Make do, Mend and Minimise in 2018

Sayschezza

Silvasave if the missing tab is the only thing preventing you from being able to move the zip, see if you can replace it with a key ring to give leverage. Usually works.

Mrs_Salad_Dodger

Paper CLIPS work as well !

YorksLass

Mrs_Salad_Dodger wrote: »

Paper CLIPS work as well !

So glad you amended that typo - I was really struggling trying to work out how paper lips would work! Gave me a good old chuckle though! :rotfl:

janb5

silvasava wrote: »

Nice pile of MMM's slowly building up!
Need to make do and minimise the food stocks in the fridge
The zip on my fleece has broken - it's only the tab hat you pull the zip up with but the zip is halfway up and won't move back down so I'll have to replace the whole zip. Got a few other mending jobs too.
Dining room skirting has been replaced now so needs repainting & then I've got to think how, where & what furniture to put in there as it's been knocked through to the kitchen/breakfast room. I'll take it slowly though

Try WD40 to lubricate it?

RainbowHippie

Good evening and hope you have all had a lovely christmas time
Well, all the decorating has gone on hold this week as we were/will be hosting our usual christmas eve and new years eve gatherings for friends and family. A couple of very short-notice site visits for work, both a good few hours away, and my own unwillingness to buy christmas presents when i could make them :rotfl: also meant there was very little time for anything house-related in the run-up to christmas!
However, i have managed to minimise a considerable amount of my fabric stash into gifts for little ones - fur fabric hoods, little toy animals and two massive bean bags made from old jeans (which also took care of one of our giant bean bags that's been getting in the way!). Hunting for materials made me really think about the kinds of fabric i tend to use, and this week, in between work i've been on a bit of a roll putting together bundles of fabric for sale on eb*y, all stuff i've hoarded and is nice enough but i am unlikely to ever use. Also got distracted and remade a long dress i came across and will wear it at new years.... not really what i was meant to be doing but it's not in my stash any more so i'm counting it as a win :rotfl:

We've also taken the opportunity of seeing friends and family to suggest they let us know if there's anything of ours that might be of use to them - so SIL is having a tall mirror and some wire fruit and veg baskets, and one of our friends will look after our bread maker while we're travelling, as she's always wanted to try one but didn;t want to but one to find out, and if not we'll have it back when we have a permanent home again. Hopefully we will have more requests over the next few weeks so more of our stuff can find temporary or permanent homes with friends/family.

I also finally went through my makeup and chucked some out, discovered a lot of what was in the drawer was nail varnish which i never wear any more so asked around and a friend has said she'd like it all! So i will drop that off at the weekend along with a belated christmas pressie for her and her partner. The 3 lipsticks, 10 or so eyeliners/eyeshadows and 2 nail varnishes i decided to keep now fit in a little bag, much better than a very full drawer!

This week i'm hoping to finish sorting the rest of my fabric stash into 'keep' and 'eb*y', list what i decide to sell, and get rid of a large chair (sold via eb*y, being collected tomorrow hopefully). Once the chair is gone then we can rearrange furniture in the conservatory. We'll also need to rearrange various furniture upstairs ready for NYE as lots of our guests will be bringing their children (we turn our bedroom into a cinema for them with disney films projected onto the wall) and a couple of families are staying over so i'll need to shunt things around to make floor space for extra beds etc. Hopefully over the weekend a large tv and some exercise equipment will be leaving for OH's dad's, which should make everywhere a bit more child safe!

In the new year i'm hoping to get OH to go through his clothes and help me go through mine (i have so many 'maybe' things and i'm hoping his opinion might help me decide whether to keep them or not!) and maybe break down another of our giant bean bags into smaller ones either for us or friends' kids. We have three for some unknown reason (ok, because they are awesome and i love them ) and one really is enough! But all our friends' kids love launching themselves into them, so maybe making them some half-size ones (still easily big enough for an adult seat or a child landing-pad) would be a good use of the beans and more of my fabric stash.

Does anyone else ever wonder how on earth they managed to accumulate so much stuff??!! It feels like i could sell or give things away as a full time job for months and still have loads left. Still, even though it feels like slow going i know the stuff-mountain is gradually reducing....
Happy new year and happy MMMing to you all xx

house_elf

Good Morning

Yesterday

Make do DH has repurposed the pantry shelf in the dining room. He moved the pictures, and I have moved files to the office. It looks much more like a dining room :rotfl:

Mend DH has moved the buttons on his Pea Coat so it fits a bit better.

Minimise I have put the Christmas cups back into storage. They are pretty Cath Kidstone mugs, but take up a lot of room in the cupboard.

Today is going to be tricky as we are out all day and have people coming to eat tonight. How will I fit in A bit of MMMing ? :rotfl:

house_elf

Good morning,

Make do Meals of left overs, timbers removed during the building of the extension have been used on the fire, and we finished off the HM Advocaat.

Mend Made one of DD old tee shirts into a shopping bag and I have started to re-make a dress, bought on EBay, into a craft apron. The material was too thin to wear as a dress, and not worth the postage to return, so hopefully it will still be useful when I have finished.

Minimise I have put a few things on EBay. I have had a bit of a break, as too many people asking for refunds. I was sure I was on a list somewhere for being an easy target. It takes the fun out of it. :rotfl:

Have a lovely last day of the year

silvasava

Made do with leftovers from the fridge last night for tea. Edible but rather bland ! Today I'll be taking down some more decorations and if it stays dry and I have the inclination I'll sweep the front drive and back patio - the birds pick chunks of moss off the roof looking for grubs and it can end up being trodden into the house. Need to try a paperclip or keyring on my zip too!
Off out to a New Year party tonight so wishing all you lovely MMMers a happy and healthy 2019 and keep on MMMing!

Wraithlady

Not done much on the MMM front what with Xmas and visitors, but slowly reducing the leftovers - only have a bit of cheese, 2 bags of frozen cooked turkey and some Xmas cake left.

On the Minimise front, bought a Really Useful box (long and thin one which fits neatly against the spare room wall) for fabric, into which I'm organising the piles of bags in the bedroom into something which i can at least see what I've got. I've found a few old t-shirts (now in the CS bag) and quite a few items to be mended, altered or mined for fabric as well as fabric and stray balls of wool.

I've also signed up for the 'Reduce Your Stash' challenge in the hope it gives me impetus to do something with the stuff!

At the very least, I will get the corner of my bedroom back!

misstara

Happy New Year everyone . I've put up a new thread for 2019, unfortunately can't post a link as I'm on my tablet.