Tag: Home

With Love and Squalor

On By samanthaIn FAMILYLeave a comment

It is a beautiful day and I am not working.  It is 10am and I have already hung two loads of washing out on the line, popped to the supermarket to do some never-ending food shopping and dropped off an online return for my daughter.  As usual, I can’t relax.  I sit out in the garden and call my friend in the Isle of Wight for a catch up, we chat for fifteen minutes.  I then decide to sit and read my current book and chill out under the parasol.  Except that I remember how smeared the mirrors in the house are, they need a good polish, and the rug in the drawing room has soot on it, that needs a vacuum, the fridge door needs a spritz of Dettox and a wipe-down….  Why am I sitting, doing nothing, when my house is a squalid tip? OK, it’s not actually a squalid tip, just not the gleaming show home I would like it to be.   I head inside and start wearing myself out doing jobs that will only need repeating in day or two. What a waste of a sunny day.

For a few years I worked for a posh estate agent. It was my job to do the the viewings in the new build “luxury homes”, a job I thoroughly enjoyed most of the time. Everything was always gleaming and glossy but I would come home and my own house would look…tired. I live in a property built in 1760, it’s full of crooked angles and gappy floorboards. The local spiders make themselves right at home and invite their friends. At 265 years old my home is entitled to look a little knackered I suppose. I’m fifty five and some days I look quite knackered myself.

Most of my friends employ a cleaner.  I did have a succession of cleaning ladies, and one chap, when my children were younger.  Two were wonderful but several were just awful.  If I paid for four hours cleaning, I’d be lucky to get two.  I would always tidy before they came, clean the loo and offer tea or coffee every hour, in the end it was just easier, not to mention cheaper, to do it myself.  One local girl, who I nicknamed Lucy Lightfingers, stole from me. It was such a shame because I know she needed the job and I turned a blind eye when it was just dishwasher tablets and washing powder but soon money began to disappear and that’s not OK. In fact I see that she has set up an online business selling pre-loved designer handbags, possibly filched from the wardrobes of her clients.  I would quite like my vintage Fendi satchel back, bought with my hard-earned overtime money, in 1997.

When I visit certain friends, their houses are always pristine, how do people manage it when they have families?  It makes me feel inadequate. I do some sort of  housework every single day yet there is always a pile of mystery paperwork on the kitchen dresser, a ring on the glass coffee table where someone (my husband) has ignored the half dozen coasters and a thin layer of dusts forms on my glossy wooden floors no matter how often I clean them.

I try to remember that our homes are meant to be lived in and it is impossible to keep on top of everything all the time. My son had a story book , The Magic Lavatory, about a little boy, Jeffrey, who lived with an aunt who was so house-proud that he wasn’t allowed to play with anything for fear of making a mess, he just sat on the sofa all day until (spoiler alert!!) he was rescued by a magic toilet, nobody wants to live like that. Those of us with nice homes and family to share them with are incredibly lucky. If we have outside space then even more so. We all set ourselves up for failure sometimes by comparing ourselves, our homes, our finances and even our looks unfavourably with others. My seventeen year old son has actually put his M & S sandwich packaging in the bin. You have to celebrate the little wins.

Thank you for reading

Samantha

Featured

Slightly Less Stuff!

On By samanthaIn FAMILYLeave a comment

In my previous post So Much Stuff! I was bracing myself for my annual March declutter. It is now nearing the end of the month and, even if I say so myself, I have been fairly successful. I have got rid of at least one hundred items and that is without even tackling my clothes. My usual method for attempting to declutter my clothes is 1) open wardrobe 2) stand in an overwhelmed trance wondering how I have accumulated so many similar garments 3) take one or two of the aforementioned garments out, say hmm to myself and them hang the garments back up 4) Close wardrobe door and go and sit down.

