Trying to live with less

Ozzy and Milo enjoying some much needed sunshine

Of late blogging has taken second place to a number of other things so I thought I would share a little bit about what I have been busy with.

Firstly I am on a mission to de-clutter my life. I am systematically going through cupboards, rooting out stuff that we no longer use, need or like and packing it up for charity or charity shops. OH wants to know when I’m going to chuck him out – LOL

The de-cluttering is hard for him because he is by nature a hoarder whereas I am able to live without holding onto stuff for fear that I might at some future stage need it.  Of course I like to have nice stuff, but only things which I can use or, in the case of art, things that bring me pleasure to look at. I am not a collector of things that require dusting and the less that has to be moved to clean the better as far as I am concerned.

OH is the exact opposite but there is no logic or order in the things that he holds onto so he can never find something when he wants it anyway. I am trying very hard to get him to keep like with like and not just stash things wherever he can find a gap. We have been married 38 years and this is a battle I have fought for every one of those years. How it starts is he can’t decide if he needs to keep something or not, so he leaves it lying around where he (and everyone else) can see it. After a couple of weeks I ask him to please find a home for it or throw it out and so off he goes in a huff and stuffs it anywhere where he thinks I won’t come across it again in a hurry. Then of course he can’t remember where he put it and it becomes my fault 😦   I hope I’m not boring my readers with this …

I on the other hand like to keep “like things” that are worth keeping for whatever reason together so that I will know exactly where to look if I want to retrieve something.  OH’s excuse is that he does not have enough storage space allocated to him which is nonsense, it’s just that he uses it badly and refuses all my efforts to help him organise the space better.

I am also busy researching my family tree and gathering information that will assist me in finding my ancestors. So far I have just started but even 2^nd generation ancestors are a bit of a mystery so there is lots of work to be done.

And then going on faith I have started researching a trip to the UK next year. We obviously want to see our daughter and granddaughter but there are other things that we would like to do as well and because this might well be the last trip that we will be able to afford to make we would like to make it meaningful and do and see the things that hold the most interest for us.  So a wish list is being drawn up and over the next year we will have time to do more research and amend the list accordingly.

Meanwhile OH has been busy with some rather unpleasant DIY. Our shower tray cracked some time back and had been held together with off cuts of plastic and clear packaging tape for far too long. With a great deal of difficulty OH has removed the tray and the bottom row of tiles and discovered that where the tray cracked there was nothing underneath except for the trap and that was also loose.

He has done a great job at preparing the area for the next step that is throwing a new base, tiling with mosaic and replacing the bottom row of tiles but it is not easy working at floor level in a 90 by 90 cm area and the old bones are complaining somewhat. He has done an excellent job so far, no damage to the surrounding tiles at all. We were lucky enough to find matching tiles in a broken box at Builder’s Warehouse but what a performance to buy them. We had to hear how they send damaged tiles back to the manufacturer and don’t sell them. We only needed 20 tiles and the other 18 in the package were all damaged and literally lying all over the floor. I don’t believe for a minute that it would have been sent back to the manufacturer, the damage probably happened at BW and had we not bought the “good” tiles I am sure the whole lot would have ended up in a skip!

So bloggers that’s what I have been up to, there just does not seem to be enough time in a day to do everything that I want to accomplish. I have also been going for physio treatment for a neck and shoulder problem that is not settling down and the discomfort disturbs my sleep a lot so come 8.30 pm I am ready for bed.