7 Bags of Rubbish!

 

Loving my picture of mortar and pestle - there's something quite rude about it - or is that just my brain?

Has been a slightly strange week, son has gone back to school which is allowing me time to actually get on with some work. Not for the company I work for - if the furlough police just happen to read this (Hi, by the way), for the company that I'm setting up. 

As I've been on furlough for so long I'm finding it really hard to get myself back into the routine requirements of work. I'm also having to fight my natural instinct, which is to focus on creative thinking and doing. I'm having to do lots of boring very grown up stuff, but allow myself one moment of creativity a day - or I'd explode. 

On Monday I met with my new accountant - she seems amazing. I'm quite nervous about having an accountant, I worry that they will run off with all my money. Then I remind myself that I haven't got any money and it helps me to calm down.

Today I am setting up a bank account - I mean how exciting is that (not). It's something I've been putting off because there is a monthly charge for a business bank account and when you have little or no income coming in it's a worry where that money will come from.

Also I've been working on the elevator pitch for my business. Harder than you think. What I specialise in I've been doing for 20 years and for 20 years I've never really been able to put into words what I do. Now suddenly I have to work this out. I keep coming up with things and trying them on people, but each time I do they admit they still don't have a clue what I do.

You may be wondering where the mortar and pestle come in. Yesterday I had a home day - that's not a sofa relaxation day - unfortunately! When I was first on furlough I tidied the entire house (not that you'd know now). Producing loads of bags of rubbish - I was ruthless. The one room I didn't do was the kitchen. At the time we didn't know if COVID was going to disrupt food lines etc. As it turns out it didn't. But I decided to wait until son was back at school.

I've got the worlds smallest kitchen. Seriously - I can empty the dishwasher without moving my feet. Fortunately the person that designed it did an excellent job and it's actually really practical. Sadly it's falling apart, is dated and very ugly -  but I'm going to keep it going as long as possible in case I can't recreate such a good design.

However, as somebody that cooks every day and likes to have things on hand. Things like an air fryer, bread machine, omelette maker (trust me it's not laziness I'm rubbish at omlette), sets of scales, sandwich maker, herbs, spices, sauces, kettle, toaster....... (you get the idea). There's literally no space at all.

So yesterday I went through the kitchen cupboard by cupboard, throwing away anything we didn't use or that was out of date. Turns out it's been a good few years since I did this. I mentioned son started secondary school last week. Well, I still had all of his baby bottles and spare teats etc. His first sippy cups - the one's with lids and the daring ones without. I even still had the bottle of laxative tucked away at the back of the cupboard. I was given this because I was struggling with.... (I'll spare you the detail), after my episiotomy (the reason I only have one child!).

I ended up with 7 full bin bags - you wouldn't even think the kitchen was big enough to have 7 bin bags of 'stuff' in it. However, there are 7 bin bags waiting to go to the dump. Yes I admit I'd normally have sent some of it to charity shops, but I can't find one that's taking stuff at the moment and my attic is already full of bags waiting for normality. 

So does the kitchen look amazingly clean, tidy and uncluttered. Nope - it actually looks no different whatsoever, how demoralising is that. Still small, cluttered - and let's face it - a little grubby.

But at least I know the job has been done. Now I need to get to the grown up reality of continuing my business start up activity.......