Tag Archives: decluttering

Back to Work – Day 3 – The Owner Returns & I Make Plans

We had a quiet morning. I had all the parcels done before my workmate arrived, the customers filtered in, we bought, we sold and we relaxed. The owner returned home in the early afternoon and came to work immediately as he arranged to meet a client. Personally, I would have left it until Monday, but that’s life at the cutting edge of retail.

My new glasses are performing well, though a couple of bits of plastic in frame shouldn’t be too difficult to manufacture and there’s a limit to the number of things that can be wrong. The main problem I find is that the frames aren’t wide enough, which eventually makes them crack. these have sprung hinges, so that won’t happen. Actually, they aren’t glasses, are they? They have no glass in them.

I now have a timeline for retirement. It needs a few more details but we seem to have covered all the main points. The difficult part is knowing the best time for us to retire as Julia is younger than me. We want to be in the bungalow for Christmas next year but that’s nearly a year before she retires. I don’t think it’s worth worrying about, but she seems to be vacillating about whether retire to early or not. I get so annoyed by the way she’s treated at work I’ve suggested that she retires now, as we won’t be much worse off and can work round it. We do, after all, have a low cost lifestyle.

Books . . .

I am going to start adding more tasks to the timeline, plus mileposts, Key Performance Indicators, landmarks and a roadmap. I may have made some of them up, but you get the idea. I will be writing about targets soon, so had better brush up on my jargon so I can sound knowledgeable.

Books are going first. Some will be offered to specialist dealers or go into auction, many will go to charity shops and quite a few are destined for recycling. Some books, it pains me to admit, are just not worth anything. Some of them haven’t been opened for thirty years, so I’m not going to spend good money on transport just so I can clutter up another house. Those days have gone.

I will be putting parts of my collection on eBay, starting in the autumn, and other bits and pieces are destined for auction or a skip. I still have a lot of stuff inherited from my grandfather – including a magnifier for a 1950s TV (they only had 7″ screens in those days), a valve tester and a variety of hand tools that I will never use.

There are also 12 plastic boxes of military surplus clothing from my market days in the garage. They have been unreachable for ten years and if they aren’t mouse bedding by now they will be going to the charity.

The more I think of it, the more stuff I remember that I need to get rid of. I was happier when I wasn’t planning . . .

Books by Paul Hollywood

 

 

Holiday Day 4 – Decay, Declutter and Downsize

We went into the garden this afternoon, sorting out the shed because we  have promised Number One Son some tools for his new house. It’s amazing what rubbish I have stored when I should really have binned it.

However, the first thing we noticed was that the guttering had come off the shed at one end. It’s been raining quite a lot and it has also ben quite blustery. The shed has started to rot a little in places and the screws at one end have pulled out. With no decent wood left to screw it into and, to be honest, no idea how to get a bracket off the gutter, I resorted to green garden wire and blue polypropylene string. It’s a very agricultural look, but it should hold it until the builders come to do the house gutters. If they ever come . . .

I have a hint for all homeowners. Move before 30 years in a property. We need a new back door and the gutter fixing (though other parts of the shed are showing their age too. The other shed, made out of wood that was less well prepared was taken down a few years ago.

As things stand, we will be taking a bag of hand tools with us, a bag of books, two household appliances and the last of his clothes. I reckon if we move this much each week it will only take us three or four years to clear the the house. It’s just a shame that we want to be out in less that 18 months, and that the shed will probably disintegrate before then, now it has started.

The photograph is part of my Sweetheart Brooch Collection – at the end of the war (1917 according to Wikipedia) the Army stated to issue overseas service chevrons – red for service in 1914 and blue for other years. The maximum that could be awarded was six – one red and five blue.  This would involve someone fighting through from 1914 to the end of the war in Russia in 1919 and I’m not sure how many people managed that. I’ve never seen a set of six, and never seen a set of five blue ones either. However, I digress.

These badges were meant for men to wear (the crescent fittings were meant to go through the buttonhole on a man’s jacket, and is a hybrid Sweetheart/Regimental Brooch.  It’s a subject area of its own and I have started a post on Sweethearts, as well as mentioning them before, so I may make sure I get down to finishing the half-complete post.

