Sunday Garden Work

It's Tuesday and I didn't get a chance to tell you all what happened on Sunday; as I'd had been out to art class where something big happened there - and because it involved a young child, I don't think it's right to mention it here. But having a First Aid Certificate really paid off - but really, nobody else had one but me.

Anyway, on Sunday, I got out bed early and into a nice hot breakfast! After reading a bit of the paper, I went outside and mowed the lawn, pulled some weeds and got the wheelie bin into the backyard. The pruning shears came out and I clipped back the Sun-loving Broms... once all the leaves were done, I tipped them on their sides and pulled them out and tossed them in the bin. However, only one fitted - as the Mum Brom didn't fit - she was too big! 

Well, another third plant was pulled out of a pot and tossed away and now I have three pots to use. One of them it empty of soil, while the others have soil still in them - useful for me to plant something else. I'll probably plant some garlic this year; which I've done before. 

Well, the bin is almost full and I'm looking forward to cleaning up the garden more next week, once the bin has been emptied tomorrow - yeah it's too full to put anything else in it now. All I can do now is plan for the next lot of gardening next week. 

That was my weekend of cleaning up, cleaning out and decluttering - in more ways than one! I moved my hot pink Geranium into a sunnier spot; and it's doing better. But the garden still needs a better clean-up than what I've done so far. 

Today - Friday Afternoon

Okay, I started my Weekend Challenge a tad early; and thought to post in my progress to you all.

It started out as a 'clean out the mug cupboard to make room' thing; but turned into something totally different! I opened the cupboards under the main counter and pulled out everything to do with some glass dishes instead (yeah, like I said 'totally different')... well, after I did that, I ended up climbing halfway to Narnia through my cupboards!

Only kidding! 

I have very deep cupboards and I pulled out everything from them and realised 'Holy crap, that's a lot of shit! And some of it I really don't need!' So, I put the bowls off to one side, found a metal serving platter I'd been looking for and three cake tins and put my food processor where it all of that was after cleaning up the shelves.

Everything looked pretty good and organised after around half an hour. My Corningware and bowls and mixing bowls were right where I needed them and right where I could lay my hands on them. 

Then, I turned around and found the metal serving platter didn't have a home... so there I was looking through the cupboards wondering where to put it! I pulled out my 3-step ladder and climbed to the top of my fridge and became side-tracked with scraping the greasy crap off that! OMG! It was disgusting! But the platter couldn't fit on there; not unless I wanted to forget its existence altogether! So, it ended up in the pantry with my cutting boards. 

At around 3:30pm, I had just had some afternoon tea and finally opened the mugs cupboard and thought to put sorting out the mugs for another day - and said 'Nope, not doing that again!' I pulled down some of the mugs off the top shelf, wrapped them up and put them into storage. And then, wrapped another 4 I hadn't used in over a year and put them in my Donation Box! I moved all the mugs from the bottom shelf and put as many as I could to the top shelf - putting my favourites towards the front - and pulled out my cups and saucer sets from around the house and setting them up in the cupboard to use. 

Yes! I got this part of the decluttering done and dusted! A broken pasta maker (it's missing 2 bolts to hold it to my counter-top so it won't work really) and a set of mugs with matching spoons is in the Donation Box... I'm very pleased with myself! There's more to do. And I'm hoping to get into the backyard a bit tomorrow. How's your challenge going?

Busy Week of No Time

I've been so very busy this week, and haven't had any time to get myself in here to chat and post about anything.

Well, this weekend I'm going through the kitchen cupboards and finding what I no longer use and donating it! Yes! I'm being brutal about things that aren't any use to me or my kitchen anymore.

The amount of things which have fallen out of the cupboards and nearly broken on my feet in the kitchen. So, this weekend and today is the time to get myself together with the cupboards and sort out what I really don't need anymore. There are certain things in my cupboards I use and things I don't.

Have you ever come across anything like this happen in your home? Well, it's time to go through your cupboards again (yep, we did this sometime last year) and redo them.

I find that going over the same area a year later in my decluttering refines the house a little better. It helps me figure out exactly what I need, what I don't need and work out what I'd like in the future too. But cleaning out the kitchen cupboards is a good way to figure out what I need and what I don't neet... and seeing I'm only using particular things around the kitchen; and have only used those things for the past year. It's interesting to find those unused items are just sitting around getting in the way.

I'm hoping to get into the yard this weekend as well, and make sure I get the unwanted plants out of there as well. The good thing is that I know which plants are due for the rubbish tip and which ones are going to be repotted. This is a good thing.

So, here's the Weekend Challenge: look through your cupboards in your kitchen and figure out what you don't use. Would it be those set of coffee mugs, or the chipped dinner set you've been meaning to replace? If you're sick of looking at it and really need it out of your house, this is the weekend to get in and do it! Make sure you have something else to replace it or have been using another set of plates instead (and you're not using paper plates for the next six weeks while you're searching for that perfect dinner set). As for the garden? Well, that's up to you? Do you want to that garden facelift like I am? 

Vinnies Drop Off

After so long, I did a Vinnies drop off. It's been around five years since I started decluttering the house of things I no longer need, and I'm so pleased to say that I'm now at the point where I'm not taking big bags of things to charities anymore.

I'm at the point of throwing out bags of things into the rubbish bin.

And you know something? I have 3 bags of rubbish downstairs and 3 bags up in the home office to go through and that's it! That's the lot of it! 

So, how did you go on last weekend's challenge? I went out to Office Works (my local office supply store) and bought myself a little bag of rubber bands (which only cost me $3.65) and pulled together my dvds into their prospective lots - the franchises and the stand-alones - and worked them out. It took me a little over an hour and a lot of working out between both cabinets, but it looks great! 

