KonMari 2016 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

grunnie

greenbee wrote: »

I think we should club together to buy GQ a smartphone so she can start a blog and provide minute-by-minute instagram updates...

I think GQ should write a book and we could read a page at a time on here as she keeps us so entertained.GQ enjoy your trip to the homestead as we will all enjoy reading about it. You make finding a spider in the loft sound exciting.

Clutterfree

Safe journey GQ.

Kondoed 4 large boxes of books to the local book lady - she sells them for our local air ambulance.

Finished washing the last of the baby clothes which were discovered in the loft. :eek:
Hope to take them to the charity shop next week or the week after.

Did a bit of weeding but that's about it today.

Have a good weekend xx

greenbee

I can hear the old staircase being cut up for firewood... so I should be able to mow the grass at the weekend.

MamaSaver

GQ - another avid reader awaiting your updates from the parental home.

I've had a great kondo success today. I thought my label maker was dead and it was hanging around awaiting my decision to send it for recycling. However, today I was continuing my paper pile (instruction manuals today) and came across the manual for my nearly dead label maker, which wasn't printing properly anymore. I took a quick look in the troubleshooting section, watched a quick u-tube video and viola - it's working like new. A big success, as I had already been browsing for a new one.

Also finished the filing cabinet, it took a long time to shred the discarded documents. Shredded paper is a complete space sucker. I spent more time pushing the paper into the box than I did shredding. Paper is my biggest enemy and I still have a lot to go through but I'm feeling confident now.

GreyQueen

And we're OFF!

The Off Room was in even more of a parlous state than when I saw it last at the previous May bank holiday. Ye gods and little fishes, the Stuff on the floor was tsunami-ing (this is a verb cos I said so ) towards the doorway into the kitchen.

The Stuff is knee high Misc and blocking both sideboard doors and the double door into the Cupboard. The countertop over the sideboard is piled 2 ft deep with slip sliding piles of packets of biscuits, baking tins, bags of birdseed and gawdknows what.

After tea was finished (got back at 5 pm) Dad settled to do the dishes, Mum ran away and hid - OK, she said don't stress me and retreated into the sitting-room to watch the TV news whilst casting on for a new cardigan from wool I found a few weeks ago in the BCofD - I set to work.

Found a plastic basket on the floor with the following; misc paperwork from 2007, two caster cups, an Observer greatest speeches in history (MLK), several dead AA and AAA batteries, two hairbrushes, a marie curie fundraising daffodil badge, two air ambulance donation bags and other things too numerous and random to itemise.

I have started to remove recyclables and rehome a few items. In terms of volume of the whole, it represents about 0.0001 % and most of it is still spread over the kitchen table.

Other things on the floor in there; tub of fat balls for birdies, bags of birdseed, step-stool, boxed circular saw, more shopping bags than the whole street could possibly need, one of which is PVC-coated cloth, is at least 25 years old and which seems to have been eaten by mice (?!), two pairs of those rubberised grip work gloves, a tube of cocktail sticks, a small plastic bag of black nylon 'ponets (sez Mum, I don't know what they are but they look important so we better keep them), two ends of bungee cords - different sizes so there are presumably another two ends somewhere else, an unused tosspots hairband still on its hanger and a betterware foot file still in its packaging, and a leftover cat prescription also from 2007, a purse containing about 20 cents in euro coppers, a nappy pin from my 1960s childhood and a darning needle, some expired Nektar vouchers, and I think you've suffered enough.

No dead animals or spiders have been seen thus far although there is enough birdseed, cat biscuits and coffee in there to have half a million weevils hopped up and caffeinated within an inch of their lives.

In the two hours since I came in, the permission to turn The Cupboard sideways has been revoked and re-given and will shortly be going into arbitration with ACAS.

I have examined the inside of the wall cabinet above the row of hooks hooks and found a set of 6 mugs, never used but acquired with a second hand mug tree from a chazzer, light bulbs of various denominations both CFL and incandescent, two separate tins of pastry cutters (one sez pastry cutters on it), several torches, a cache of those handbag pkts of tissues, and the next several years' supply of clingfilm.

It is at times like these that I wish I could put myself up for adoption by Bea Johnson of Zero Waste Home.............Ok, I'm older than she is, but I'm sure we could work something out.:p

I have also found several things I don't recognise and don't like to ask at this time of the evening, have tried out several biros and felt tips and binned the dead ones and a few other things.

Thoughts thus far:

1. It was strange that my mother turned into a twitcher on retirement and it's a good job they otherwise live modestly as those blinking wild birds must be as expensive to keep as their two cats.