In the meantime, note how the two pieces seem to screw together, though I’m not quite sure how they manged it when you see how they fit. It was clearly a case of buying a badge and specifying the number of chevrons – a cunning marketing ploy. The Patent Date appears to be 1918 and the maker was TLM – Thomas L Mott, who made a lot of fine Victorian sweetheart brooches too. He also did loads of other jewellery, often using butterfly wing, as a quick search of his name will prove. Yes, butterfly wing – I shudder at the thought.

Wiltshire Regiment (Reverse)

Wiltshire Regiment (Front)

Downsizing, Decluttering and Döstädning

All productive days need a list somewhere near the beginning. If not, you risk wandering off the point, lose motivation and, as I often do, become confused by the number of tasks. Once you are confused by the profusion of tasks it is hard to settle down and achieve anything.

Some things need to be done every day – replies to comments, checking emails, maybe looking at eBay (which is of varying importance, depending on what I am bidding on). Others don’t need doing, as they are just time-wasting habits of no importance.

It is now some time later . . .

I looked up soup recipes using tinned soup, which was something I had meant to do. Then I made the lunch, using one of the recipes. Well, part of one of the recipes. We are out of smoked paprika and the lentils would have taken too long to cook.  Then I had to take Julia to an appointment so, while I was out I nipped to the jewellery shop as I haven’t been for a while.

It’s now 4pm and the day is slightly slipping by, despite my mention of lists.  I am now going to spend another hour on tasks from the list and see how it turns out. I suspect it will be better than some of my recent days.

In the last post I said “research some articles, write some bits for the Numismatic Society Facebook page and knock some submissions into shape.”

I’ve done a bit of research and polished a poem. So far, apart from the soup, they are the only actual list-type things I’ve done. I’ve also found a specialist book dealer who may buy some of my books. I need to downsize and if I can make  few shillings at the same time it will be good.

I’m going to start calling it döstädning, which is Swedish for Death Cleaning. Actually, I might just call it Swedish Death Cleaning, there are a lot of umlauts in there now I come to look at it again.

Ah! I’ve just come up with a new title . . .

The Second Morning of the Rest of My Life

After yesterday’s energetic start I faded. The afternoon was OK but the evening tailed off and I fell asleep in front of the TV, woke up, flicked through three old writing magazines from 2002 (decluttering throws up some strange finds) and went to bed. I was, I admit, resigned to the fact that I was likely to face anti-climax in the morning.

I was amazed to find myself almost leaping from bed this morning when the alarm went off. I’ve dropped Julia at work, abused a few drivers and had an interesting time with the shredder already this morning. The COVID testing station at the County Council offices is, as usual, well lit and well staffed by people wearing high-vis jackets and masks. All they need is somebody to test.

The shredder is a large and impressive shiny plastic box. I have inherited it from my father. It seems right and proper that shiny mechanical things should pass down the male line, particularly as we threw the box away and I am operating it without instructions. Wives all over WordPress are nodding wisely not and saying “Yes, shiny mechanical things with sharp blades and no instructions have been a feature of married life for many years.”

Let’s face it, most instruction books could be reduced to two points –

(1) Switch on.

(2) Do what you like. We know you aren’t going to read past here. Even if you got this far.

I normally stop reading after ‘on’.

Last week I used the shredder. Julia had left me with a pile of documents and instructions that the shredder would probably need emptying at some point. What she actually meant was that it was full and needed emptying.

I wondered why it had two lights when one would be enough. Seems the second one was telling me to stop because it was full. You’d think they’s make it more obvious. Anyway, as long as it kept cutting, I kept feeding stuff in and the light kept blinking.

Then it stopped.

Even I can tell that means it’s probably full. At that point I found that I didn’t know how to empty it. Despite repeatedly pulling at anything that looked vaguely pullable nothing gave so I rang my sister, who told me what to do. It didn’t work. I waited for Julia to show me after I collected her from work. Nothing.

