KonMari 2016 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

GreyQueen

Morning all.

Yesteday was a scorcher but I didn't reach the family home until early evening and not enough time to pull stuff about.

This morning it is still hot but less perfect. Nevertheless, I laid hands of the biggest of the family rugs, 30 x 56 inches. The back-story to this rug is that Mum bought it three-quarters finsihed in a bag with what she assumed was the remainder of the yarn, from a chazzer in a town she was visiting, for £12.

She brought it home and put it, still unopened into the Bedroom Cupbolard of Doom (BCofD) and left it for a few months until she was minded to do some rug-making. On unpacking it, she was gutted to discover that the rug yarn with it, wasn't from this rug at all, and didn't go.

The rug is an abstract design in two closely-related shades of mid-blue, beige and grey and is a mirror-repeat, although the canvas wasn't printed and there weren't any destructions.

So, someone's discarded WIP became Mum's WIP and went back, into the BCofD and stayed there for a couple of years. Mum would mention it periodically, she felt a bit 'done' that she'd not opened the packaging and checked it was complete before buying it, and wasn;'t sure about how to finesse it so it would look OK.

Now, I completed my first ever solo hand-hooked rug as a 9 y.o. and quite enjoy doing them, plus I don't like Mum to be niggled. So I volunteered to take it on and then took it away to the city and worked on it in my copious free time.

Because I hadn't got the right colours and had to invent part of the design, it was a faff and a fiddle but I got there in the end (I had to unpick and move some of the existing tufts to make the design and colours work) and then it came back to the family home and has pride of place in the sitting-room.

I spent 1.5 hours washing and rinsing it in the tub. If you ever do this yourself, be sure to use a hair-catcher over the plug-hole to catch the shed fibres) and then Dad and I carried the sopping wet rug slung between us in a tarp downstairs and thru the house, to rest it on the tarp but dripping off the table outside.

I'd nearly finished the restorative cuppa I was having and then a storm came over and the heavens opened.:rotfl: I just folded the tarp over the rug and will unfold it when the storm passes, it's lifting already.

These hooked rugs take about 2-3 days to dry but they are incredibly heavy when saturated, far to heavy for washlines or, realistically if as big as this one, for the clothes airer.

They'll drip for the best part of a day and will then weigh a lot less and be able to go over the top of an airer, so they can dry out for another 1-2 days. Hence only doing this in the hottest of weather.

We're having a roast Sunday lunch today as we'll be out tomorrow and the house smells lushly of roasting beef, nom nom nom.

Dunno what I shall get into this afternoon, although a bit of grocery shopping is on the cards, we'll have to see what I'm allowed to get away with.

GoingToDoIt

Hi Kondonistas,
I have had some socialising and some tiredness, so I'm "sorting things out" this weekend. I've just started to revisit clothes as I suspect I may have dropped a bit of weight, and I seem to be right! Released a few items which can be laundered and bayed or donated. Acquired a dress or two, two pairs of leggings and two bras which now fit, and were much needed! I was very happy to notice a hole in a pair of leggings the other day, as a pair of cut offs had fallen apart. So I have replacement cut offs (great for housework in warm weather) plus replacement leggings and some summer clothes, all for no further cost...brilliant.
Clothes is spilling over into summer/holiday/travel stuff, some of which is sorted and some needs a revisit. I can easily put my hand to some sun cream however I think it's over 2 years old and I should replace it. Same with sunglasses, a few ok cheapie pairs but would be nice to have some new ones, plus I'm planning a big holiday next year and would like a half decent pair.

wort

Hi all, I'm still here , not kondoing as hubby is in hospital quite poorly, the last couple of weeks feel crazy, we were on our first cruise when he became ill after a couple of days. We flew home early and he's been in hospital since.
I'm reading along with your exploits as a way of occupying my mind and I know how upbeat and inspiring you all are. Xx

iamsalt

Huge hugs Wort. Thinking of you both x

ivyleaf

wort I don't post on this thread very often but wanted to send you a virtual ((HUG)). I hope your OH is starting to feel better.

GreyQueen

wort wrote: »

Hi all, I'm still here , not kondoing as hubby is in hospital quite poorly, the last couple of weeks feel crazy, we were on our first cruise when he became ill after a couple of days. We flew home early and he's been in hospital since.
I'm reading along with your exploits as a way of occupying my mind and I know how upbeat and inspiring you all are. Xx

I'm sorry to hear he's poorly and sending good wishes for his recovery.

Been lounging around on the concete outside reading and drinking tea. We had to declutter a confused mole which surfaced on the lawn and somehow got down onto the patio (a drop of about a foot) and was blundering around trying to dig thru concrete.

