2023 DECLUTTERING CAMPAIGN Mrs SD

Siebrie

Moorviews said:

I really need to clear and clean out the cupboard under the sink in the shower room as I recently spotted it was very grim! I use the bathroom myself so I hadn’t registered what has accumulated in that cupboard. I also have my eye on the cupboard under the sink in the utility room. These are obviously all distractions from tackling the desk!

They are not distractions; you are just training for the desk!

The content of the blanket chest is now airing. Dd2 has revitalised the cedar wood blocks I keep in the blanket chest.

Liverpool_Anne

Hi all, thank you for all the birthday wishes and happy birthday to Flamingo  , I hope you have a lovely day.
I did manage 2 LDFPA yesterday as the sun was out. I spent ages texting thank yous to various messages etc and have dealt with presents put away and packaging either put away, in the recycling or bin as appropriate. The heavy parcel from the friend turned out to be a food parcel, most of which I can eat, some olives with chilli have been offered to OH and are being contemplated, otherwise they will be off to the foodbank. I have also booked covid boosters for myself and OH.
I am feeling recovered today after a good sleep and have dragged a box out of the rod to go through. It looks to be paperwork so I am hopeful it will be mostly empty later but I will let you know

@Vulpix, hugs, as you say families can be difficult .

Hugs to everyone who would like one. Right off to tackle the box
1318 + 1319 LDFPA
1320 covid booster booked
Take care everyone
1320/2023

flamingo747

Thanks Liverpool_Anne. We have covid boosters on Tues, so I will count +2 for having booked them

Mrs_Salad_Dodger

1. Write a daily To Do list - only 3 tasks to include MMiM - do this before I go to bed

2. Commence ‘Operation Frog Tickling’ I have an acronym - I.R.I.S. being Identify, Research, Implement, Sign Off 

3. Implement a new sleep/wake up regime - start going to bed earlier (target before 2:00 a.m.) get up earlier (target by 9:00 a.m.)

4. Deal with ‘Urgent’ daily mail immediately & the rest at the weekend

5. Don’t put it down, put it away

6. If I spot a mini task deal with it immediately e.g. refill olive oil pourer or salt cellar, stitch up a hole in a garment etc

7. Continue to keep kitchen clean & tidy - before going to bed

Saturday is a rather overcast day - at just before noon when I dragged myself out of bed 😉 DSis has been up awhile & there are signs of movement upstairs. DH was up until about 06:00 watching MotoGP qualifying (being held in Japan) The recycling wheelie bin has still not been emptied & there are now 2 full bags of recycling to pick up as well 😔 

2070 - 2071 Office recycling + medium sized cardboard box filled with recycling from DSis’s bedroom

First things first, Happy Birthday flamingo747 🎉 🎂 💐 

GrannyKate, pleased to hear that DGS4 is finally on the mend & that you have managed to catch up on some of your lost sleep 😊 Good luck with today’s plans of dealing with frogs & cleaning 🍀 Perhaps a short nap this afternoon so that your ‘little grey cells’ (to quote Poirot 😉) will be fully recharged for your quiz tonight 😊 Sorry to hear about the hike in water prices 😔 The cynical part of me thinks that the water companies are recouping some of the monies that they have been fined 🙊 

Breaking off from cheerleading to say that there has just been a delivery of a beautiful bouquet of flowers 💐 + a box of Belgian chocolates. Compliments of DH as we have been married 31 years today 😊 It cannot have been too bad as DH has just asked for another 31 years 😉 

flamingo747, even an acknowledgment of the invisible people would be a start 😉 Although it might be that everyone else is shy ☺️ 

Moorviews such lovely support for vulpix 😊 Great work decluttering the garden 👏 I hope you enjoy your sewing project - it will be like having a whole new wardrobe of clothes without the expense 😉 I won’t be telling you off or even wagging a finger at you 😅 I do believe you have to be in exactly the right frame of mind to tackle decluttering a desk 🙂 Anyway, I think that falls into the category of Slow Decluttering 😉

Lovely supportive post 2Scratters 😊 & what a wonderful description “numpty brother” 😂  Just thinking, perhaps vulpix should do a paper exercise costing out her time spent decluttering & cleaning her mum’s house + similar costings for all other family members who assist 😅 yes I am hanging my head in shame. 