My daughter’s room has just been decorated and she spends most of her time at university so, when she came home for a week it was easy for her to see what she no longer needed. I donated, via FaceBook Marketplace, a pile of her hoodies, jeans, jogging bottoms and T shirts, all in good used condition. I listed them for free and three women messaged within minutes asking if they could have them. Obviously the items have to go to the first person who responds but I always message the others saying that, should I come across any other, similar items, I will let them know. My rule for giving things away like this is that the items must be clean and with no damage. I also insist that the person comes and collects it. Last year I spent an hour driving round trying to drop off a framed Dr Who poster. The woman who wanted it couldn’t even manage to give me her correct address and thought it was funny that she had sent me to the wrong road. Needless to say I was not laughing! If it is a more expensive item then I may list it for a small charge of £5 or £10 and then give my daughter the proceeds. It has become increasingly difficult to sell things in recent years although some of my friends swear by Vinted.

I shredded two recycling bags worth of old paperwork and also took three big bags of unwanted things to local charity shops. The challenge is to actually go to the shop and donate the stuff rather than driving around with it in the boot of your car for six month. These bags included a brand new wicker hamper that was taking up space in my cellar, It had been a gift containing Christmas food. The hamper was a strange shape and I kept thinking that I’d perhaps use it as an umbrella stand but, after three years, it was clear I was never going to get round to that and I only own one umbrella. I also donated about fifteen books, some clothes I had bought in a sale and never worn and was never going to wear, yet more hoodies, some decorative bowls, nine necklaces (all costume jewellery) and some new scented candles. I like scented candles but my husband and son are both asthmatic and they are not good for their lungs. I took some old shoes to the shoe recycling bins and two coats to the Salvation Army collection points. I dropped old reading glasses into the collection point at SpecSavers. I also went though my make up, some of which was about the same age as my youngest son who is seventeen, and threw about half of the items away.

So does my house now look clutter free? Don’t be silly! I have hardly made a dent. It is nice to know that most of the things will be reused and the woman who collected my daughter clothes was so grateful that I felt a little embarrassed. She said her daughter would be thrilled. Perhaps in April I will pluck up courage to tackle my own clothes. My friend Caroline suggested that she clear out my wardrobe and I do hers. Not sure I am ready to let someone else decide on what I should keep and it could be the end of a long friendship if one of us was insulted by the other’s judgement. It would be fun to have a rummage through somebody else’s things though!

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Onur Bahçıvancılar on Unsplash

Featured

It’s All A Lot Of Oysters But No Pearls

On By samanthaIn FAMILYLeave a comment

The title of this post is taken from the song A Long December by Counting Crows and seems to sum this week up perfectly although, now I have started thinking about it, I realise there have been some nice moments.

I have been ridiculously busy at work, feeling overwhelmed and it seems that my email inbox is like the fairy tale The Magic Porridge Pot, it just constantly refills. For very email I deal with three more seem to pop in. I have come to dread the accompanying chime. My shoulders have been hurting because I have been tensely hunched over my desk, working at the speed of light, for seven hours at a time. I am not very good at taking breaks but I need to get up and stretch every now and again before I completely seize up.

I had a day off on Tuesday and was looking forward a a little rest but my husband had booked a man in to clean the carpets, he was due to arrive at 8am. Groan. Obviously the rooms had to be cleared of clutter (thank goodness for my March decluttering efforts, see my post So Much Stuff! ) All the windows had to be left wide open all day even though it was freezing. I messaged my friend to have a moan and she invited me over for a cup of tea. How lovely to have a friend who knows you are chilly and proffers a heated gilet as soon as you arrive.

My dad called me later, in pain with toothache. Having had the most awful, ongoing dental infection a couple of years ago I have great empathy for anyone suffering like this. My parents can no longer get to the NHS dentist and have started using the lovely but very expensive private dentist in our village. Fortunately she was able to fit Dad in for the following day and I arranged to spend the afternoon sitting with Mum. I had some numbing gel that helped while Dad waited to be seen. Poor Dad, he really looks after his teeth, flossing and using interdental brushes but has been beset with problems for years. The dentist extracted the tooth, the second in six months. It was at the back of his mouth so he doesn’t have a visible gap. Mum didn’t really want me at their house and kept telling me to go home which can be a little hurtful but I just have to remind myself that she doesn’t mean it. Or perhaps she does, I hope not.

