My home is a mess

Emm-in-a-pickle

I only worked a half-day today (7.30 till 2) due a swapping with a desperate colleague - so I was full of plans to get things done this pm...
did a quick shop on the way home, put shopping away and pots to soak, stopped for a cuppa....
did a bit of course-work online (work-related) that I`ve been putting off for 2 weeks....
refilled the birdfeeders, washed pots, and stopped for a cuppa....
I`m now going to put some pork in oven for tonight, put WM on, cut my toenails then hoover bedroom (in that order), clear living-room windowsill - it`s a flat surface therefore cluttered!!! and put away some dried washing. I SHOULD also attempt to clean kitchen floor, but we`ll see...

YORKSHIRELASS

Wow, been some busy bees today! Helen 5 bags gone, that must feel sooo good. Going to be so nice waking up tomorrow morning and seeing your lovely tidy bedroom.

Horace, well done for rescuing the flowers. I have home grown sweet peas in my kitchen but they never seem to last very long. Oh and Dinx, £391 on ebay thats very impressive. I made about £100 on my last clear out and I seemed to have put a lot of effort in for that - but still worth it. We came back off hols to find a big spider had made a huge nest in the corner of the utility room window, complete with dead insects! I asked OH twice if he would clear it up but in the end I had to be really brave and do it myself.

Kids are bored and crabby today, they are really getting on my nerves but its the first time I have felt like this all hols so not bad going I guess! OH has shut himself in the lounge with the telly and they wont bother him but there you go, the joys of being a Mum!

Off to have a little glass of wine I think and put my feet up!

helen_jelly

YORKSHIRELASS wrote: »

Kids are bored and crabby today, they are really getting on my nerves but its the first time I have felt like this all hols so not bad going I guess! OH has shut himself in the lounge with the telly and they wont bother him but there you go, the joys of being a Mum!

Off to have a little glass of wine I think and put my feet up!

Enjoy your glass of wine - well deserved, as 1 Mum to another I know exactly how you are feeling!! I find weeks 1 - 4 enjoyable, week 5 is hard work and week 6 is soooooooooooo long for both me and the kiddies

I understand that the whole school staff need a break over the summer period but I do feel that 4 weeks is enough, personally, I'd like to see another week added on at Xmas so we get time to enjoy the Xmas pressies!!

Helen x

Money_maker

I would like to find my floor too...

Just wondering whether the OP will return to this thread, don't think she's posted on here since june. You don't think she's got all organised and absconded over to the Flyladys

Two binbags of old clothes sent over to my nephews but makes very little difference to our bedroom. Done some listings on ebay but very time consuming. Feel a bit down about my house too - just can't seem to get a grip on clearing it out. Just end up moving piles around. Need a jolly good kick up the bum!

jpscloud

Finally moving things back into the kitchen - had to opt for much less than perfection of course but it does look so much better than before. I bought some pvc tablecloth stuff which is clear and printed with lemons if you can imagine it (I'll see if I can take a pic) to cover both the pine table and the round table. It looks really nice, and it was the cheapest on the site - the two tables cost less than £15 to cover.

I've assembled the new kitchen trolley thing which is perfect for sitting the halogen oven on - very pleased with that. I've done what I always swear I'm not going to do, which is get really absorbed in everything and forget what time it is and suddenly realise it's very late and I've had no tea. Time for some toast!