As you say vulpix, family can be an absolute minefield 😔 Thank you for sharing your history 👏 It is perfectly understandable that you are very wary of interactions with your brother but also rather sad that he doesn’t appear to have grown as a person in the last 30 years 😞 Wishing you very productive decluttering in October when your kids are there to help - perhaps some before & after photos will ‘help’ your brother & mum ‘understand’ the amount of time & effort you have invested 🤞 Good luck 🍀

Lovely post Floss 😊 I can see that several of us are of the same mind about billing the estate for house clearance although I imagine it might cause another major rift between vulpix & her brother 😔 

GrannyKate, lovely siblings 😊 The whole process is quite different in France - three children = a third each 😉 no ifs, ands or buts 😉 Excellent decluttering of frogs 👏 It also sounds like you had a lovely time at the MacMillan coffee morning 😊 Congratulations on your wins 🥳 I see plenty of vigorous wood polishing in your future rewarded by savouring your chocolate biscuits 😂

Brilliant Siebrie 🤩 “They are not distractions; you are just training for the desk!”  I do love the smell of cedar - so fresh 🙂

Liverpool_Anne, sounds like you had a lovely but busy birthday 😊 Yippee 🥳 to the contents of the parcel from your friend being consumables rather than another warthog 😂 Good luck with the box of paperwork from the rod 🍀

I was mistaken about sounds of movement upstairs as DH is still in bed 😬 DSis is currently making her signature coconut chocolate cake as an anniversary gift for DH & me 😊 & I will be putting my flowers in a vase once there is worktop space in the kitchen 🙂 

Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their Saturday 😊

MrsSD (a superwoman) 😇 🎖💐🤩🏅🦸🏅💐🏆 💐🍰🍾🌟⭐️🌟 💐🏅💐🏅💐💐💐🏅💐 ⭐️ ❤️🏅🍾🏅 📣🦸‍♀️💐 ⭐️ 🏅 💐 (✨✨ aka platinum stars) 😇 🏅 💐💐 💐 ⭐️ 🏅 

DH Awards: 🥇🏅⭐️💐,  perseverance medal 🎖️, 🥇 🏅🏅 😇

Decluttering Target 2023: 2071/2023

1p Savings Challenge Running Total: £469.00

~FlowerPot~

ooh congratulations MrsSD on your wedding anniersary, 31 years is good going!! enjoy your flowers anf chocs

Vulpix ~ you have done well to detach yourself from your brothers antics, I hope you can can this time round! Sending hugs, beacuse its jolly hard when family are difficult, if it was a friend you could just walk away, but its a bit more difficult with family

HAppY bIrtHdAy!! Flamingo ~ hope you are haivng a good one and some cake!!

Well all my plans to clean yesterday failed and fell completetly by the wayside. When we arrived at the home ed session DD was feeling off and headachey and she panics she might be ill (shes has a phobia of being sick!) so I had to stay in the lession with her and then in the car, so nothing got done and by the time I got home at 3 by face was aching and that was that!!!

But DH has been a darling and we have spent the morning cleaning the lounge together. Quite deep clean, moving furniture and cleaning the sofa. We have also made the table smaller as DS1 has gone to uni and it just makes more space to walk through into the kitchen.

So some cleaning has been done yippee, Im going to look for positives!

Did have some sudden news yesterday, the GP rang DS2 about his blood tests ~ becuase hes been very tired and its come back coeliac !!! quite shock and a big change for him, I didnt even know they were testing for that! But being positive, it should make him feel so much better and have a lot more energy.

Its lovelt and sunny so the laundry is being decluttered and is gently flapping on the line, I do love line dried washing (mostly because we have no tumble drier!!!)

Enjoy the rest of your day

Flowers x

ooh and if anyone has any good coeliac hacks/ cooking ideas / products thats are good please do send them my way I am a bit flummoxed by it !!

vulpix

Flamingo, you were included in my unclear birthday greetings the other day. Xx

 for clarification my Mum lives with my brother and his adult son. She doesn’t need care as such, she is anxious after dislocating her hip last year. 

 I don’t want to make waves as DB works from home and I don’t want to have awkwardness when I visit my Mum. Once my Mum is gone DB and I won’t stay in touch. I think the age gap was too much for us to be close. I left home when he was six so he didn’t really remember me being part of the family. 

 I am feeling overwhelmed with everything today. 

