Well the days are getting shorter and nights are getting longer (to give Santa enough time to get around the world). I know this blog is anonymous - but the photo is me! Yup I have a teeeny tiny pin head and a huge bulbous bottom.
To be fair it's actually a long shadow, but the description is not too far off the truth!
Now the weather has turned and I cut back the garden ready for Spring last week - the time has come to turn my attention to the inside of the house.
We've now been 3 months without a cleaner - I've done my best to stay on top of things - though I realised this morning that I've totally forgotten to mop the floors in the bathrooms and the kitchens - ever! They've been hoovered by husband (and I think actually if I'm cleaning the loos mopping the floor is actually his responsibility - but that's a row for another day).
Overall the house is beginning to show the strain. We keep talking about hiring a skip - but it's finding the time to do the activity that comes after the skip hire. So what I'm going to do is to clear out the house room by room.
Yesterday I started with the 'Pit'. It's always been called that - actually it's our spare room, but I have always used it as my dressing room. This was because I used to get up for work at 05:00 - back when I used to commute. Husband then didn't get up until 07.00. Now I don't need to use it in quite the same way - but when you've done something one way for about 14 years it's hard to break the habit. Plus my everyday clothes are all in a wardrobe in there.
Now I work from home it's also my study - a skinny table at the end of the bed. I also use an old side table that my parents threw out because the skinny table isn't wide enough to write notes on. It's not an uncomfortable setup and I've managed it for a while, but I could do with a bit more space.
We have a study - but husband started working from home before me and he has commandeered that. As he and son use it all the time the room is disgusting. I literally cannot bear it in there. There are piles of paper all over the place, cobwebs hanging from the ceiling - it really is yuck! I go in there as rarely as possible. About twice a year I go in there and wipe the surfaces and get rid of the dust (even the cleaner refuses to enter). So I have no desire to move in there even though there are two desks.
Plus husband and I couldn't work next to each other anyway, we'd end up killing each other. Our working styles are too different (mine being perfect - obviously!).
Husband came up with an idea a couple of months ago. To get rid of the bed in the spare room and replace it with a sofa bed. It's not like we have guests very often. In fact it's utterly rediculous.
Then I could have a proper sized desk and the 'pit' will become a proper office space - instead of a spare room with a tiny desk shoved in there. I knew that for this to become a reality I needed to spade out the space.
So I did this yesterday - going through my wardrobe to clear old clothes I don't wear any more (still got loads more to do when I get to the main bedroom - but that's a blog for another day).
I'm glad I did actually I have some nice bits and bobs that I'd forgotten about because I haven't been into a proper office environment for 3 years (well I have - but as my colleagues wear uniform I always go suited and booted out of respect for them). So today I'm quite posh with what I'm wearing. Should be a surprise to my colleagues who are used to me wearing grotty fleeces and sweatshirts when I'm on camera.
We've chosen a sofa bed and this morning I picked a desk - though husband is the detail person so he's going to look at measurements and see if it fits into room. He's so detailed he's built a 3D rendering of the 'pit' so we can move furniture around and see where it fits best. He's also very kindly offered to pay for this as he has the posh study (love him).
Obviously I know the most important thing is to find a nice picture to go behind my head (currently there's a window) and we need a rug for the floor.... why I hear you ask? (could you please).
When we moved into this house I was 6 months pregnant and HUGE. The house was in a disgusting dirty mess when we moved in. I had to scrape the fat of the draining board in the kitchen with a teaspoon (I KNOW). The bathrooms were beyond compare and the whole kitchen was covered in grease. But this wasn't the worst of it.
In the spare room (the 'pit'), the previous owners cat had done a poo on the floor on the cream carpet. Rather than pick up this poo and remove it (they'd obviously discovered it when they moved their spare bed out) - what they did was spray the poo with some sort of green bleach and just leave it there.
WHO WOULD EVEN DO THAT!!!!!
Needless to say I removed the poo and gave the carpet a clean, but nothing was going to remove the stain of that green bleach.
We've got away with it so far, because OUR spare bed went on top of this delight, but I know it's there and I know when we get rid of the spare bed it's going to appear. So another thing I need to buy is a rug - to hide the offending poo stain. Lovely huh!
At some point we literally have to change the carpets in this house - but we have so much furniture.
I may start to clean out some of the furniture actually, but husband hates change and I know it's going to be a challenge to get him to release stuff.
I know I'm going to move the bed from our spare room into our bedroom, It's not going to be as astatically pleasing as the one we have in there. Basically it's the first bed we ever bought, but it's always been the most comfortable bed and mattress we've ever had. So why get rid of that when our current bed looks good, but is hopeless and the mattress is like a block of concrete.
Anyway, I'll keep you in the loop on how my study is going.
Once that's done I'm going to make my way through the house room by room - going through cupboards and looking at what I can get rid of. Then the scary bit - the attic - though I will do part of the attic in a few weeks as I'm going to do a huge clear out of my Christmas stuff.
I'm dreading it!
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