Mum captured it in a dustpan and popped it back on the grass and it began to dig itself underground immediately. The back yard has just a scabby piece of grass where the linen lines go, so not exactly a beautiful lawn in peril from mole hills.

After lunch and a liddle shopping trip, I had a rummage in the dead-end corner of the off-room and pulled out 60,000 fabric shopping bags. OK. very slight exaggeration, but we're definately SABLE'd for shoppers. I asked Mum if she knew she had 8 unused kitchen rolls under there? She thought she'd run out, so I have brought them all out into plain view so they don't disappear again.

Also lurking under there were 2 x 5 litre plastic containers which once held - I think - pickling vinegar and three redundant biscuit tins. The former are to be recycled and the latter are To Be Dicussed.

Mum has her nose stuck in a large novel which will be going to the chazzer when finished. I asked where she'd got that one and was told : Off the shelf.

If anyone's lost a [STRIKE]Rosemary [/STRIKE][STRIKE][/STRIKE] err Rosamunde Pilcher novel, it fell thru C-space and into the parental home. Will be going to a chazzer next week.

Karmacat

wort, I'm so sorry to hear your DH has been so ill I hope its a case of starting on convalescence now.

GQ - I'd love to see a mole! How amazing and what a quickthinking mum you have to scoop it up with the dustpan

I managed to get previous kondo efforts out of the house yesterday, and today I'm starting to kondo some rats in the loft and possibly in the cavity walls? Or maybe just thumping around on the outside of the walls. Not nice.

GreyQueen

What was amazing is that The Queen of Sheba and Wild Thing were out there mere feet away from the mole and ignored it! Mind you, they're coming up to 13 and more interested in hunting Whisk@s sachet food than vermin, even the cyrils (squirrels) and blackbirds and starlings land beside them and get ignored.

Just finished washing up after having made a batch of 4 dozen buns. Neither Mum or I have baked for ages so we had to get Grandma's Mrs Beeton cookbook down, and got side-tracked by a recipe she'd handwritten on the back of a flyer for a sale in a 1950s dept store......

Due to chaotic stock-keeping this household has a considerable quantity of OOD dried fruit. I soaked two part-used pkts of Morries mixed dried fruit in boiling water for an hour or so and an tub of mixed peel (BB 2014) had a glug of orange juice in it and soaked most of it up. All of those were added into the ingredients.

The buns are now cooling on their racks on the kitchen table (under mesh domes) and five have already hit the alimentary canal. Bliddy baking, ya slaves fer hours and folks will insist on eating things.:p

The big rug has astonished me by being about 50% dry but it is hanging over a table in a regular sun-trap. We'll bring it in at dusk and sling it over the clothes airer.

Tomorrow morning we're out and about the ancestral villages and then will have a picnic lunch and come back. Either tomorrow or Monday, I will wash the rug in the loft (Christmas Roses) as Mum has decided that she wants to keep that to have for a bedside rug as and when she can no longer manage the stairs and they have to have their bedroom in the additonal downstairs room.

I know, I know, but there is no carpet on that floor, just vinyl, and the only reason this rug was in the loft is that it is superfluous to the present domestic requirements. I said if CR is a keeper, it ought to have the patented GQ treatment as it needs washing and a few tufts at the edge are coming undone and should be sorted.

I figure if you're going to keep things for future use, either your own or somebody else's needs, they ought to be ready to go.

iamsalt

whiteguineapig wrote: »

you could keep an eye on george at asda range for sports bras, i got 2 in the sale last year and they are good quality

Thanks I will have a look. I usually find that the fuller figure isn't as well catered for but I haven't been there in ages!

Didn't manage any packing as I seemed to hurt at Parkrun today (and that was before the rain/thunder/lightning came) so I walked most of it, but proud I still completed it. I have a sore ankle now on top of my sleepiness. So have had a good nap instead, and that has helped a lot.

I have lost a couple of bits I was going to try on flea bay so that's on hold, but mum has offered a couple of large garden items that I will try on faceb00k tomorrow once I have been over to take some pictures. Have identified more items to kondo sitting resting so that has been noted-I am never without a notebook- for when I am more able to get about.

am hoping to find a few more bits to sell as the new house project may cost more than planned, I have got rough estimates and added 10% to each, but renovations never seem to go to plan and nor do new builds. I am also thinking about how to minimise the mortgage that I will have to take out near to the end of the project so have been mooching about on the mortgage free wannabe pages.

S x

iamsalt

Good work on the using up of OOD stuff GQ.