Reverse Advent

Last year I started a new little tradition in our house ... the Reverse Advent.  

I posted about it HERE.

Instead of having a fancy pants advent calendar with doors to open that contains chocolates or gifts I would simply sort through my possessions and donate one a day each day over the twenty four days in the run up to Christmas Day to charity.

Although we have decluttered and sorted out throughout the year and sold lots of our stuff at car boot sales, I really do think that with a bit of a push and digging deep in the cupboards and on the bookshelves I can do the same again this year.

Although as you can see from the picture above, I have been treated to a very fancy pants chocolate filled advent calendar by my Lovely Hubby.

Reverse Advent - Day 1

A signed copy of a book that to be honest I didn't think was that good.  It's now residing in the charity shop, and hopefully will make someone a lovely Christmas present AND raise money for a good cause.  To be honest I don't know if I will post daily pictures of everything I donate, it does keep me on track and inspire me to sort out even more, but it seems a bit showy offy ... do you know what I mean?

Have you started any 'new to you' traditions for Christmas?

Sue xx

Still Clearing the Clutter

Once again I am dipping my toes in the world of selling on Ebay.  Yesterday I offered for sale THIS lovely Cath Kidston sewing box.  I've had it a few years, but it is in brilliant condition because it was always sat in a cupboard, so no fading.

Why am I parting with this lovely, well I am still of the mind that we have too much stuff, and I don't want to live with excess, so once again I am looking at things with fresh eyes and working out what should stay and what should go.

This sewing box is the first thing to go as I have just bought myself a dual purpose sewing /jewelery box of just the sort I have been looking to find for the last couple of years.  So with the arrival of the new mini chest of drawers I can part with this and a couple of boxes and pots that my jewelery was stored in.

This year for Christmas the immediate family decided that instead of buying each other presents, that would perhaps be not what we either wanted or needed, we would all buy ourselves something we really wanted and do a 'show and tell' instead.  So my new sewing box is my gift to myself and this little lovely can be somebody else's ... where hopefully it will be loved all over again.

(Edited to add - If you want to follow it's progress on Ebay and see what it eventually sells for, just click on the link in the first paragraph, or HERE.)

Sue xx

The KonMari Method

She's everywhere it seems, well everywhere in blogland anyway,  Marie Kondo and her brilliant book 'The Life Changing Magic of Tidying - a simple, effective way to banish clutter forever'.  It seems to be gripping our imaginations .... and for those of us that have been putting some of her ideas into practice she's changing our lives.

Take our chest of drawers for instance in the bedroom ....

... once filled with 'stacked in the normal way' clothes.

First the drawers were emptied and wiped out  one by one ....

... each item held, pondered over and then if it was staying ....

...folded into a neat rectangle ....

... then a smaller rectangle ....

... and finally into a rectangle that was the same height as the drawer.

Then replaced with the others that were in the drawer, and in this case with another six that now also fitted into the same space the others had taken up.  As you can see folding and storing in this way means that you can see at first glance where every one of your items is and get it out without having to move anything else out of the way.  So much easier. 

My neat knicker, sock and tights drawer ..... who would ever have thought I would show you this, but now it's tidy I will ;-)

Another thing that this has highlighted for me is that folding this way means that suitcases will be able to be packed so much easier, and instead of actually unpacking at a destination you could simply and very neatly live out of your suitcase all week for a holiday ... if you even need a suitcase, seeing how small things can be folded has made us both realise that perhaps for us the way forward will simply be a piece of carry on luggage if we ever fly again.

I'm currently working on my Summer clothes that have been stored in our large suitcase under the spare bed, now that things have been sorted everything I own is now fitting neatly into three of these drawers and my half of the wardrobe, so the suitcase will be filled with car boot items and sold while we are there.

To help with my tidying mission I purchased eight of these 'under the bed' storage boxes from Asda, at just £4 each they were a bargain.   I am using them as drawers on the shelves of our wardrobes, because before we had piles of 'in-use' and out of season bulky things stacked on the shelves.  It meant if we wanted something off the back stack we had to lift down the front stack, remove the things we wanted and then replace the stacks, all this for me whilst being stood on the end of the bed!!

Now the boxes slide onto the shelves like drawers and I can pull them out and lift down easily.

And I can see at a glance all the woolly jumpers and cardigans I own.

You can see from this picture where the 'drawers' will slide in on the shelves.  I was very lucky with the dimensions of the boxes .... it was as though it as meant to be!!

There's still some more sorting to do but once it's done that will be IT, no more tidying and a complete banishment of clutter.  How this fits in with my P333 I'm not sure yet, as I am simply putting all my clothes into the wardrobe for now regardless of counting what I have.

