Doors Galore

I think I promised pictures of doors this weekend, didn’t I? Well, here they are. The new ones aren’t painted because I have decided to put off all painting until the very end as all the painting I have done so far has got trashed in the wake of further DIY. 

This is the landing upstairs (I was standing on the stairs with my back squashed against the wall when I took these photos. It’s a very small space!)

(from left to right: my wardrobe, the study, the bathroom)

(from left to right: the bedroom, my wardrobe)

This is the new front door. It is a stable door, which should be great for letting the air and sunshine in without worrying about security. At the moment though, it is awaiting all sorts of decisions on my part about locks, bolts, cat flaps and other hardware. And also about colour. It will be white on the inside, but what colour to paint the outside? This is a decision that links in with Garden Therapy and is one decision too far for my poor little brain at the moment.

Finally, does this count as a door? 

This is a little door/hatch/thingy I made for the kitchen (it’s on the left just as you walk in) to enable access to the pipe which drains all the radiators. It is held in place by magnetic catches and is opened by inserting an allen key into the hole and yanking. I am stupidly pleased with this and hopefully it will blend in well once it is painted. The photo also shows the skirting boards I finally got around to fitting throughout the downstairs.

My next door project is to make some doors for this space at the end of the bath:

I have the wood, so I might make a start this afternoon.

Garden Plans

Over the weekend, we finally assembled our new shed at the top of the garden:

(To the left you can just about see the hazel tree which the tree surgeon coppiced heavily a couple of weeks ago. This should grow back quite quickly into an attractive crown.)

This is a Big Deal in many ways, not least because the shed is no longer in the house. It is a replacement for this old shed which was falling apart when me moved in and has just deteriorated over the ten years that have passed since then:

Other things wrong with this old shed are:

1. It is right in front of the front door and blocks precious light coming into the house

2. It’s ugly

3. It leaks

4. It’s very hard to open the doors

5. Now we’ve had a couple of trees cut down and more light into the garden, it is in the perfect spot for sitting at a table, drinking tea and relaxing.

This is the view from inside the house:

Won’t that look inviting as a little terrace with pots of herbs, the honeysuckle and a little table and chairs? I’m also going to build a little hutch to house the bins. And we’re getting a new front door.

There’s quite a bit of wrangling ahead to get everything from the old shed into the new one along with various DIY stuff from the understairs cupboard. But I have fun plans to whip the garden into shape. I’ve planted a few herbs already and bought a tomato plant today. I was also cheered to see this list of low-maintenance perennials at Unclutterer.com. With a bit of work this year, next year the garden should be looking beautiful. 

Right. That’s me done blogging until I get back from holiday. I hope you all enjoy yourselves while I’m away and I’ll “see” you at the end of next week!

Aaargh.

As it seems to be the week of “one step forward, two steps back”, I thought I’d share a little bit of the chaos round here:

Yup. That’s a shed. In my sitting room. Hopefully it won’t be there for too much longer as the tree surgeon is coming on Friday to give the tree which is in the way of its new home a haircut,  so we should be able to assemble it over the weekend.

Nevertheless, it does sum up how things feel around here. I’m struggling to keep control. I know what I’m meant to be doing (for example, that shed is part of a larger decluttering plan that should reap enormous dividends) but everything has descended into chaos.

Meep.

On the wardrobe therapy front, I’m so glad I am restricting myself to just the work-at-home wardrobe, but even that is proving to be a bit of a challenge. As predicted, all the ‘who do you think you are?’ and ‘what makes you feel beautiful?’ questions have got me running for the hills (which is probably why I’ve been silent for a while). But I’m plugging on with the practical things and am on target to unveil a complete work-at-home wardrobe by the end of this round.

Hell, Revisited

I remember during a past Apartment Therapy Cure, Alana wrote in her blog about getting to the point of wanting to throw her paintbrush against the wall and scream. I can’t find the link, but it stuck in my mind as being an all-too-familiar scenario. It is also exactly how I felt this morning before I’d even got my shoes on.