Eventually we opened a drawer slightly and Julia, having smaller hands than me, was able to scoop some of the shredded paper out, which eventually allowed us to free the drawer and empty the rest. This is a cross-cut shredder so the paper debris is not all ravelled up in a big ball, but cut into tiny migratory pieces. I’m still finding them on the floor.five days later.

Today I have started it and jammed it. There was, it seems, a piece of paper stuck in front of the sensor that tells it that it is full. I found that piece of paper after removing several dozen others.

I’m now ready to take another leap into the unknown and see what other interesting adventures occur when I start shredding again. You’d have thought, by 2020, having sent men to the Moon and built a Space Station, that we’d be able to design a shredder that actually works for longer than twenty minutes at a time.

My sister has sent me some oiled sheets you use occasionally to clean the blades. I’d never heard of them until last week. I can’t wait to see what areas of disaster open up as I feed one of them through.

It’s just turned 10.00 so it’s not been a bad start – all that and 600+ words. At this rate I’m in danger of actually achieving something.

 

The First Morning of the Rest of My Life

I think we’ve finally made the breakthrough in decluttering. It’s cost us many arguments, the serious erosion of my book mountain and, in my case, a very stiff back, but yesterday I could finally see it was beginning to look clear rather than simply redistributed, and I felt free. Well, freeish. There’s still a lot to do, but we are getting there. Even moving the car insurance is part of the new life. At one time I would have paid the exhorbitant rise simply because I don’t like change.

For those of you who noticed it, I’ll go back to my spelling of exhorbitant in a later post.

Today I dropped Julia off at work and went shopping in Lidl. I normally go to Aldi (the other budget German supermarket) but I thought I’d give a recently opened branch of Lidl the once-over. I needed a loaf of sliced bread. Bear that in mind as I describe my shopping technique.

My first stop was the bakery, where I selected four croissants for tomorrow’s breakfast, because they looked inviting. I bought two pain au chocolat because Julia likes them, a sourdough boule, a , some cobs for a sandwiches over the next couple of days, and, finally, a brown sliced loaf. I( sound very middle-class, don’t I? Apart from the fact that Lidl isn’t the natural home of the middle-classes.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d stopped there, but I added sea bass (I hate fish but Julia loves it, and I’m still trying to make up for the lack of birthday presents, which are still in the post somewhere). Plus ham trimmings (which are a good, cheap sandwich filling), chocolates (see previous comment regarding birthday presents), butter (necessary for the sea bass), paracetamol (just in case of shortage) and some quinoa in microwavable pouches. Yep, definitely middle class…

I doubt I’ll go back. It was a poor shopping experience, despite the bakery. Too many customers with no masks, bossy checkout operator with no mask and a bad attitude, poor stock levels and obstruction of the aisles by staff.

I’ve also decluttered, written, drunk a bottle of Lucozade and filled the shredder, though I have stopped it before jamming it this time.

All in all, it’s not a bad morning, though I’m now starting to wonder if my new found energy is down to the psychological boost of decluttering or the 45g of sugar that the Lucozade label tells me I’ve just consumed. That’s 11 teaspoons according to the internet. Oh dear…

Speckled Wood

 

 

 

Tree Gibraltar Point, Lincolnshire - dramatic setting

Dreams of Lottery Wins

We didn’t, I must confess, get much work done today. Well, not much work of a decluttering nature. I spent most of the morning writing instead of working and Julia spent most of the day preparing for an art session she is running tomorrow. It won’t be appreciated by the organisation, though the clients will enjoy it. That seems to be the  way of things at the moment. Normally, when I dream of winning the lottery, I see myself giving a month’s notice and acting as a responsible employee should.

However, if we win enough (my normal £2 win won’t be enough, I’m afraid) I’m going to take great pleasure in listening to Julia’s end of the phone call where she rings up the morning after the win and hands in her notice instantly.

There’s a £70 million rollover on Friday. If I win that I will suggest that we retire early.

Then I locked my keyboard. Not entirely sure how I did it, but I did. The computer was supposed to be off but it switched itself on and when I got back to it, after stacking stuff all over the table, there were messages on the screen. One must have related to locking the keyboard, because that is what happened.

