Cheery's path to fulfilment - finishing the DIY, looking after myself, appreciating the garden 🌻

Cheery_Daff

Thank you all! 

We've only got a tiny freezer La Plan - it's full of batch cooking and frozen fruits 😂 But yes, we could do with freezing a couple of pints. Almond milk was actually a good solution in the circumstances - we've often got a good stock in, it lasts for ages, and doesn't need to be in the freezer. Very unusual to not be able to get out for so long! 

Didn't check the chicken run for tubs today, got sidetracked by Mr C attempting to sort out the medication 😮 Another area ripe for a sort out. We had about 15 packets of cold & flu tablets with just 2 used - clearly we don't have a place to put these things, so each time we're ill we just buy a new one 🙄 Not sure what the solution is yet. I think we could open a chemist at this point! 

A charity shop success today! 😃 remember we moved the sofa bed into the living room? We now don't have a double in a spare room, so we've been on the look out for a day bed with a trundle underneath. Seen a few on marketplace, but too far to collect, or won't fit in the car, and new they were about £300 without mattresses 🙄

Anyway, today spotted one in a charity shop, £95, plus £40 delivery. Includes both mattresses. A bit like this:



Obviously the second bed folds up and stores under the first, so mostly it'll look like a sofa in the back of my work Teams meetings (it's going in the study), and I can indulge my sewing and fabric collecting habits by making lots of cushions for it 😂 They're delivering it a week on Monday - I delayed it as long as possible so the snow would be gone.

Now need to decide what to do with the chaise lounge that's currently in there... It'll either be in our bedroom, or off to the charity shop itself. 

Pleased with that, ticks of another thing on the 'sorting out the house' list 😊 Also gives us a decent amount of guest accommodation:

Single in the craft room
Double/two singles in the study
Double (small) sofa bed in the living room

I'll want to look for quite a firm mattress topper to go on it, I think, to pull the two bits together properly.

VintageHistorian

We've got a first aid bag which we keep all our various medicines etc in. We bought it off Amazon, search for "empty first aid bag" and you get a lot of choice.

We got one that was a small bag and a larger one, both in grey with a reflective strip. The small one is now in my car with plasters etc for the toddler, but the big one has paracetemol, ibuprofen, Lemsips, as well as plasters. It's amazing what you can fit in it with a bit of Tetris skills.

Cheery_Daff

Thanks VintageHistorian, a good idea! Will investigate. I think we're leaning more towards a cupboard, but with the amount of prescription medication we now have between us it might have to be a wardrobe!

Nice evening tonight Went to the theatre to see a neighbour's daughter in a musical show, very jolly. Realised quite quickly why we said we'd go tomorrow instead of today originally - they're doubling up on parts and while she was in it today, she has a speaking (and singing!) part tomorrow. Oops. Never mind - Mr C is going to be away tomorrow afternoon so we both would have missed it if we hadn't gone tonight. 

Baileys_Babe

Where we keep medications:
In our kitchen we have a plastic box with a lid which we keep an the current box of paracetamol, ibuprofen, cold and flu tablets, cough mixture, lozenges, thermometer gun/zapper.
My daily medication along with Vitamin D spray and antihistamine for everyone which we take daily are in a small tray next to the above box.
In our bedroom we have a zipped bag (quick to pack when we go away) with antiseptic throat spray, vapour rub, deep heat...
We keep stores of OTC medication in a drawer on the landing.
In my bedside drawer I also keep a box of paracetamol and one of ibuprofen - if I'm ill enough to need it in the night I'm not well enough to walk downstairs to get some.
Prescription medication -
Mine and OH stores are under the bed in a drawer
OH's currently open boxes are in his bedside drawer so everything is to hand to stock up for the next day.
Eldest child (adult) keeps their prescription medication in their bedtime.

OH's tanks of oxygen are also mainly in the bedroom.

When written down in sounds like we have medicines everywhere 😆 but it's not really the case, this system (if you can call it that) stops us having lots of partially used packets and things going out of date.

Bluegreen143

We just have a small drawer (one of the ikea kallax units in the living room has sets of two drawers in some of the cubes so one of those). 

Sounds like we have way less medication than others though (nobody in our family is on prescription meds and it’s really just painkillers, antiseptic wipes and plasters in there!) so this size of storage wouldn’t work for everyone, but if we did have more medication I’d probably use two drawers instead of one so still a similar system. I like a shallow drawer rather than shoving it in a cupboard as it’s a bit easier to keep it semi organised and the drawer is below eye height so when you pull it out you can see everything at a glance. We do have extra plasters etc in a first aid kit in the car too. 

