KonMari 2016 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

iamsalt

What a lovely afternoon.

Have managed to remove a wardrobe past its best, and the top which was useless is now in wood recycling and the rest is awaiting a new life as a chest of drawers, which is useful.

The new wardrobe is arriving this week so had to do the furniture shuffle so it could fit in. Bad timing as we are preparing to move but have waited a while and it will be coming with us.

Another box for books has come in and another e b a y item is ready to go.

Unfortunately it's the end of the weekend and I am motivated to kondo again, it's a lot of work travelling this week, so I will have to wait until the weekend to indulge I think. At least I can plan what I will go through when I have the chance. Definitely the summerhouse at mums but I may do clothes again as I move things between drawers and the new wardrobe.

S x

MMF007

Another little haul is leaving!
Two spare phones (for landline, replaced by caller ID models - have kept one that doesn't require electricity to operate if power failure),
a box of pot pourri,
a small picture,
several small cardboard boxes that were holding odds n ends that have been re-homed,
about 450 business cards bought ages ago (surplus to requirements),
and another book!

[Deleted User]

lots of quality high count white cotton bedding to the cs a few days ago, finally admitted to myself that I have too many and they are too hot as too high a count and anyway someone else can get the benefit and do the ironing.

Packmates came yesterday and worked a treat. Small 2` 6 single bed, electric with a large motor hanging below, so not a tonne of space below. That space swallowed all my packmated welsh blankets and throws as well as a whole set of cozee home for that bed and I was able to put my stack of blocking mats (knitting tool) back under.

Did more fleece sets and two woollen duvets in the airing cupboard and now have three free shelves in there. Some pillows to do when the roll up ones arrive, The new packmates are fab. I got some mixed sets from amazon but estimated sizes wrongly. The jumbo ones are massive, so they will go to ds for his caravan cushions in winter, too big for my uses. The two duvets went into an extra large bag and is now flat and on top of some cases under my bed

Also will carry on with km in a more subtle way ie sewing to make things from stash and remnants. Christmas zipped bags and two reversible bed/sofa throws. The girl bags will hold bath bombs and soaks from my stash. That is christmas almost sorted and that is a bonus

hebwood

Been busy in the garden - weather permitting. Km-ed lots of weeds/deadheading/trimmings from the garden. Stopped having the council 'green bag' last year as they stopped the 'green bag' collection and you had to have a wheelie bin at more than double the cost and I thought I could cope with 'small' amount of green waste. Now having second thoughts. Don't have a compost heap/bin as despite quite a few tries over the years, including a worm bin, I have never had any success in getting any useable compost, just a very smelly mess. I do bag up leaves though.

Pooky

Garage tidy today resulted in a car load for the tip, lots of half used paint that has started to set, some old tools that went to metal recycling, some old duvets, a couple of big blue ikeeeeer bags full of general tutt, loads of cardboard that was being saved for wrapping my work parcels, a couple of broken flower pots, a concrete birdbath that's started to crumble and half a desk. Everything has been tidied and sorted, all tools back in their right place and made room to order some logs for the winter.

Turfed out a few camping bits that we don't need, listed them on the local FB page and they've been snapped up and collected later today! Result!

Hopefully kondoing a few lbs too as it's a fast day (giving 5:2 another bash) and I've just sat down with a cuppa for the first time since I stepped out of bed at 6am. Pooped!

GreyQueen

Hi hebwood, I'm sorry to hear that you've not had success with composting thus far, and I really hope you'll give it a go again.

Sometimes, compost gets really stinky because there's an excess in the pile of one kind of stuff, such as grass clippings or kitchen scraps. Compost works best if you have a fair mixture of materials, such as green weedy stuff, kitchen waste, brown stuff (such as unprinted cardboard ripped up, paper shreddings, twiggy stuff). Heaps particularly like a bit of urine (men's urine is better) so if you can persuade the other half to do the business there, it's all good. If you can get a fresh horse dropping and chuck that in, it speeds the process, too.

Composting is a temperature-sensitive process and goes much faster in summer than winter. In my very ordinary compost dalek, it takes up to two years to produce about one-third of a bin of lovely rotted compost. But I'm a singleton household and don't produce that much veggie waste, plus a number of the things produced on the allotment fall into the compost-at-your-peril catefgory, like horsetails, bindweed and couch grass.

This is a tip list of things I've learned about composting:

Peelings, particularly thick things like banana peel and orange peel and stalks from brassicas rot a lot faster if you slice them up a bit.

Teabags contain some synthetics in the weave so don't rot fully, leaving 'orrible little teabag ghosties in the soil. I get round this by mostly using loose tea but, when I do use bags, I rip 'em open and save the leaves and bin the bags. I hate teabag ghosties with a passion.

Tis a far easier thing to remove little stickers from the fruit than to pick them out of the soil later on.

Eggshells don't decay easily and come thru the composting process intact. I now keep mine aside and then grind them up in the pestle and mortar and add them to the soil later.

Some woody things won't rot in our lifetimes but can, if allowed to dry out, be burned and the potash added to the soil as a valuable resource.

Treat your compost bin as a strict vegetarian and keep meat and fish waste out of it. It does rot perfectly well, but it also attracts rats, which you don't want. On the rare occasion I have some animal waste to dispose of, such as the rind off a chop, I cut it into small bits and keep it in the fridge until I'm next up there, and then put it on the birdtable.

The allotment birdtable is where I put soil-dwelling grubs and snails which I uncover, birdies usually nab them in minutes. I like to keep their interest in the table by having stuff up there like the chop rind etc.

HTH.

whiteguineapig

gosh you do get up early gq

GoingToDoIt

Some early bird kondoing here, the place is a mess!
Re-arranged underwear drawer due to change in season, needed to bring footsies forwards and thick socks backwards. I have a cereal box on standby to be used as a divider but will do that at the weekend. I have a few books ready to exit, tube stations now seem to have a "help yourself" book table so I will dump, er donate those today. Hope everyone is as well as can be
Gonna x

GreyQueen

whiteguineapig wrote: »

gosh you do get up early gq

I wake early and get too bored to stay in bed!

The downside is that I am normally tucked up by 10 pm, 10.30 pm is a very late night by my standards, lol.:rotfl:

Siebrie

DD2 tried on all the clothes I took down from the attic, and about half are back up there for being too small, too large, not nice (donation/rag). I'm still looking for my two sets of flipflops

One pair of dd's pants in the ragbag; it really helps to focus on one or two pairs to wear out.

A fortnight ago I bought a set of new-to-me display vases/plant pots, huge silver coloured earthenware pots. I thought they would look good in our front window sill, but they are too dark; the silver seems to take the light, rather than reflect it, so they will go on some internet auction site (or be donated to the school for some raffle; I only paid €4 (GBP3.50) for the pair).