thrown away. I was incredibly disciplined in what I put up there (camping equipment and sailing kit only) and for years it remained immaculately organised - easily the tidiest place in the house... even though if friends stayed over they had to sleep on the sofa because both spare rooms were piled so high with boxes of junk that they couldn't get to the spare beds! It was only when I put the house up for sale that OH persuaded me to fill the loft with junk like every normal house And now that junk is sitting in the loft of this house, still waiting to be sorted :rotfl: I don't know where its going to go when OH gets round to converting the loft to bedrooms. We'll probably go full circle and I'll be storing my junk in the spare room again.

I'd agree that its much easier once you get over the hurdle of inviting folks in. We're lucky in that most of our neighbours are a) lovely, b) understanding of the fact that its a work in progress, c) interested in what OH has achieved in finishing rooms rather than nosying at the unfinished bits and lastly d) too elderly to come over and have too close a look anyway! Some of the younger neighbours (late 60s or 70-something) have popped in or looked through the window when they're passing walking their dogs but the 80-somethings just have a chat over their garden fences or on their doorsteps. I actually think it is quite telling that all the rest are on first name terms around the place but grumpy-neighbour-who's-complaining-about-our-untidy-garden is almost universally referred to as Mr so-and-so - I don't think he's really made friends with anyone. He keeps telling us that the extension built on our house in 1995 blocked his view of the farm. I'm pretty sure that the housing estate built on the farm in 2000-ish did a much more effective job at taking that view away

It could be worse - my brother had a senile neighbour who was in that viscious, nasty sort of dementia. She accused him of all sorts of things he simply hadn't done so he had no real way to respond. At least we are actually doing what the old cuss is accusing us of, we're just within our rights to do it! He finally managed to work out where one of the accusations came from though. She used to yell at him for playing drums in the middle of the night. He didn't own a drum kit. However, he was a police dog handler at that time and he finally realised that when he was opening the back gate to get the dog out for early shifts at 5am, the dog used to wag his tail and hit the wheely bin. When the bin was empty, it echoed like someone was banging a drum. Took ages to work out that out but quickly resolved once the real problem was identified.

Oh, and Emm - at least now your neighbours have seen you own a feather duster so they can assume that you do clean up sometimes. Just not while you're in your current state of recuperation!

Emm-in-a-pickle

Sonastin - yes, timing was good with that outdoor dusting!
Love the doggy drum-beat story. It reminded me of a caravan holiday a few years ago when we still had our big old lad, very bouncy to the last and a long strong tail...and our Daftie-dog was just middle-aged and a bit too fat due to scavvying every waking moment.
We had both dogs with us in the caravan, and in the middle of the night Daftie had sniffed out a bit of sausage that was dropped under the table while we were eating, and while the dogs were outside. We`d forgotten about it and by the time she found it under-the-table had turned into under-the-bed. She got to it ok but was too fat to turn round or reverse and got stuck. There was this noisy heaving about, and she had to be pulled out - by this time we were giggling a lot, and our bouncy old lad, who was sleeping beside the metal-fronted gas fire, woke up and thought `folks having fun!` so started the tail-thumping.... these sounds do echo in the small hours, don`t they?
Nobody from the neighbouring caravans said anything next day, but we did get some funny looks!
I think you`re right about your grumpy neighbour, but it`s good that the other neighbours are so nice. I suspect that you aren`t the first ones that he`s grumbled at either! Sounds like he must once have thought he owned the whole place, and has had plenty of practice at grumbling long before you turned up!

Haven`t done much today at all.
I did quite a bit yesterday, pottering in the kitchen - mostly cooking/clearing up after myself! Spent ages unrolling & cutting up a thawed piece of brisket, marinating it, searing it and doing a slow Chinese beef & ginger casserole. Also spent ages peeling and cubing a butternut squash, and cooked it with some Bengali 5-spice (whole seed mix, found it when I cleared the corner the other day). Both were first-time experiments and were really nice. Surprisingly, they went really well together too!
I`ll have a day traipsing round hospital tomorrow, so having a restful day today seems like quite a good idea. Liver, with grilled tomatoes & frozen rosti for eats tonight, something easy, then an early night.

bearcub

Evening Messies.

At least you got the misconceptions sorted, Emms. True, how we so often have totally the wrong image of people, and they of us. Those of our neighbours we know are lovely although none of them have been in for a cuppa. All are retired, except Mum's next door neighbours, who are young and he (and maybe she, too) is in the Police. Took us a while to realise that, although Mum had noticed that he worked very strange hours. I can imagine you getting some very odd looks from other holidaymakers in the caravans. What a fun night you had! :rotfl: I hope all goes well at the the hospital tomorrow.

Sonastin, I'm pleased that the rest of your neighbours are a lot kinder than Mr Grumpy. You two have worked so hard on your house, you deserve interest and praise, not discouragement.

Very little de-messying done today. Did one WM load (have caught up now, with a couple of days decent weather to get washing dry), but it had to be put in the conservatory as, while the rest of the south was enjoying 20+ temperatures, we were bathed in rolling chilly sea mist most of the time, with the occasional burst of sun. Did a bit of dead-heading in the garden, and OH cut the front grass. Spent an hour and a half or so with Mum, whose green fingers surpassed themselves today. She noticed a couple of sweet wrappers in her back garden, probably blown in from the nearby relatively main road, and picked them up. She was just about to take them into the house when she noticed another bit of paper. She picked that up, was about to screw it up in her hand, then realised it was a £10 note!

snookey

Hello everyone Iv been missing due to the junk in the house,lol. Iv not caught up on the posts but hugs to everyone.