In Marie Kondo's words .... if it gives me joy it stays, if it doesn't it goes.

Oh well enough talking about it time to get back to actually doing it.

Sue xx

Tidying for the Last Time?

Photographing all our books last week brought something to my attention .....

... the messiness inside the cupboard ...

... and the mix of DVDs and books on the low bookshelves.

Even though the mess in the cupboard can be hidden behind the closed door and the DVDs were lined up relatively neatly, once I had noticed this it played on my mind.  Not just played it danced, whizzed and did a full routine on my mind, something just had to be done.

Once I decide something has to be done, it has to be done NOW!!

So after half a day of absolute chaos in the living room with the dogs taking to their beds in disgust at the upheaval, we now have  all the DVDs in the cupboard, near the tele and DVD player ... which makes much more sense ...

.... and all the books on the shelves, tidied, sorted and arranged much neater than before.

Everything was thoroughly wiped down too, so that is a little bit of Spring cleaning out of the way as well.  :-)

And now my mind is calm ... well for now, because I am about to start on the kitchen cupboards, the ones that hold my plates, bowls jugs etc.  Because while I was doing all the above tidying I did it to Marie Kondo's method,  after reading and being inspired by her book 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying- A simple effective way to banish clutter forever',  only keeping the things that gave me joy.

I love that all my books give me joy ... lets hope my bowls and plates do too ;-)

Sue xx

Too Many Tools

 

Our big shed is over run with tools and gardening tools.  We simply have too many, so yesterday I decided to hoick all the gardening tools out and have a good look at what we have.

The Brush Cutter was not amongst the deliberations ... it was just drying off after Lovely Hubby had done another mammoth nettle and weed cutting session, this time with his arms covered up!!

 

Once I had laid out all the gardening tools on the grass I could see the duplications and called LH over to point out his favourites, those tools that might not seem brilliant to me but that do the jobs he needs them to do and are comfortable to use.  Most gardeners will know exactly what I mean, some things just feel right when you use them and no matter how old or scrappy they seem they really are the tools you would turn to time and time again.

 

 

Between us we picked our favourites and yes, there are still some duplications, but they are for when both of us are digging or they have slightly different handle heights, shorter for me, longer for LH.  We also have a lot of sticks with interchangeable heads which are really useful so they were all kept.

 

The rest were then washed, rinsed and left to dry in the sun ...... half an hour later the heavens opened and we were subject to the most impressive two hour long display of thunder, lightening and torrential rain.

 

So they got a second really thorough rinsing before being taken up to the shed in a lull between showers and left to dry off before they will be sold at a car boot sale next week.

 

One more niggly job out of the way.

 

Sue xx

Painting Almost Done

 

 We've almost reached the end of the painting, it's been a long hard slog with every room needing it's ceiling doing, two coats of paint on the walls and all the woodwork gloss painted, but at last, thank goodness, the end is in sight.

 

Lovely Hubby did the first coat on the walls in the conservatory last weekend.   We didn't get around to assembling the new henhouse as I originally said we would, which hopefully will be done this weekend instead, otherwise the chickens who are coming with us next week will have nowhere to sleep, instead we decided to concentrate on the inside of our house rather than the hens!!

 

 

Telling him he looked like he was worshipping his paint tray on the first picture he decided to actually do it on this one :-)

 

It's all looking very bare and clean in the conservatory now a completely different story to how it was before,  we used it as our store for all things DIY and without a place of their own.

 

 

The kitchen however, is a different kettle of fish, the worktops keep filling up with all the bits and pieces we are using over the course of each day and it's an on-going struggle to make space to eat every now and then, but one that we do do otherwise it will all get out of hand. 

 

In the brown paper box is my surprise Christmas present from LH, delivered to the house last week, I have no idea what it is .... but it doesn't rattle at all, is quite lightweight and smells of nothing in particular ;-)

Little finishing touches are being added all around.

 



 

I'm in two minds whether to paint the little gate that stops the dogs from going upstairs or leave it 'rustic' as it matches the carpet so well.  The dogs by the way do not seem at all bothered that they have no access to the upstairs, they sneak up for a peek every now and then when the gate is left open when our arms are too full to be able to close it behind us, but finding no doggy toys up there or nothing of interest they usually come down without even being asked.

 

Our lovely new mirror has now gone up on the bedroom wall, as well as the lampshade that we have brought with us from the bungalow, it matches the bedside lamps we already have and looks just as good with the new curtains here as it did with the ones back home.   Hopefully our king sized bed will fit on this weeks trailer load so we can finally sleep in our own bedroom rather than the guest room.