I then received a letter from the NHS telling me I was being fined for not paying for my migraine mediation months and months ago. I have paid for my prescriptions my entire adult life but the pharmacist mistakenly put my migraine meds in with my HRT which I had pre-paid for. How I was supposed to know this is a mystery. My husband had collected the sealed paper bag and I didn’t open it for weeks. I tried explaining this to the NHS appeals team but it was like speaking to a brick wall and I paid the fine which was around £50.

My daughter came home from university for a week yesterday. It was lovely to see her although as soon as she was through the door she said her laptop isn’t working well. I am hoping that a replacement battery will do the trick. We have been spending the evenings watching a documentary on Netflix called HellCamp: Teen Nightmare. Parents spent $16,000 in 1989 to send their wayward teens off to hike in the Utah desert for months at a time or to be stuck aboard a boat for a year. Some children were used as slave labour . The most famous participant in one of these programmes was Paris Hilton. Thousands of American children still attend these camps despite the recent bad publicity. It is nice to snuggle up with my daughter and watch something together, usually while eating a giant bag of Chocolate Buttons.

So not the best week but, looking back, nothing majorly bad has happened. There are so many people in the world suffering terribly at the moment and my trivial problems are inconsequential in comparison. I have just been feeling tired, cold, headachy and a little frazzled. I have probably also been watching the news too much. The spring will soon be here and it will be nice to feel the sun for a change.

Thank you for reading

Samantha

Cover Photo by Dagmara Dombrovska on Unsplash

So Much Stuff!

On By samanthaIn FAMILY2 Comments

Stuff – if you are fortunate enough to live in a first world country the chances are you own too much of it. I seemed to spend my twenties, thirties and forties accumulating things and now I am trying to get rid of most of it. What a colossal waste of time and money. In my dining room I have an ugly silver tray with three crystal decanters I received as a wedding gift displayed on it. I have never once used any of them in the twenty nine years that I’ve owned them. I only notice them when I’m dusting. Somebody, I can’t remember who, probably spent a lot of money on them and it makes me feel guilty to think about lugging them all to a charity shop, I doubt I’d be able to sell them . Who uses decanters anymore? My husband is decorating my daughter’s bedroom and, even though she is not an acquisitive person and has lots of her possessions with her at university, the clutter is spilling over into the rest of the house. Fleecy blankets, toiletries, sporting trophies, odd bits of jewellery are on every surface and it is driving me mad.

Every year at about this time I start decluttering. Three years ago I made it a serious project and I am pleased to say I still have empty cupboards where I have resisted replacing any of the items I got rid of. Anytime I am going to the local high street I make a point of having a look around the house first for items to donate to one of the many charity shops. My wardrobe is still full to bursting with clothes that I never wear though. The more I have spent on an item the more reluctant I am to let it go. I have two pairs of leather boots that I have worn about twice because they are too wide at the calves and it is really time to say goodbye to them. I tried selling them for a bargain price on the local Facebook page but the woman who said she was going to buy them didn’t turn up and they have languished at the bottom of my wardrobe ever since. I also have a collection of worn-once evening dresses that really need to go along with the various strappy heels I bought to wear with them. My feet hurt just looking at them.

Something I did manage to part with was the collection of Lladro ornaments I had received from a particular relative over a number of years (I hope she never reads this!). I bit the bullet and dropped them all at the charity shop. Our local British Heart Foundation shop now emails once a bag of donations has been sold letting the donor know how much it raised. This is such a good incentive. A recent bag of paperbacks and scarves I dropped in raised an impressive £19.

My project for March is to have a ruthless clear out of my clothes, towels, bedlinen and paperwork. My coat cupboard is full of similar black padded coats, some I have had for twenty years. I need to give most of them a quick rinse in the washing machine and then drop them off at the Salvation Army collection point. I will report back once my decluttering project is underway. In the meantime, if you are in need of any boots….

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Onur Bahçıvancılar on Unsplash