Se7en’s Fabulous Friday Fun #67

I also tried to do a declutter/maintenance project with the kids each day. Set them a task and see what they got up to.

• Car Maintenance: Replaced the windscreen wipers… our wipers have been flapping around for ages, dare I say years rather than months…, I have had the replacements on the dash board for so long that I simply forgot them… Every time we wash the windscreen I think: “Must change the wipers…” and just never do it. Set a kid the task and it will be done in a jiffy. (Note to mother person: please write a post on car maintenance… please, please, please.)

• Heaps of yardwork: It is Autumn after all and all the summer debris needs to be cleared away… Also we have more than a couple of projects that we want to get going in the garden – finally it is cool enough and everyone is chomping to get to the good stuff.

• Getting all the beach goodies cleaned and sorted: I know it is the end of Summer, why on earth would we do that… One of Cape Town’s best kept secrets is that now is the season to head for the beach. It is not to hot, it is not windy, the crowds have gone, endless sunny days… perfect.

• Getting the Bikes in Order: We only have a few die-hard swimmers left headed for the pool each day, my kids will turn to riding their bikes up and down the driveway every afternoon. They are quite passionate about it, the noise associated is simply unbelievable and the grumpy neighbors up the road will have plenty to say, but I won’t be able to hear the complaints above the din!!!

• Operation Box sort: I know it is important to keep boxes for appliances you have – but we (and I am speaking royally here and I don’t mean me) have a bit of an ongoing box situation… So I set the kids the task of finding boxes that were not appliance boxes… boxes that were just boxes and then the great squashing began… we have many more to go!!!

• And finally my ultimate nemesis:The garage… this is a corner of it right now, I cannot bring myself to show you the whole terrible thing. The time has come to sort the garage before the rains come down seriously and stuff that has been dumped there gets soaked, as the water from the mountain we live on drains under our house and through our garage!!! Things to look out for when you buy a house… I remember thinking that they had such interesting concrete patterns on the garage floor, well those are actually water channels and we have to get everything well away because the “river runs through” quite literally!!!

So that was the organizing this week. I have this idea that we should just call a dump truck and empty the garage into it and have the junk hauled away. This literally turns my family, not to mention the father person, pail in horror. So instead, I am setting my kids small doable tasks in the garage and hopefully we will in a slow and steady fashion get to a stage where they can actually use for the tasks they want to do. They are very motivated: one has visions of an electronic workshop, another dreams of an art studio, another thinks it would make a great clubhouse… right now it is a “box and other junk” depository. This is really my big can’t face it project of the year/decade/century and I imagine that in week 52 we will still be working on the garage. Perhaps this is the book I can’t think of to write: How to declutter a garage in se7en million steps… Bestseller material – I know!!!