Monday, July 23, 2012

I Gotta Skip in the Front Yard, or I Did HAve Until This Morning!

Ack Pvvft Pfvt!  I am busy channeling Bill the Cat.

It was Dad's 80th birthday yesterday.  We had his 'partay' at my house, so my smoking rellies could indulge in peace and the toddlers/kids could play and not drive paying patrons up the wall.

Big problem was that I needed to declutter the house.  We are drowning in shit.

I got a fright the other night when I walked past Foxtel and saw previews for an American reality show called 'Hoarders'.  I was horrified.  Dear God these poor people.  It's a horrible condition and I was equally horrified to see that some of these people had kids in these houses.  You couldn't see the floor, walls, in some cases you couldn't even see the ceilings.  These have been instances of pets actually dying in these houses, either by getting squished or trapped.

For a long time, my house has been gadually filling up with clutter.  A lot of it craft related, but a lot of it just general detritus of life.  Kid's things, paperwork, broken or obsolete electronics it has just grown over the years.

The shed of holding was not much help as it looked like the hoarders house, only with plastic crates instead of loose crap.  There was room to carefully back the lawn mower in and put it away again.

Horrible.

Dear God!  Was this where I was headed?

Plus the looming party.

I thought first things first, I will go and clean out the shed.  Every box was sorted into three piles:  Keeping, giving to charity and a 'trash and treasure' pile (which I will sell at a later  date).  This was going OK until I found a box that had managed to accumulate condensation for oh, about two years... 

THere was no way I was putting that in a garbag and into my car.  No.Way.

So I ordered a skip.

Upshot was that I now have made a whole third of the shed clear.  Even more will go when I get to do a trash and treasure day.  I was a bit crapped off with the three day hire though, as I didn't get the skip until 3.30pm Friday, and they came and picked it up first thing this morning, and it was nowhere near full.

I rang and left a message on their answering machine, thanking them for getting it to me Friday, but reminding them that it would be good customer service to actually give people an estimated pick up time, as I had a crapload of stuff I still could have chucked...  Ah well, can't have everything.

I still have along way to go, and Sparta the Wonder Cat is seriously freaked by the whole re-arranging thing going on.  Siamese cats are Aspergergic to the max.  Or maybe it's just Sparta. Hard to say.  But, I am on my way to turn the house around.

I think we will all be better for it in the long run.

I think we will all reap the benefits of a clean house, as it I firmly believe that your house reflects your state of mental health...

Sadly it wasn't that great a holiday for the kids, but they got a few new computer games and apart from going out to the lake and harrassing ducks, and other ways in which I dragged them out into the fresh air - they declared the holidays to be most excellent and not long enough.


My beloved brother and SIL came down for the birthday party and came over to play today.  They got my KNK going again (I thought the control panel was fucked, but it turned out it had only oxidised from lack of use.  A quick rub with a jewellry cleaning cloth and the copper was all sniney again and it now runs better than it ever did.

I have amused myself by making some of Jennie Bean's sliceforms.  Noice, very unique.

I'm off to bed.  Back to work tomorrow.