I got Julia to look up how to unlock a keyboard, but it didn’t work. So I tried the old keyboard we had hanging around. It wouldn’t plug into the back of the computer. Fortunately we had a third one, the one I used to use with my laptop on the farm (yes, we really do need to declutter – but look how useful it is to have three keyboards). This one plugs into a USB port and fortunately the computer, though old, does have several, so I was able to connect it up and get going. I really do hate computers…

…and computers feel the same way about me.

If I win the £70 million at the weekend I will probably get a new computer too. But mainly I will buy myself a house enclosed in a bubble, with filtered air and an airlock for a door so the grocery delivery man can deliver them without breathing on me. Let nobody accuse me of not taking Covid seriously.

This is not at all like I used to dream of spending my lottery winnings.

Wednesday Morning

I went to hospital this morning and parked up under the treatment centre. I spent the best part of an hour writing and watching life pass me buy then stuck a mask on and went in. The reason for the hour’s wait was because I wanted to get there while there were still spaces left.

By the time I walked into the entrance there were still spaces left – another great plan that didn’t quite work out. However, it wasn’t wasted time as I did quite a lot of writing. And compared to taking a taxi, I saved £12.

The sheet of questions you used to be asked about Covid has been reduced to a simple “Any Covid symptoms?” from a bored receptionist. This is quicker, but less reassuring.

By the time I left I had a lump of “putty” and two sheets of hand exercises. I am so looking forward to doing something like 20 exercises, each with ten reps and each at least twice a day. That’s going to be… (sound of wheels turning and gears clunking… a lot…

I’ve just ordered a couple of plastic gadgets to pop my pills out of the packets for me and, more importantly, to catch them for me. I tend to drop a lot due to declining dexterity.

I’ve also looked up my grip strength to compare it to the average. Seems that even with arthritis my grip strength in my dominant hand is strong. The non-dominant hand score is about two thirds of the other, but still good. I’m surprised at the size of the difference, though I couldn’t use one of my fingers on that hand. I’m feeling a bit better now, as I have been feeling pretty decrepit lately.

We went out for a coffee after I returned home, then went to Hobbycraft for Julia to buy things. Nothing much of any importance occurred but judging from my fellow drivers it was National Leave Your Brain at Home and Drive Like an Idiot Day, particularly for those driving 4x4s. Not one of them, it seems, can plan their route 50 yards in advance, with the result that I have to be barged to one side to allow them access to the lane they need.

While we were out we found a charity bin that takes books. It was nearly empty so all the books from the boot of the car went in there. I’m giving some specialist books to one of the customers on Saturday, so will have got rid of several hundred this week. It’s sad, but necessary.

 

 

 

Confessions of a Bad Husband

I thought I’d get up early and do some writing before Julia rose. She deserves a rest after her exertions yesterday, and I though I might evade her for a while as she lay in the arms of Morpheus, as they used to say. I wasn’t sure whether to say that or not, but it seemed more appropriate than the more accurate ‘snoring’. On looking it up, I find that it is considered a ‘pretentiously classical allusion’. It’s a cliché

, an anachronism and overly-flowery, but is it really pretentious? Am I pretending anything? I think the writer of the free dictionary should read his own product.

Anyway, it didn’t happen. At the first hint that I might be making  a break for freedom, she woke up, sniffed the air, sensed a disturbance in the force, imitated a questing Dobermann and said: “What are you doing?”

“Putting my socks on.”

“And then?”

“I have some writing to do.”

The air crackled with tension.

As things stand, I am, as you can probably tell, writing. There is a time when a man has to put his foot down and tell his wife “This far and no more!” This is, I believe, a paraphrase of Job38:11 “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further:”, though, unlike Bertie Wooster, I did not win a prize for Scripture Knowledge in my youth so have to admit checking it up on the internet. I have, of course, used the King James version.

This, however, was not the time for me to use those words. I have, sneakily given her a lift to the laundrette, and returned home. She thinks I am sorting books for disposal.

Books for disposal, one of the saddest things I have ever written.Anyway, can’t stop for sadness, or more discussion of my craven capitulation, as I need to make the best use of the next half hour.

blur book stack books bookshelves

Photo by Janko Ferlic on Pexels.com

What’s Five Foot Four and Scares the Life out of Me?