2. The storage and rotation of the various kinds of bird-feeding products is going to be a major factor in reorganising The Off Room.

3. I can see a rusty bun tin. The baking tins which formerly lived in the pan drawer under the stove which was replaced in summer 2015 - replaced with a stove without a pan drawer - were homeless and spent several months in the shed. They are now indoors but at least one has a problem and all others will have to be checked carefully and cleaned.. That bun tin was Grandma's and most likely is pre WW2. It's practically a Sacred Object!

4. I'd better clear off that kitchen table before Mum sees it and has forty-fits.

PS anyone want a cassette case of trad irish folk music (sans cassette), CDs of British birdsong, perished elastic bands, leaking batteries, several purses containing random hardware and the odd bent knitting needle, please form an orderly queue.

Onwards!

GreyQueen

Call from downstairs Are you on that blinking computer?!

Went downstairs reassuring her that I wasn't intending to leave the kitchen table like that and found Mum poking around the detritus. She was delighted with the purse containing nappy pin and darning needle, voluntarily surrendered the two mis-matched bungee cord hooks, tried a papermate biro refill and binned it as non-working, consigned a Something which is probably a personal alarm (no one knows where it came from) into electonics recycling, pawed through a 2004 pocket diary which has some things written in it and decided must be kept as might contain something relevent, and we have no retired for the night.

We have also found a dictaphone, a brass number for a house whose number is not ours (complete with screws and tarnish!), a non-matching pairof cycle clips, three-and-a-half pairs of work gloves, a luminous paperclip, two bulldog clips, a pkt of industrial earplugs, and several other things inc more important looking but otherwise unidentifable plastic 'ponents.

GQ to Dad I found a runner bean in that basket.
Dad How old is it? (not looking around).
GQ It's just one loose bean, it doesn't have an expiry date (slaps it onto windowsill in front of him)
Dad I'll put it in water and see if it grows, they mostly do.

You can see where I got my interest in gardening. Oh, and I found two of those free with shredded wheat flower seed packets which I've confiscated. Probably more than a decade old judging by when we last had shredded wheat, but I'll chuck them in the ground and see what happens.

greenbee

Sounds like you have your work cut out GQ!

Builders have left. A couple of things not done (must make a list), and the landing and stairs need another couple of coats of varnish. But they'll be back next week at some point to do the odds and ends and take the rest of their stuff (not do the varnish as there will be too many people here).

It looks fabulous. But there is a lot of dust and mess and furniture to rearrange. I haven't got the energy to deal with any of it tonight, but have three days to sort out the house and garden before my visitors arrive.

Most importantly, heating is back on. Which is BLISS! (I now have to run it flat out for 4 days to get the air out... so anyone in Hampshire should expect a heatwave over the bank holiday!)

GreyQueen

Glad you've got your house back, greenbee, sounds fabulous.

Was taking five downstairs en famille with a cuppa before retreating when they started to watch telly (can't abide the stuff) when Mum said to Dad;

Did you tell her about the spider?

I should explain that I am a second-generation archanophobe and spiders are pretty high on my ugh-list.

My merry-making male parent told me that they found a really really big spider in the kitchen by the door and he captured it in a pyrex measuring jug (too big for a cup) and he as about to put it outside when he thought that was cruel and has put it under the sideboard instead.

It has a gammy leg, apparently. So now I shall be kondo-ing with one eye a-swivel for a large house spider with a limp.:rotfl:

ETA; I love both my parents dearly but I wish Dad's compassionate nature that means he cannot bear to put a house spider into the garden extended to not releasing it right into the area where his archanophobe projeny is due to be pulling Stuff about the very next day. He'll know if I find it - hell, the rest of the street will hear the shriek.

And then I may well have a nightmare and wake them up shrieking. In fact, I might just have a nightmare on purpose to teach him a lesson............. ;P

greenbee

I'm third generation arachnaphobe. Your dad needs to be put in a pit full of snakes and rats or whatever makes HIS skin crawl!

Did you point out that if his limping spider emerges it'll be a flat spider?

Makes sure you wear boots with your trousers tucked into your socks and wear gloves...

GreyQueen

greenbee wrote: »

I'm third generation arachnaphobe. Your dad needs to be put in a pit full of snakes and rats or whatever makes HIS skin crawl!

Did you point out that if his limping spider emerges it'll be a flat spider?

Makes sure you wear boots with your trousers tucked into your socks and wear gloves...

Very little phases my Dad. And I don't think we could find enough Tories in this very working-class town to fill a pit with them.

But hey, I could re-open the soakaway in the back garden which was dug out when their extension was built as I've always thought it was a bottle-dungeon in the making and wasted on rainwater run off.