I’ve set myself the task of getting all the final bits and bobs finished in the kitchen (yup - it’s still not finished) by the end of the month. This weekend, I’m getting all the baseboards and skirting boards finished. In the spirit  of using up what we already have, I’m trying out ‘Dulux Brushwood’ on the baseboards. It’s a fake wood (which I like to call bois faux) paint system that my parents passed on to me last year. It’s meant to be mahogany and this is the base coat:

A bit pink, no? When the base coat(s) are dry (16 hours - so, tomorrow), you then use the top coat to create woodgrain. If it is still pink-ish at that point, I think I’ll mix up some stain and varnish (hmmm - it won’t explode, will it?) to tone it down a bit.

I’m also going to do my shoes piling this weekend, which I’m actually looking forward to as it should be a simple case of fit/don’t-fit and scuffed/not-scuffed. No body image issues there.

Taming the Cable Monster - for Alana

This one’s for Alana. For anyone else interested, it is in relation to this problem with cables.

Alana - I hope you don’t mind if I dispense with all the “if I were you” or “perhaps you could” and just dive straight in with instructions. I know it will sound bossy but it will keep the writing clear. My intention is not to boss, just to offer a possible solution.

OK… So there are two objectives here:
1. To stop cables bonking you on the head as move around your basement
2. To make all the cables look a little bit neater and less chaotic

You will need:
1. A roll of Velcro (not self-adhesive)
2. Scissors
3. A stapler
4. Some short nails with flat, smooth heads (maybe upholstery tacks or drawing pins?)
5. A hammer

Step One
If possible, remove any cables that are not in use (that bedroom phone cable?) and store them away.

Step Two
If they are not already there, relocate things like the fax machine, etc so that they are next to a vertical upright or wall. The aim of this is to eliminate these cables dropping “out of nowhere” and get them in position to be neatly secured.

Step Three
Label all the plugs for fax machine, lights, etc, so you can see what they are at a glance.

Step Four
Make some cable ties. Take your roll of Velcro and cut two pieces: one that will be big enough to wrap around groups of cables and another a couple of inch or so in length. Separate the Velcro so you have two sets of pieces. Match the long piece of ‘fluffy’ Velcro with the short piece of ‘grabby’ Velcro and vice versa:

Step 5
Look upwards. Identify your first cable, or group of cables, to be secured. Take one of the longer bits of Velcro and attach it to a rafter with a nail (I’ve done it in miniature, here). The ‘working’ side of the Velcro (i.e. fluffy or grabby) should be against the rafter:

Step Six
At this point you may want to trim the velcro a bit if it looks like it is too long to hug the cable(s) satisfactorily. Take your stapler and attach the corresponding smaller length of Velcro to one end of the longer length, so the smooth sides are together. Make sure the sharp ends of the staples are not on the side which will have contact with the cables:

Step Seven
Wrap the Velcro cable tie around the cable(s) and stick the ends together.

Repeat until you have secured as many cables as possible - both horizontally and vertically. If you make longer Velcro ties, these are also good for securing loops of longer cables to keep them out of the way - you wouldn’t need to attach the ties for these ones to a rafter or wall. I made some of these yesterday to manage all the cables in my study and I think they’re great - really strong, but still easy to remove if you need to work with the cables.

So, that’s my idea. I hope it a) makes sense and b) is helpful. Let me know what you think!

Dreaming of a paper free future

I’ve been making good progress on clearing out and reorganising my study this past week. Four bin bags have been filled and I’m halfway through my fifth, and that doesn’t include the stuff going to charity or freecycle. I am currently at that awkward phase where, although there is less of everything, what remains is all higgledy-piggledy and I can’t start organising it all until I’ve finished clearing out the junk.

A lot of what I have thrown out is shredded paper (too much to go in the compost bin, unfortunately). Now I’ve got a computer I trust (my last Macbook was a dud and went through three logic boards and a hard drive under warranty before Apple relented and gave me a new one) and have bought a great external hard drive for back-ups, I feel more confident storing important documents in digital form instead of on paper. Of course, there are some that need to stay in paper form (mortgage deeds, tax records, ancient manuscripts, etc), but I have been scanning an awful lot.

I’ve been using a flatbed scanner which, although painfully slow, is getting the job done. But as it creaks through each page (and gets stuck and requires system reboots), I find myself dreaming of this:

It’s a Fujitsu Scansnap and one day it will be mine. It can scan 15 pages a minute, automatically converts files to pdfs, can scan directly into my database program of choice (Devonthink Pro Office) and even copes with double-sided documents. There are two versions - one for Mac and the other for W*****s. The downside is that it costs somewhere between £350 and £400.