After a day that alternated tedium with periods where I feared for my life, I am not quite sure what to write about.

I did think of a witty piece on the perils of being married but she’s been tidying all day, with regular pauses to snarl like a rabid badger, so I’m not going to risk that. I too have been tidying all day, but at a less frenetic pace. I have just put the vegetables in for tea and taken my chance to sneak to the computer while Julia is upstairs beating some poor junk into submission.

I am seriously thinking of making up one of those bundles on a stick that you used to see illustrated in kids’ books and running away to sea. My other choice, joining the French Foreign Legion under an assumed name, is not really a viable proposition for a man approaching his sell by date.

You have to be under 39½ on joining, and I don’t think hair dye and a cunningly doctored birth certificate are going to help me much with that. Apart from that I am amazingly eligible to join one of the toughest military units in the world. Their list of disqualifying medical conditions misses most of mine out and as long as I can meet the requirements of the BMI I only have the sports tests to do. Unfortunately, at the moment, I would need to be about fourteen feet tall for the BMI calculation to work.

This is probably too tall for a long and successful military career – it is usually felt to be a good thing if the soldier is shorter than the generally available cover.

Looks like I might just have to do what I’m told and offer her chocolate.

I saved two books on photography from the pile she gave me to throw out, so as from tomorrow you can expect better photos. For now I’m just going to chuck in a few old ones before returning to my roasting vegetables.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Don’t be fooled by the smile…

 

Monday, a Day of Promise

I rose at a moderate time, washed up and made breakfast. I tried to make Julia a heart-shaped fried egg but the egg didn’t quite spread inside the frame and then it started to stick to the pan and in the end it looked like three-quarters of an egg, as long as you knew it was supposed to be an heart. If you didn’t know what it was meant to be you wouldn’t have known what it was. My own egg was much more successful as I set out to produce an odd-shaped free-form fried egg with crispy bits, and that was exactly what I ended up with.

Once they were shoved into a cob with bacon and mushrooms it didn’t matter what shape they were. All that matters to me is that my yolk is hard. I don’t really like runny yolks at the best of times but they are a hazard to shirt fronts when used in a sandwich. Julia likes her yolk soft, but as my wife of thirty years, she is accustomed to disappointment.

 

I have read the comments on my posts, added the word ‘cyanosis’ to one and added a couple of lines to another.

My first post of the day is now done, my new medication has been delivered by a hospital volunteer and Julia is clinking with menace as she sorts jam jars and emanates expectations. She wants me to start filling the skip with bits of shed. She has dragged it to the driveway and it is now time for me to do my bit. I will potter out to offer support and supervision in a moment, then come back to this.

By the magic of WordPress I am now back.

She had been struggling to dismantle a bookcase which had suffered from years of standing in a leaky shed and is therefore un-salvageable. This is the sad state of quite a lot of stuff, including things that had been safely stored in the dry garage last time I saw them. Married men will recognise the note of pain in my writing.

Anyway. the bookcase fell apart from a few taps with a rubber mallet. If I had been able to access a proper hammer it would have taken considerably fewer taps. With a proper Enoch I reckon one blow would have done it. That’s right, when I am in full swing, we are never far from a Luddite link.

Last night, whilst relaxing, I started to read WordPress. I haven’t really done that for years now. It was a very pleasant experience. I’m going to write another few posts to top my total up to two thousand then I’m going to cut back on posting and increase my reading.

Don’t get me wrong – I like all the blogs I read, but I’ve been limited in the last few years and have struggled even to keep up with sporadic reading of my regulars. Given a little more time I’m going to enjoy more reading, particularly as I was able to catch up with a few people I haven’t read for years.

Despite the weather, which features a cold breeze and a threatening low grey sky, I’m feeling quite sunny today, and am hoping that this frame of mind persists.

I’m going to throw in a few cheerful flower photographs from Harlow Carr Gardens and make beans on toast for lunch.

All photographs are irises in spring from our visits to Harlow Carr Garden, apart from the header which is Julia in the Mencap garden at Wilford.