Emm-in-a-pickle

So much for my earlier intentions! LR windowsill still appallingly cluttered but I did water the plants there.
Just posted on the `Frog` thread, did toenails and other bits (downstairs loo) playing with the 1-minute timer - Very Surprising what you can do in one minute.
Trolley - your allotment can`t be worse than my allotment-sized back garden, all gone feral... have just had one raised bed built, starting small.
Horace - rescuing flowers, well done you! I only ever have cut flowers in the house if they are `rescued` like when daffs get blown over, etc. My veg. man gave me 2 big longstemmed bunches of flat parsley this afternoon as he wouldn`t sell them - could I rescue and use them? -yes I could! Looks like a green bouquet now on bathroom windowsill! I also `rescue` growing herb pots sometimes in supermarkets, have a lovely thyme and a lemon thyme that were once in the reduced pile.
Yorkshirelass - hope you enjoyed the wine , am doing the same as now have 3 days off work! Don`t mind the spiders, tolerate them - they are on our side!
JPS - reading your posts makes me dread the day - but it`s got to happen here, this kitchen is SO DIRE!
`Rustic` sounds fine to me, when my little kitchen is somewhere beyond Drastic! Pots and sink & worktops are pristine, but walls & the floor ( floor was on my to-do list for this pm but CBA) you could probably grow things there.
I also need to do a major sort-out of clothes, am quite envious of folks finding bin-bags of clearance items to discard. I`m going to concentrate on what I`m taking on holiday (Ireland, second week of September), then sorting winter stuff, but I`ve another week off in November when I hope to deal with the surfeit of hoarded textiles, the Christmas shopping, and the prep for winter.. and a belated Spring Clean!!!
Meanwhile, I`ll give myself a pat on my little ol` head tonight, a couple of very good bits at work, a couple of tasks I`ve been avoiding done and dusted, and then I did a LOVELY supper tonight. Menfolk very happy with whoopsied pork joint, steamed half-price charlotte potatoes, a cauli squeaky fresh from veg.man, and a cheese & onion sauce from scratch with various `rescued` cheese items from fridge, & using up expiring milk, the sauce was more like a fondue! Plates were scraped. Then pan was wiped with bread by DS. - nearest HE`s got to washing up for ages!!

Balance - do what you can do, and accept that you can`t do it all, NOW.
Relish the bits you DID do, and don`t beat yourself up about the stuff you didn`t do. Neither did anyone else, did they?

jpscloud

Well done Helen, wow! I need to do that next but with the new term looming I doubt I'll have time.

Emm, I buy herb pots (especially when they're on offer) at supermarkets instead of garden centre ones as well - it's a brilliant saving and they do really well! I find that I have to treat thyme as an annual though, it goes too straggly by the second season.

Still working through the mess in the living room, which now includes kitchen stuff that I have to decide to keep or declutter. I'm so not into this - I keep distracting myself and not finishing the job I'm supposed to be doing!

Emm it only took 12 years for me to motivate myself to do the kitchen! As it is, I've only whitewashed the walls and got rid of nasty cupboards - the floor is old quarry tiles which were partly covered up by patchy lino (now thrown away). They look terrible, all stained with salts and black in the grouting. Fortunately, from the bits that were uncovered before, I know that they do come up quite nice after a while so I'm not too worried they look a mess at the moment.

Will try to work out how to attach pics in a bit.

Rummer

Hello Messies

Thought I would pop in with an update . I have now successfully kept the house tidy for three weeks and for two of those I have been back working full time. Slowly my family are improving their tidying skills and we are all enjoying a clean, tidy organised house.

The time it takes to keep on top of things has greatly reduced and I can now have me time in the evening which has been bliss . There is now no longer a nagging voice in my head telling me to tidy and the fear of people dropping in has now passed :rotfl:

I have no idea how long this will last as I and my family are naturally messy and it may all fall apart at any time however I am going to enjoy it now. In fact I may even pop into the fly lady thread

jpscloud

Well done you Rummer! I don't think I've ever had the whole house tidy but when things do look nice, I so wish I could keep it that way, but work and other things (like feeling that I *have* to do the garden on sunny days!) get in the way and it soon gets back to being messy.

Well, trying to post a pic or two but I can't work out how to do it... can anyone help me?

helen_jelly

JPs - no idea how to do pics - sorry
Rummer - well done, hopefully the family can see the benefits and will keep on top of their own mess - WTG!!!

I've done nothing so far today except wash up - I'm knitting a Hot Water Bottle cover so thats my excuse for doing nothing and I'm sticking to it lol

Have a great day everyone

Helen x