 Vx 

Floss

~FlowerPot~ said:

ooh and if anyone has any good coeliac hacks/ cooking ideas / products thats are good please do send them my way I am a bit flummoxed by it !!

My elder son is coeliac, and I have an ex-sis-in-law who is gluten & wheat intolerant - I have always found Asda GF flours give much nicer results than any others, and I just swap them in where required. I even used them for DS2s wedding cake & you couldn't tell any difference. Cornflour is naturally GF so can be used to thicken sauces & gravy.

Florenceem

Flamingo - Happy Birthday.
I took ages to get off to sleep and had an unsettled night. Alarm at 5.45 and up at 6. I got to SA at 7 and we got home at 3 - very tired - we raised £599.74.
We are going to SA tonight to take in the M & S food delivery.

dND

Hello again everyone, Congratulations, commiserations and lots of Happy Birthday wishes to those who want/need them. 💕

Lots of lurking has been done but I finally have some positive news - I've agreed to buy a house! Building survey and recommended structural survey have been done and finally reported to me.  Yes, there some problems but it doesn’t look like the house is going to imminently collapse.🤞🤞  As always in these things I’ve had to compromise but I think that this is a good compromise even if I’m going to be spending at least the next decade renovating.  As my children say, it will keep me from getting bored.🤣

Again stuff has been coming in rather than going out even though I’m limited as to what I can fit into my Ds and Ddil’s house where I’m living at the moment but I’m not duplicating what I have in storage somewhere in the middle of England, (removal company is storing my stuff).  I got rid of a lot of old electrical items before I came back as I made the conscious decision not to buy any replacements in France.  Mainly because I wanted a UK guarantee – it would be a long drive to take items back to complain – and I wanted a UK plug/charger, again any guarantee would be null and void if I cut off the plug and put a UK one on.

So this last month I’ve bought a new printer and a large slow cooker.  Thanks to MME I used cashback and introductory vouchers so outgoing cash was minimised.

Tomorrow I’m hoping to get a new pressure cooker from Lidl.

Apart from that the only decluttering is a few old used envelopes and rather a lot of money on cattery and storage fees.  But hopefully I will be able to collect the cats before too long; I’m now waiting for searches etc., to be done and then there’s the small matter of paying for the house which will be a rather larger decluttering of cash.

I should put my hand up to various store cupboard items coming in.  Where the offers are too good, I can’t resist so, a large bag of dried chickpeas and one of wholewheat pasta and a tin of food grade bicarb arrived today after a quick trip to Te$co to get sandwich fillers for my Ds and Ddil plus some mixed peel and a jar of mincemeat from L!dl in the hope I will have all my stuff out of storage in time to make a cake and mince pies for Christmas.

Then it will be Round Two, decluttering all the junk I know I packed up and brought back because I couldn’t deal with it all in one go in France. 😱😱😱

Cat alert! 

My two who I think look like they feel abandoned. Jewel at the front was 14 in August and Gino was 1. 😿😿

weenancyinAmerica

Happy Anniversary Mrs. S_D.
Still trying to declutter the living room so the sofa can be moved out. The city trash services is picking it up on Tuesday so it has to be out by Monday evening. This is thanks to roommate's cat. Fortunately for cat, the sofa was an old one that had been given to us by my sister. It already had problems and was being held up by cushions under the cushions. Lots of bags of trash going out too, including broken lids for containers. Why the lids were floating around, I don't know - they belong to roommate Di. She may have to buy more boxes for things as she will be missing many lids. Only problem is still trying to get over Covid at same time. But I keep doing cleaning in 15 minute spurts. We are also expecting rain for the next two days and my joints don't react well to weather changes. Then the temperature is to go back up by the end of the week to the 90sF (expecting about 30C here by Saturday!) Things are really confused but the tree in front of our house knew exactly when fall started. I am amazed every year that the yellow flowers appeared on it on the first day of fall - I can count on it. Of course, they fall all over for the next few weeks so everything outside is covered in yellow blossoms, to be followed by red seed pods, then seeds piling up everywhere and tiny trees trying to come up in the planters. Wish I could find a use for all of the seeds. 

Hope you get through the strikes and the weather okay. I have been in Britain twice when there have been train strikes. Makes it difficult for tourists so I can imagine how disruptive things can be for those going to work.