 

  LH has a friend coming round tonight to help load the trailer with some of our heavier items and is hoping to phone around some of our new contacts at the other end to help with the unloading.  So I better get off the computer now and go and get some more packing and shifting done in readiness.

 

It's nice to know that we're on target for our Christmas move.

 

Sue xx

 



Inside/Outside Day ... and News

 

 

Look at the state of that, my messy bits and pieces baking drawer out there in glorious colour for you all to see, it was starting to be a bit of a struggle to get anything out!!

 

Yesterday the weather did not know what it wanted to do, brilliant sunshine for a few minutes ... just long enough to get me grabbing my trowel and gloves ... and then heavy showers that just made me run for cover.  I gave up in the end and got stuck in to tidying up the messy drawers in the kitchen instead. 

 

I knew there would be some things that would end up in the car boot box and was determined to get rid of them.

 

 

An hour later it was sorted through, cleaned and then the things I needed to keep were laid out neatly and ready for action, so much better and easier on the eye too.

 

 

I didn't stop with the baking drawer either, I went through and sorted and cleaned the cutlery drawer, I wanted to double check that we had just enough to supply two houses and yes, I think we can just about do it.  We will just need to buy another one each of our large and small chopping knives, which we both love and then we will be set up in both our houses.

 

Because yes, fingers crossed that everything now progresses smoothly, but our offer has just been accepted on our new North Wales home.  We have to wait for the results of a Radon Gas report for the mortgage company but as long as that is at reasonable levels we have done it, got ourselves our forever home :-)

 

 

Bits and pieces that are now waiting in the car boot sale box ready for the start of July.  I think we're a bit old for Gingerbread men and teddy bear shaped biscuits now, don't you !!

 

Sue xx

Making Do ......

Making do is something I've always been good at, thinking quickly and reassessing things something you learn when you're in retail management and luckily it translates well to my new 'career' that of smallholder and veggie grower.

 

When the greenhouse came down things were quickly relocated to their new temporary homes.  The tender seedlings spent their first few nights under plastic cloches getting used to the cooler utility room ... 

 

... now they've acclimatised they are without their plastic tops and sat next to the open door during the day.

They've all survived as far as I can see.

 

 

Outside the window on the patio is the new working area for planting and potting on, simply the long bench from the greenhouse, altered and strengthened by Lovely Hubby. Under the black plastic is my compost tray, I mix two types of compost for seed planting.  John Innes seed compost and multi purpose about one third of the former and two thirds of the latter is my preferred (and cheaper) way of doing things, mixed together and then left to dry out slightly before being trowelled into toilet roll tubes or plant pots and the seeds added.

 

Today is a day for catching up, I've been away all week looking at properties with my lovely Mum, who's also house hunting, she's found a beautiful modern flat that we're hoping will be her new home.  So it's all plants and properties for me at the moment.  But today I am taking a step back from both and having a good sort out ready for this weekends car boot sale, it's good to clear the clutter and we are almost there. The forecast (up to now), is good for Sunday so I want to have everything ready to load up the truck tomorrow.  Today will be sorting and stacking the boxes and then tomorrow will be baking more chocolate muffins.

 

I have even sorted through all the food stuffs we have and the things we have decided we do not want to eat are being sold to add some money back into the £2 House Keeping tin.

 

I've just updated the £2 HouseKeeping Challenge page as it's the last day of May, where has this year gone to it's whizzing by!!

 

Sue xx

Living Simply

 

At the moment I am in full swing, simplifying our lives and our possessions, and with the prospect of hopefully, having found our 'forever home' I can visualise what we have in the rooms of our new house. 

 

It is a lovely simply shaped house that has recently been refurbished to what looks like a very good standard.  There are three bedrooms one of which we will need to use as our office, and downstairs next to the living room is an open plan kitchen/dining/conservatory room.  (Sorry but I am not tempting fate by putting any photos of the house on here until we have the keys in our grubby little mitts!!)  When we move in we intend to keep it simple, as simple as we possibly can.

 

For some reason this plan brought back to mind the house in these photos.  It was at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum, which is in Chichester and which I visited with Mum when we were on holiday together last year.  The whole place fascinated me, seeing how folk had lived through the ages and we spent many happy hours walking round the houses that had been real homes to so many people.

 

 

 

The house in these photos was the 'youngest' house on the site, I'm sorry I can't remember from what year exactly but they were built and lived in from the late 1800's.  (It, and it's adjoining semi are called Whittaker's Cottages if you have a look on the website.)  Things didn't change much from this time, especially in the countryside until after the two world wars and so many of the items in this cottage I could remember from in my grannies houses.