Does yours look good too? All organised and easy to get to, isn't it? Well, for me it's much easier to find what I'm looking for now.

This weekend is another challenge - yes, I know it's late, I'm sorry about that. What you need is to sort out your personal life... again if you haven't done so already. I've scored some archive boxes from Office Works in a particular colour and put all my personal and medical records inside them. Anything to do with my schooling, young life and personal things - like my Last Will and Testament - I've put into these boxes. So far, I'm up to my third box on this; and think it's a good idea. There's colourful file folders I'm using to make my Life Archive boxes as fun as possible.
I'm using other colours for other parts of my life - like my banking and my car. It's a good way to keep things on track - especially if you don't have a filing cabinet. If you've got a filing cabinet, well, you're more organised than me... but if not, this may be the way to go. Also, with cars, you're going to have a few car bits and pieces which will need a box to go into - so an archive box will be the way to go. 

So, that's the challenge this weekend - let's see how far you and I can get with it. 

Weekend Challenge

This week has been busier than usual. 

I've had to pay for my license and look through the house for clothes to wash... yeah wash day is an ongoing thing when you live on your own. 

Otherwise, I'm getting into op-shopping again, and decluttering my home office in a big way as well. The books are looking great and I've picked up my new pair of glasses - they had their lenses replaced - and am now reading more and faster than I did before. 

In the coming two months, the back yard is going to have a complete and total facelift as the broms will be pulled out and replaced with a lovely rose. I'll be planting a couple of Avocado seeds and I'm looking at repotting a few other plants into bigger pots as well and buying myself a proper green house. This means saving up money in a big way in my sludge account; and saving money on groceries as well.

Anyway, this weekend, the challenge is a simple one: if you have a movie collection, on dvd, collect them together and buy a large index book. Write them all into the book in alphabetical order (yep, this one will take a bit of time). Then, get in find the movies which are trilogies or two-parters... and put them together with a rubber band. Keep the television shows with the big franchise movies and the stand-alone movies separate and put the index book in a place where you can find it easily. So, when movie night comes by - and there's nothing on Netflix you want to watch - you can flick through your Movie Book and find your pick of movie, and really can find your pick of movie within minutes for the night; especially if you're out to do a movie marathon. 

Sunday!

I'm free! 

Yep, the two days stuck at home have freed me up to get in and do some of the nitty-gritty things around the townhouse I normally ignore and put off.

Over the past two days, I have gotten in and done some serious work and sorting out around the place: 

Friday:

Woke to a dreadful earache, so headed off to the doctors, and found it was beginnings of a cold; so the doctor told me how to 'nip it in the bud' as it wasn't developed enough for antibiotics. The earache is gone and I'm feeling better! 

Once home, I got out into the back yard and looked at which plants needed to be pulled out and tossed out. This left me with 3 extra pots which I could recycle - not a bad thing really.
Then, I pulled the solar lights out of the garden, turned them off and pulled one of them apart to find out if I could replace the batteries in them - and I can! So, I'm going to buy new batteries and install them, and then put the lights back outside with them switched off so they can recharge.
I got into the home office and tidied up some one area of it - the hand-written notebooks mainly - and found where all of my pagan spell books were hiding. 
The kitchen towels were all put away and then I put out the rubbish and I sat down and pulled out all of the oil-based bags from the bag-holder in the kitchen, put them into a bag to take to Coles for recycling. Then, I put my fold-up bags in the bag-holder so I can grab them when I need them. This freed up one drawer in my living room!

Saturday:

I polished up the phone seat between my living room chairs. This meant I had to clean it off and organise the crap on it too! Then, I polished the piano too... both things look just gorgeous!

I put away bath towels, hanging clothes, sleep wear and warm clothes from the wash basket.

Ripped and burned music from cds - tried to do the same with some music on my computer, but it didn't work out... will have to look into why that's not happening.

I wrote a chapter of a new book I'm working on, edited 2 chapters and then made a pizza from scratch.

Today? Well, I still have some sorting out in the home office to do, and then other things to get ready for this week. But getting in and doing little things when I was forced to stay home was something I didn't think would work out; but it did. 

What did you get up to this weekend? If you had to stay home for two whole days, what would you get done? 

The Next Day Or So...

I've been in hospital for some big tests; and now I'm not allowed to be outside the house for the next day or so.

This is the perfect time for me to pull myself in the direction of those jobs I've been putting off and get in and do some serious decluttering, putting away and tidying up.

So far, I've been out in the back yard and sorted out which plants have to be pulled out and thrown away, leaving which pots behind to be reused and up-cycled. While I was out there, I cleaned out the rain gauge and counted up which plants needed bigger and better pots and will need to bring in the solar lights to see if I can get new batteries for them to make them charge for longer - if I can't get them batteries, well, I'll go and buy new lights to set up around the garden. 

This morning, I started sorting through Bookcase #2 - the Tallboy Bookcase - and sorted out my Stephen King shelf so all my SK books are standing up, not laying down. I'll be doing this for the next shelf down too; to make sure it all looks uniform and clean; leaving a space for my drink on the shelf and for my cordless phone just like where they are now. There are still books to sort through, to find homes for, and I'm hoping to get this office figured out before too long.

The bedroom is a mess as I've let the clean laundry pile up. So, there's putting away to do, sorting out what to vacuum in the bedroom as well as cleaning the bathroom too. In a funny kind of way, I can't wait to get in and do these odd jobs around here... after the death of my friend, I kind of let everything pile up and stop - my world just came to a crashing halt. It's time to get it going again, time to get it back on track.

This weekend is the perfect time to get it working again properly - to pull my focus back onto the decluttering and cleaning of this place.