KonMari 2018 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

greent

DS1 has decided to take an alternative (but related) degree course so will not be re-sitting 2 maths papers next Summer (was 3-4 marks off a needed A grade) - so I am expecting lots of paper recycling this week! Already started by recycling a text book (battered and damp damaged) this morning.

lessonlearned

Grunnie.....I think that's a great decision. The money you save by not moving can be put to good use making yourselves comfortable so you can age in situ.

I move tomorrow. :rotfl: to a chalet bungalow. I am looking forward to making it nice and cosy and somewhere I can future proof to meet my changing needs as I get older.

I am surrounded by boxes, I have kondoed as best as I can before the move but I suspect there's still a lot more to go at the other end.

Wish me luck......:rotfl:

GreyQueen

:beer: Good luck with your move tomorrow!


It's early but I'm a bit shell-shocked as went swimming between 06.00-07.00 and am now back in the flat. Several chores need doing including the vacuuming and some shredding (or, the shredding and some vacuuming) but it's too early - IMO - to be making noise in a block of flats. Post 10 am on a Sunday I regard as fair.


The mug has gone to the juntique shop and I will wander out in a little whiley and take the dead mobile with me as the charity shop which takes them in for recycling is sometimes open for a few hours on a Sunday and I have errands in the next street over.


Going to have a little tidying-pootling session and see if I can get rid of anything else to the chazzers whilst I'm at it.


Have a lovely Sunday, everybody. GQ xx

grunnie

Lessonlearned good luck with your move. Someone I know is just home from hospital. Needing care and now ok except for her house .Huge and with the only bathroom on a half landing and steep steps to her front door. So she needs carers in 4 times a day to walk beside her ( not allowed to walk behind her ) up the stairs and then up the rest of her stair so she can get to bed at night. Her steep steps at her front door stop her going out. Several stair lift companies have been contacted and said that there isn't enough room on the landing for a stairlift to stop and turn for the rest of the stairs. Basically she is stuck and should have listened to her friends and moved years ago. So sad.

GreyQueen

grunnie wrote: »

Lessonlearned good luck with your move. Someone I know is just home from hospital. Needing care and now ok except for her house .Huge and with the only bathroom on a half landing and steep steps to her front door. So she needs carers in 4 times a day to walk beside her ( not allowed to walk behind her ) up the stairs and then up the rest of her stair so she can get to bed at night. Her steep steps at her front door stop her going out. Several stair lift companies have been contacted and said that there isn't enough room on the landing for a stairlift to stop and turn for the rest of the stairs. Basically she is stuck and should have listened to her friends and moved years ago. So sad.

We have this a lot with our council housing stock; not all staircases can take a stairlift and many people don't realise this until they find out the hard way. The time to do your downsizing is well before you have to.


I used to be pally with an occupational therapist and she told me she'd accidentally upset her own aging parents by giving them some professional advice. They, like most of us as we get older, were struggling to get up out of the bath tub and thought to have an over-tub shower. She told them what inevitably happens with this is that within a few years the movement of lifting one's knees high enough to step in and out of the tub becomes impossible so it's best to go straight to a walk-in shower.


Based on the amount of repairs I book on the dadblasted things, I'd be very wary of wet-rooms; the drainage pumps are prone to malfunctioning and the flooring costs an arm and leg.

grunnie

She's right. I can't bend my left knee enough to get into a bath which is a blinkin' nuisance when I am at a hotel. Once was offered a disabled room !! Yes that is what was said but felt and still feel I was keeping someone more needy than me out of a holiday. Am never more than a few days away at a time and just made do with an allover wash. Grew up in the 50s when Friday night was bath night and water was heated in a boiler with a lit fire underneath to heat the water.
Starting this week to decorate my lounge so my huge display unit will be emptied. It has been KM once or twice but hasn't been moved this century so may have a cobweb or six behind it. One girl's treasure may be on to the chaser for someone else to treasure.

Karmacat

grunnie wrote: »

Someone I know is just home from hospital. Needing care and now ok except for her house .Huge and with the only bathroom on a half landing and steep steps to her front door. So she needs carers in 4 times a day to walk beside her ( not allowed to walk behind her ) up the stairs and then up the rest of her stair so she can get to bed at night. Her steep steps at her front door stop her going out. Several stair lift companies have been contacted and said that there isn't enough room on the landing for a stairlift to stop and turn for the rest of the stairs. Basically she is stuck and should have listened to her friends and moved years ago. So sad.

Wow. I did *not* know that. I've been thinking of doing something big to the kitchen ... I'm going to wait and talk to some stairlift companies. My stairs are steep and narrow, and turn 90 degrees at the top, and if they won't take a stairlift, I have severe doubts about staying Oh drat. Big time. But thank you for bringing the issue in, grunnie!

lessonlearned

Just grabbing a quick coffee before I finish the final bits of packing.

My current house is lovely, but as a grand old Victorian terrace it too has steep steps to the front door, a narrow very steep staircase, a half landing and steps in the rear garden, fine for now but it won't suit me in later years.

I'm 67. It's time to forward plan. My late husband became a wheelchair user, it was a real eye opener.

I too begged my Late parents to move whilst they could, they were furious with me and just wouldn't listen. After my mums stroke they couldn't cope. Dad did his best but he was around 87 and hadn't a hope of being able to look after her. She ended up in care. They were heartbroken.

If they had listened and moved to somewhere more appropriate to their needs we might have been able to avoid the care home route.

I know it's not a pleasant subject but aging comes to us all (if we are lucky) and it's best to be prepared. That's why I'm doing it now.

lessonlearned

Karmacat wrote: »

Wow. I did *not* know that. I've been thinking of doing something big to the kitchen ... I'm going to wait and talk to some stairlift companies. My stairs are steep and narrow, and turn 90 degrees at the top, and if they won't take a stairlift, I have severe doubts about staying Oh drat. Big time. But thank you for bringing the issue in, grunnie!

Actually there are some great domestic lifts on the market now, that might be an option. Certainly cheaper than moving.

If you really don't want to move and it's only the stairs that are an issue then It might be worth investigating that route. It wouldn't work for me because I would still have a steep flight of steps to the front door.

GreyQueen

I am so thankful that my parents spent a few thousand in the 1990s having a single story extension which includes a shower room and WC, built on the back of their little terraced house.


The room has the potential to take a double-bed and be a lovely en suite bedroom and, with Mum having Parkinson's and both my parents already in their mid-seventies, is likely to be needed eventually.


House is very cluttered but me and Kid Bruv are big enough and stubborn enough to shift the furniture around when necessary. I am so glad that they are not living in a home with the only WC and bathroom upstairs and won't be forced to move for accessibility - it would be perfectly possible to live entirely on the ground floor.


:j Have just re-organised the shallow drawer at the bottom of my sewing cabinet (this is actually a CD/DVD cabinet) to take the screwdrivers and pliers which were living in a tool roll in the tool bag under the bed and were awkward to access. They're the most commonly needed tools, it makes sense for me to have them very accessible and I have decluttered/ rehomed the items of sewing equipment which formerly lived there.


Now going to rustle up some luncheon then off to the lottie for a few hours' pleasurable graft.