 

 

This is what living used to be like. 

 

 For normal folk you lived like this, no house full of things you might use once in a while, just a house containing the day to day necessities of life.

 

 

You worked to pay the rent and feed your family, you bought what you could afford to buy, there were no credit cards or adverts to tempt you to buy what you really didn't need.

 

Times were hard for so many folk I know, there are no rose tinted glasses that can make the past seem all sunny and light, but in many ways life was lived more.

 

If you wanted something, you made it, whether it was food or furniture.  If you wanted access to fresh fruit and vegetables you grew them in your own back garden or bartered with your neighbour, you couldn't wander the aisles of a large supermarket throwing into your trolley exotic fruits from other countries.

 

 

Children shared bedrooms, and played outside with each other, ball games, skipping, building dens and playing tig.  They treasured the toys that they were given (again usually handmade) for birthdays or Christmas and didn't expect something every week like so many seem to now.  Learning to knit with Mum or with Gran was more fulfilling than any solitary computer game played for hours in the loneliness of your own room.

 

And yes there are a lot of beds in this room, in the brochure it said that this house had been home for a family with Mum and Dad, a young baby sharing their bedroom and six children and plus a toddler in a cot sharing this other bedroom. Topping and tailing being the only way to sleep.

 

 

I loved the productive veggie patch in the small back garden.

 

I didn't love quite so much the outdoor 'facilities'.

 

Now there's no way we would trying to recreate this type of living at our new house, we will have running water, central heating, space for us and guests to be able to sleep comfortably.  But what I want to take from these pictures and the images still fresh in my head from the visit to this wonderful Museum is a way of living.

 

Working for ourselves to produce what we need for ourselves, producing just enough extra to give us an income and of being satisfied with what we have.  Of spending time doing things we love, not shopping for things we don't need.  Going a few steps backwards is not always a bad thing, especially when you look at folk that have already taken more steps forward and seeing the dissatisfaction in their lives with what they have and what they are for some reason, still striving to get more of.

 

We live pretty simply at the moment and it's starting to feel really good, but we are still in that jettisoning stage where we are realising how much we were suckered in to acquiring things to fill spaces and feeling the need to get rid of them to get back that space.  Another car boot sale or two and we will really be there.

 

Living simply really is the only way forward for us and this Year of Less is working in so many ways.

 

Sue xx

 

The Year of Less - Less Food

 

How little is less?

 

This was my cupboard last night, this morning I am slowly but surely working my way through the shelves, looking carefully at each and every item in there.

 

In this Year of Less we want to re-jig our diets, relying less and less on pre-prepared, packaged foods and cooking from scratch, so it's important for me to go through our cupboards which yes, are ridiculously full, and keep only the foods that fit in with this way of eating.  Obviously we are not throwing food away willy nilly, those foods that we have decided not to eat will be sold on our next car boot sale, only foods that actually need throwing away will be thrown away (and no I don't stick religiously to 'best before' dates I use my commonsense, my eyes and nose to determine what foods are safe to eat).  The money made from selling off any foodstuffs will be added to our £2 Housekeeping tin to make this last longer.

 

 

 

This was how it looked when I had emptied just the lower shelf, somehow it looked even more spread out all over the worktop, and this was after I had thrown away some foods that had gone off (a couple of jars should have been in the fridge after opening....oops).  Foods in the bin, jars in the recycling box.  

 

Now I am on for the second shelf and it's contents are all over the worktop, I am Blogging while the shelf dries after a thorough wash.  While I'm doing this I'm also sorting foods into types and storing like with like, it will make for a much easier rummage through cupboards while we chomp our way through the contents of them all.

 

Using most of this food up before we go shopping for similar will make the £2 House Keeping Challenge last even longer, and now I am getting to know exactly what I have in stock I will be able to meal plan that much more effectively, and see the contents of the shelves go down in a very pleasing way.

 

Yesterday I had a good sort through the larder cupboard ...

 

 

..... freeing up lots of space and managing to fill some baskets for the car boot sale with over £20 worth of food and thats a lot of food when I've priced most of it at just 20p each (they are out of date items, so I will have to sell them cheaply).

 

I am constantly sorting and re-sorting at the moment, since this picture was taken I have already moved the pasta sauces over to the other cupboard to be with the tins of tomato puree and chopped tomatoes, hopefully it will all make sense when I finally finish :-)

 

The shelf will be dry now, so it's back to work I go.

 

Sue xx