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, thank you for your detailed descriptions!! Please do keep them coming! @Baileys_Babe your house sounds like ours but more organised 😂😂 

We do have a bit of a system for some things. Well, I do! My prescription medicine is all in the bathroom, open in the top drawer, and remainder elsewhere - all taken 1st thing or last thing, so handy to have where I'm getting dressed or undressed. 

Everything else is all over the place. Mr C's prescriptions (quite a lot at the minute) are in the music room/kitchen drawer/random other places. I did make a bit for organisation a while back by putting stuff like bite cream, antihistamines, deep heat etc in a box in the offshot (utility room) - but as stuff got used it's slowly migrated back to under the bathroom sink. I also created plastic tubs for ibuprofen, paracetamol, cold & flu etc - but again things got wildly out of hand and we've ended up with stupid amounts of open packets.

Clearly we need a 'no more buying painkillers' challenge 🙄 

KajiKita

Or you could define what you want your storage to be for them and then offload the rest at a food bank (if they take them?).

I find I can repack three strips of painkillers in one outer box if I recycle the instructions sheet - not an issue with something like ibuprofen. That saves a surprising amount of space. I also leave the box that has the half used ones with the tab untucked so it’s easy to see it and pick it up first. All the painkillers live in a small drawer in the kitchen, along with Sudafed. Everything else, stuff like deep heat, bite creams etc live on a shelf in the downstairs loo (which is a mess if I’m honest). My prescriptions live in my drawer in the bathroom vanity unit, apart from the current in use strips, which live in my toothbrush and other bits (comb, scissors etc.) bathroom tidy thingamee, so I remember to take them every morning. 

KK

beanielou

I have a bag for life with everything. 

Then I have a make up bag in the sitting room with the stuff I take at night. Then a wee bag that hooks over my bedside cabinet door for stuff for the morning. I have also just started to use a nomad for morning stuff. 

I am currently really missing the dresser in the kitchen as it used to have all my vitamins in it with OTC stuff. 

rtandon27

We have an impractically narrow cupboard in the kitchen - top shelf houses painkiller, vitamin & supplement overflows - and our surplus meds live on the top shelf of another cupboard along with seldom used serving platters - the middle shelf of the impractical cupboard holds one of each kind for easy access - these get replaced form the overflow once used - every month or so. 

We each have a pill box organizer for daily supplements & meds which I fill once on Sunday  to save brain space during the working week & lives on the bottom shelf of the impractical cupboard so we can get at it easily when having morning coffee - also easy to take with us when we travel. 

First aid type supplies live in a bottom cupboard of one of our bookshelves in the dining room.  Since moving here 3 years ago from the farm, we've reduced our stores of everything to one of each thing with no extra surplus as that was the whole point of living in a town - anything we need/want is a 5 minute walk away! 

During my 15 min flylady daily blitz, anything that gets found out of place gets returned to it's home, and if I find something constantly out of place (such as nurofen gel) - we decide if it's better off in a new home, even if temporarily!

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, I am loving these little insights into people's medicine storage, thank you!! 😃 @rtandon27 there's definitely a stockpiling mentality here 🙄😂 Mind you, I think there has been for several decades before we moved too 🙄😂

Tackling this abomination this evening 😱



😱😱😱

This is what we call the offshot - it's basically the utility room, and the main entrance to the house 😱 It's always a bit of a dumping ground, especially because the garage is an unusable mess, but with the snow, missed rubbish/recycling collections etc, it's got into an appalling state.

I've spent 45 minutes, got rid of 3 bin bags of rubbish and another one of glass bottles, repackaged the recycling, stacked some stuff back on the high shelf, and it's looking slightly more reasonable. 

Garage sorting is a job for the spring I think, but when the snow has gone we'll at least be able to move the odd bit of furniture that's ended up in here. Mr C has been clearing out the music room too - I'm not sure what's destined for garage/tip/friends so I'm leaving alone til he's here.

Can't wait til my recycling bins are here for next to the washer. It's been a massive pain since we moved here. We have a box, which is too small, and only collected once a fortnight. The box doesn't properly fit in this space, and overflows anyway. At least this way it won't all be on display.

Anyway, I don't think I'll be invited to grace the cover of Country Living magazine any time soon 🙄😂