KonMari 2018 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Karmacat

Greent, is it all down to you and your mum, do you have any cousins/ aunts and uncles who could help?


Emptying my kitchen has shown me some interesting things - I have half a dozen empty Bonne Maman pots, stashed here and there all over the place, which I was originally saving for my brother, but since I helped him move house at the end of last year, I know exactly how many kilner jars he has (answer = a lot!) so I'll keep them by to use them myself. My kitchen is going to be amazing!

greent

Ooooh - BM jars, Kc - always useful - and look lovely - am loving your enthusiasm for your new kitchen xx

Re my nan - my mum is one of 5 remaining siblings. All bar one live in the county and the one who doesn't is only about 70 mins away (but has only been to see his parent once in the home, I believe) My mum is the eldest and I've always been treated as child number 7, rather than grandchild no 1 (I'm the eldest gc) and things have often been left for me to deal with. Child number 2 lives next closest and visits my nan in the home 2/3 x/ week. My nan's house has to be checked upon min once/ week for insurance purposes, as it's empty. My mum and I live the closest (although I have more to do in general with pt work and the kids and OH working away, whilst my mum is retired) so it makes sense for us to do it. Plus it's the home where my mum and her siblings all grew up in (moved in when my mum was 2) and she clearly struggles with some emotional attachments, understandably. My mum's youngest sister (child no 5 of 6) also visits nan a lot. The remaining 2 brothers are a bit rubbish, tbh - but neither have ever visited her that much and the youngest is struggling with rather bad depression, from what I can make out and has all sorts of issues. Whilst I did live at my Nan's house for a while when I was little and went there every day after school/ in the holidays and was extremely close to my Grandad, I don't have the same attachments to it all and can get in and just deal with it - which means my mum will get in and deal with it with me jollying her along. As to my cousins (6 on that side) - none of them (bar the youngest who lives in London) ever visited my nan when she lived alone, so they're not going to start doing anything now TBH, it's much easier taking control and giving a couple of people tasks to do, rather than when I was saying from a more remote angle what needs to be done and it wasn't happening - it's getting sorted now (and not for the £2k fee wanted by her solicitor to fill in all the forms) which is the important thing to do for my Nan to ensure there's easy access to money going forward for the home fees and (ultimately) less stuff to sort out when she dies. I'm not an executor in her will but you can bet your life that the 2 people who are will hand it over to me...… I've dealt with several probates for not just family but family of married-into-family now, as well as friends coming to me for help. I'm seen as the 'sensible' and organised one.
xx

Karmacat

Hi greent, thank you for that lovely reply. I can see why it falls to you and your mum, absolutely, and I'm quite certain that you're the sensible one - your time management skills are the best I've ever seen, even on here!

I never had to do anything for grandparents/ step-grandmother, as one set lived with my mum and dad, and of the other set, grandad died when I was only 15, and grandmother moved into sheltered housing when I was about 25, eventually living a mile from my mum and her sister in a nursing home. Walking distance for them in those days! The places that she left were council, so nothing there about selling, just *very* quick declutters. And I'm one of the oldest cousins (there are 13 of us, though some were born abroad) so no other cousins ever got involved either, though some of the local ones nabbed a few mementoes.

Me and my brother and sister, of course, have been working on my mum's house the last few years, that's been my only experience of all this. And although we sold it 5 months ago now, there's a slight issue going on with some Ercol chairs that were painted :rotfl: I don't dare laugh about it IRL, I just find it very unimportant.


For my own kitchen - yep, its going to be great! The important thing is doing it slowly so as not to make myself ill with stress, I really, really hate having workmen in the house, it freaks me, sigh .... it won't be long, and then it will be beautiful.


Have a good day today.

wort

I have kondoed a double and single wardrobe! My dd2 has moved and the new place didn't have fitted wardrobes, so she's got the ones she bought when living at home which were in the spare room. I've contemplated getting rid of some wardrobes! After dh died , but knew there was no carpet underneath so it put me off. This means I have done s good deed and got rid of clutter:rotfl:
I patched the carpet with carpet from box room that was patched anyway! I will look at a piece of vinyl for in there as it's very small, it only has wardrobes in as I use as a dressing room.
The spare room has been painted and a dresser has been put were the donated wardrobes were.:T
Keep on kondoing :j

Siebrie

Out: 4 books to the village's free little library. In and out: 1 book from same, which was read and put in paper recycling (it was a nice book to read, but rather grubby).

I have had my second afternoon of the outplacement course, all about resumes. Though very informative and fun, it was also stressful to think about working again. Have decided with husband to wait until September to apply anywhere.

An indication of how stressed I was, and how that kept me from lifting up my head and looking around me: I have been home for five months now, and only last week realised that I could actually go sightseeing! Belgium has so many lovely villages, cities, parks, musea, which I never had time to visit (husband does not see the point, so that's like pulling a dead horse; once we've been and are on our way back, he will call all his friends and gloat... . I don't always have energy for that).

Siebrie

A couple of weeks ago, Mum mentioned that she was looking into repairing the two curtains they have at both ends of the hallway for draftstopping use. They have had those curtains there for about 20 years, and they were first used in the dining room for about twenty years, too. The pattern is tumbled autumn leaves, so all rather brown and orange, a bit dark. As it happened, I had just refound three off-white with embroidery curtains in my attic. One was eaten by mice and thrown into the ragbag, one was still fine, and one had a small nibble hole. The last two went to my parents'; they are already hanging, they light up the dark hallway, and my parents receive many compliments on them

Slinky

Finally got around to taking 2 donation bags and half a bag of rags recycling to the charity shop this morning.


Tidying is continuing, we're aiming put our house up for sale in the next couple of weeks. We've stained the inside of our back fence. OH did the trellis on the top, took him a couple of afternoons, I couldn't believe it only took me 1.5 hours this afternoon to stain nine 6ft by 6ft panels. We did the outside last Autumn but were waiting for some of our garden plants to die back before doing the inside. The stain had come through the panels quite well so a quick topup was all that was required.

Igamogam

Four large bin bags to charity shop plus 2 small carrier bags. Net flow out.............still plenty to go!

Karmacat

Complete fail from a charity shop who say they collect furniture. Booked an "appointment" yesterday (some time during the day, our driver will call 30 minutes beforehand) ... they never showed, called at 6.45pm to reschedule for the next day. No, I said, now or never. So its never, not for them, anyway.


Luckily, my sister is back in the country and she's taking all the boxes (can't fit the furniture in her car) when we pop out for a walk locally, we'll get them to a charity shop first. Going to use free-on-gumtree for the furniture.

Pooky

Karma - we have lots of free local groups on Facebook so could be worth joining one of those, I tend to find stuff goes within the hour (mainly as I say must be collected today). If you're not a FB user then you can create an account with an anonymous profile.