Saturday Spot: The Cure Continues…

Last week I wrote about the cure and the kitchen cure… well this week we are still hanging in there… If we make it to next week I will sign up, but I am a little nervous that signing up will bring a sense of comfort to us and a dramatic drop in action!!! I love that the tasks are simple enough for me to get done while we are schooling. Some how it seems a waste of the impending summer to spend it sorting and decluttering – I am dying to get a chunk of our house-sort done before our school year ends!!!

• Day 6 – Floor and Surface Clean One Room: So I headed into the lounge, which is pretty much the father person’s domain and one of my least liked places in the house… it is just messy. But I decided that a 20 minute clean could only help it!!! We did get a working couch last year and it has been a total blessing to us, we can finally all sit in our lounge. I wrote this comment on SmallNotebook and it is indeed the story of our couch:
  Aaah couches!!! After se7en years we moved from a furnished rental to our own home – with no furniture!!! My mom in-law moved in after a week and we didn’t own a single chair… we sat on packing boxes!!! We took a month and bought a couch… we never really liked it!!! She moved to her own home and we had several kids – or we had several kids and she sought some sanity!!! Anyway twelve years later we could stand it no more and we relegated the couch to the outdoors (where it is perfect – for collapsing and summering!!!) and we finally bought our own fabulous leather couch!!! It took 18 years of marriage to get the couch we liked!!! And it changed our whole family dynamic because finally there is a place for everyone to sit and now we all sit around in our lounge – that we never ever went into before – and read and and chat and watch the odd movie, it’s just lovely!!! Eighteen years!!!

  Back to the clean (and I have had quite a bit of help): For the twenty minute challenge I intended to pick up and dust under all the stuff from the bookshelves that weren’t actually books… and right there I broke the twenty minute rule… I started turfing and discarding and brainstorming: how to turn this into a room I actually like… well cleared shelves later… my lounge is now in a state of sad despair… where do you put all those little things that have been cleared off the shelves. They aren’t mine to throw out, but you can access the books, I hate all the bibs and bobs everywhere, I love bookshelves stacked with “just” books… Needless to say my twenty minute clean was a total failure and I have given myself to the end of The Cure to cure this dilemma!!!



• Day 7 – Buy Flowers and Sit for 10 minutes: Well we didn’t buy flowers but we did make some and I did sit for ten minutes and a chatted to my artists about life in general – time well spent!!!



• Day 8 – Establish a Landing Strip: I love my landing strip… it’s a whale – I have to tell you because in the olden days when I was very young I made it – and you might not have recognized it for what it is!!! So walk in the door and in go my phone, my wallet, my keys… Unfortunately, over time it fills up with stuff like this:
  

  Oh will somebody tell me that every house has this: eclectic stuff that is vital to someone’s life!!! Though I am just not sure whose!!! When it looks this bad I pop the whole lot out into a small container… if no-one asks for anything then I kind of lose the container after a while… never had a problem!!!

  Now the thing about our landing strip… I realize as I write this… may indeed be the problem with the lounge… This is clearly my landing strip – small, contained and minimal… the father person’s landing strip is ummmm well undefined and could well be the entire lounge… you see I need to do The Cure!!!

• Day 9 – Find a New Recipe and Cook Tonight: I reckon a change is as good as a holiday and while I didn’t try anything new I did hand dinner over to the kids… took the holiday option!!! Hopefully that counts as trying something new!!!



• Day 10 – Make List of Top 6 Home Needs: This is what I like about The Cure… it doesn’t say make a list of everything – just six things… Can I say the garage, the garage, the garage… the garage. We normally do a big garage sort every year… but this past year we didn’t and it is in a dreadful state…
  1. Our pool pump has died, just as summer kicks in… it seriously needs some attention.
  2. The vase deserves a photograph!!! It is a ceramic vase we keep in our lounge, where I toss little tiny things that are lying around when visitors are impending… it is exploding with tiny bits of lego, magnets, marbles, batteries and countless letters to and from the tooth mouse…
  3. The post pile… my kids bring in the post, recycling goes straight to the recycling and the rest on the pile… where I just can’t be bothered to open boring old bills and bank statements – I can not want to do this chore.
  4. In case you have been waiting for a GiveAway from me I have a massive pile to post and very good intentions for Friday – really!!!
  5. We don’t have a lot of clothes, but every couple of weeks I take twenty minutes and whizz through everyone’s clothes, filtering to the mending, to donate and handing down… general maintenance and it’s just gotta be done.
  6. I hate stuff on the fridge… hate it… I had a pristine blank fridge and then I had kids… And my fridge will never be the same again… the day the recycling goes out is the only day my fridge is shown any crystal clear respect!!!



And Finally the Kitchn Cure this week was to restock the Kitchen with ingredients and tools… I am so glad to have gotten rid of a few things that I don’t really want anything back into it, least of all any new tools… Well I food processor maybe, but that isn’t on the budget!!! I did make a spin through our Christmas recipes and made a shopping list for all those dry ingredients you discover you need when you are 95% of the way through a recipe… very pleased about that!!! I never plan ahead for things like ingredients!!! Anyway that wasn’t enough, I did a little more and cleaned all the little hand prints off the cupboard doors – it is amazing what a quick wipe down can do!!!

I made the catalogue card using Blyberg’s card generator.