Light Touch 2018 - I Find A Waistcoat !!

Hi again, darlings, so glad you popped back again today.  You're a glutton for punishment!

Yesterday we talked about decluttering and Death Cleaning -  here's Part II of my  shaggy dog story.

Christmas came along and the bathroom tidy was put on hold, with me scratching my head over where to store towels and toiletries.  Fast forward to the first few days of this year.  Time to return the Christmas decs to the loft.  Yeah yeah, nothing to do with bathroom tidying, I hear ya!  But it does.  Read on ...

  I'd seen a blogger post of decs nicely stored in see through boxes.  

I had storage envy.

So out went the battered old cardboard boxes.  In came these beauts and things were looking good.  Apart from TP declaring that there was no floor space in the loft to store these beauts.  Thus early in January we found ourselves clearing a space in the overfilled loft.  A loft that has only existed for eight years, yet is filled to the gunwhales.

Obsolete luggage, lampshades ... you get the picture; charity shops and dump people don't know what's hit them!

Creating the space for the boxes also necessitated the clearance of a pile of wood we'd forgotten about, absolutely new wood which had been used to pack the kitchen we installed in 2010.   The dump man told us it just gets thrown on to landfill (a real shame), so we decided it would be perfect for shelves.  Shelves for the bathroom cupboards, declared TP. 

You see, the cupboards running under the eaves have no shelves.  So they have attracted the wrong sort of clutter.

Without prior notice TP decided to start on that little project last Saturday.

Of course, we first had to clear the bathroom cupboards of their, err, carefully curated items.

No nice way to put this bit, chaps.  Picture the bathroom floor covered wall-to-wall in old towels, curtains, cushions, yaddayadda, oh and toiletries, ca. 2010,  the year the cupboards were built.

I didn't take photos.  That upset me for all of two seconds, until TP responded with "Would you really like your readers to have seen the mess?!"

And he was right of course,   It was just toooo embarrassing.

I expect what I've learned at this point is that when you put stuff in a loft or a storage cupboard that isn't used frequently, things get forgotten.  Then they get so old (or out of date) that you don't want to use them by the time you do eventually become 

reunited with them. 

Fast forward to Friday just gone - almost all of the contents of the two cupboards have been dumped or taken to the GSPCA, save for a handful of cushion covers (and a few other choice pieces!), which I've laundered.  Shelves have been built.  Lighting has been installed.  Oh TP is a wonder DIY'er!

Storage boxes have been filled with towels, PJs and in-date spare toiletries.

 



It's all there bar the inside painting.

I am sooo excited.  It feels like storage cupboards have been magic-ed out of thin air, because they just weren't used properly previously, so it was like they didn't exist. But now that they are shelved and lit, they've identified themselves as what they are, very useful storage in a very small house!

And all because The Pout wanted to store her Christmas decs neatly in plastic boxes.

Now, I did promise you a shaggy dog story in Friday's post and I think you'll agree that this certainly is such a story.  Because at the end of this lonnnnng post, there is a link to the cinema outfit.  For, in amongst the mess in those eaves cupboards I found my few choice items, 3 suede skirts and a waistcoat.  So I threw them in the washing machine.  Yes, suede, thrown in a washing machine!  You see I had nothing to lose as they'd previously been wiped from my memory banks anyway and thus didn't exist.  And they've come out just fine.

And that is how I was able to wear a brown suede waistcoat to the cinema, peeps!

Decluttering is a First World problem.  I get that.  Declutterng this house has always been a "when I retire" sort of project.  But when I started to fear that someone might have to clear up MY mess, spurred on by seeing TP organising the total clearance of two houses (mentioned yesterday), well, the time is now and Death Cleaning has commenced.

And following my Light Touch 2018 approach, I'm dealing with one area of the house at a time, then moving on to the next on my list. It's light touch, little tweaks ...

So now I just have to ask you, what's your take on decluttering?

Is it not needed because you keep on top of things, ongoing?

Or do you have lightning speed purges?

And have you started thinking Death Cleaning ...?

A la perchoine.

Please note that the writer does not recommend washing suede and cannot be held liable in the event of laundry mishaps.  She washed hers because she had nothing to lose as the items would have otherwise been dumped.  Only chance washing suede if that's your situation too!