Iv been very busy sorting junk out. Lots to the tip today and charity shop. My o/h brother is coming back next week to clear more for the tip. I can at last see the end of the clutter.

My niece has moved in so the spare room has to be cleared as she has my front room for her bedroom at the moment. Dd should be back in her room this weekend and Im looking forward to having some privacy .

Bearcub how lucky is your mum finding money. Emms our dog is turning into a pudding too. He eats everything he can get to. Mind you all of our cats look as if they could lose a few pounds too.

I dont like having people in when the house is a mess but I think we all assume that everyone else has a perfect home. Id love one but I dont think you can have animals ,kids and messy people in them,lol.

Emm-in-a-pickle

Hi Messies!
Bearcub, if I found a tenner every now and then maybe I`d tidy up in the garden more often! We`re right at the end of a cul-de-sac here and there`s always bits of paper and wrappers off stuff WE didn`t buy blown up the road and caught in our front fence! Grrr!
Snookey, good to hear from you & well done on the junk sorting, even if it`s been forced upon you! Swapping room uses is nearly like moving house in that way. And you are SO right, animals/kids/Messy folk - not conducive to perfect homes! Mind you, I`m not sure I`d want it perfect, just a lot less cluttered and easier to keep clean!

I had my post-op appointment this am, all very satisfactory!
Had scar and orifices inspected, had formal confirmation of the `all-clear`histology report (I`d had news over the phone earlier but it was good to see it on paper too) was pronounced no-longer-anaemic, so it`s farewell to the iron tablets and their gut-slowing side effects.
OH came with me and asked the Dr about what things I still mustn`t do, he wanted to hear it from the horse`s mouth (Dr)
rather than the donkey`s bum (me!)
Still can`t drive for another 3 weeks minus one day (gutted!)
Same for Hoovering. (moderately gutted)
Work - advised to take another month off after the 3 month post-op sicknote expires as they know the ward I work on is one of the heaviest in the hospital. (mixed feelings on this)
We called in at my ward afterwards, where my lovely colleagues echoed the advice, which I have to admit I would give them if roles were reversed.
Well, it should give me time to get the house a bit more sorted, even tackling just the bits within my limitations (which will decrease over the weeks.
Meanwhile, OH & I are going to the Pub! Taxi is booked for 4pm and we`ll be home before 6 for a quiet evening at home.
As I`d got dressed and presentable today it seems a shame to waste the effort!
Have a lovely start to the weekend, all! x

bearcub

Afternoon Messies.

Hello again, Snookey! Did someone have to wade in and rescue you? Well done for clearing so much.

So glad you've got the all-clear, Emms. so, you're officially well, but not striong enough yet to go back to work. Seems like a pretty good situation to be in, and definitey a sound reason for going out to the pub to celebrate.

Re Mum's tenner, it's not hard to see something out of place in her garden. She doesn't have a weed in any of her borders, and there's far to much bare soil for my liking. Given that she's in her 80s, and does all the gardening except grass-cutting and edging (she pays a gardener to do that), obviously she's still fit enough to manage.

OH and I have booked a table for tomorrow evening at our local pub. It's very popular with locals and holidaymakers alike so, at this time of year particularly, we have to book. No celebration, just fancy treating ourselves. De-messying? Not a lot, except a bit of gardening earlier this afternoon, as I visited the residential home and stayed there rather longer than I intended, as one tearful lady needed to talk.

gilly1964

Hi All

I have missed keeping up with you, but with our wedding now only 3 weeks away, 18 May, there is so much to do and so little time.

The house is fairly clutter free apart from the spare bedroom which looks like a wedding outlet store - bridesmaid dresses, jewellery, shoes, table plan etc etc

The garden is all sorted, but looking a little bare. Too early to plant bedding and by the time the weather has improved it will be too late time wise for us and DS will not water anything so will all die anyway :rotfl:

Emms - glad to see you got the all clear, now enjoy this time off work

YL, BC, Sonastin, Snookey, FW, Buffy, Grousescot, JPS - hello to you all

Off now to Zumba - I must stay in shape for my dress

Love and kisses

Buffythedebtslayer

Morning!

Oh Messies! I am a mess!

I am house sitting this weekend in my friend's minimalist flat with her LOVELY dog. Must leave soon.

I am so depressed about the state of the house it is pathetic. In actual fact I am almost glad that during May my man is busy with stuff and so am I so we can't see each other apart from for the first weekend, this means I have time to get some things sorted out. It

Like a work space at home. Not having one is crippling me. seriously.

Still have got quotes for the garden, unfortunately he doesn't do greenry just the hard stuff so I will be there in 1/2 term hacking away!

and digging.............ugh.

The most exciting thing apart from newish man is that one part of the garden will be fenced off for the guinea pigs! Bit of a waste of money to be honest but it will give them a lovely dog free summer and a ALOT more space and I can plant guinea pig friendly plants there and they can eat away!!

It is a waste but I feel they have had a !!!! time since we got the dogs and they should have a better life really.

Any how head ache is coming back due to computer so I am off to get ready for house sitting
xxx