I don’t know when I’m going to have that kind of money spare, but as soon as I do it’s going on one of these. It’s not absolute-top-priority, because I can cope with my flatbed scanner. I don’t need one, but it would make maintaining the paperless (or less-paper) system so much easier. As it is, I have set up a ‘for scanning’ file, which I will deal with in one big chunk each week to stop the paper mountain building up again.

The Sound of Silence

I think it’s safe to come out now. I’ve spent the last week in hiding, busily and actively NOT PARTICIPATING in the Apartment Therapy Spring Cure. It’s been hard because part of me really wants to join in the fun, but I know what will happen. I’ll start looking at what other people are doing, I’ll look at my own home, I’ll think “Well, if I knocked that wall out, we could tunnel down and fit in a ballroom” and I’ll be knee deep in half-finished DIY projects again before you can say, “Er, I think you hung that door the wrong way up”.

I am, of course, still ankle-deep in half-finished projects, but they are getting done slowly - and I do plan to get them all completed by the autumn so I can participate in the Fall Cure. I’ve got plans to make our bedroom a healthier and happier place, which will be a major-ish job, but nothing on the scale of the kitchen. I still look around the kitchen in amazement at what I achieved there (and in irritation at all the little bits I haven’t finished).

Work has settled down now, which is a relief. All I have to do until the end of March is a steady four hours a day. That may sound easy, but motivation is proving a little hard as those four hours need to be spent writing object labels for hundreds of museum objects that a) I don’t really like, and b) are practically identical to each other. In consequence, I am working at Scout’s pace - one hour on, one hour off - in order to retain my sanity.
During my ”off” hours, I am decluttering the house. I realised that I needed some outside force to motivate me to keep up with the housekeeping and organisation, so I have signed up for monthly membership of The Clutter Diet. So far, it’s working out very well and my house has shed 65 lbs, which is pretty good going (I assume houses are allowed to lose more than 2 lbs a week and still stay healthy). I started working on my study this morning and managed to unearth one shelf. The rest of the room still looks like the aftermath of an explosion, so I think I’ll be plugging away at that for a while.

Evening Routines

The sheer amount of work* I’ve got on at the moment is leaving little head space for philosophical thinking, so I have been concentrating on practical changes on the housekeeping front (which is a good thing, as thinking about how to clean a floor won’t get it clean). I’ve made two leaps forward this week:

Firstly, I’ve started an evening routine for the kitchen. I find that if I do this at the end of the evening, before my relaxing cup of cocoa, it really is quite painless. It’s also quite simple - just doing the washing up, clearing and wiping the worktops (which I discovered again on Monday, buried under a pile of old newspapers, sewing projects and other miscellany),  wiping the stove, microwaving the washing up sponge (to disinfect it - not sure why I’m doing this, but it makes me feel efficient) and emptying the kitchen bin. It doesn’t take long at all and coming into a clean kitchen in the morning is great. I plan to extend the routine to cover the rest of the house (putting away, emptying bins, etc) gradually.

Secondly, I have had a brainstorm about cigarette smoke and smells in the house. If I’m honest, this is the most ’shameful’ thing about our house - and, yes, it is all my fault. If I was really good, I’d make myself go outside to smoke. But I’m not really good and, besides, there is nowhere to shelter from the rain out there. So, instead I have purchased a couple of ‘air washers’. They are little machines that you fill with water and they suck air in, wash it and puff it back out again. I bought two because, although they are not loud, they’re not silent either. One will live downstairs and be switched on at night and when there is no one in the house; the other is upstairs so it can do its stuff during the day (and also when there is no one in the house). They seem to be doing a good job already. My only concern is that the manufacturer makes a big deal about how they also humidify the air to replace moisture lost through central heating. Lack of moisture is not a problem we have here, so we’ll just have to see how that goes and if it causes any problems.

*This also leaves me with a dearth of words for blogging, so I apologise if I’m quieter than usual over the next few weeks. I’m banging out words all day in quite a frenzy (and all of them for publication, alas, so I can’t cut corners) and find that the last thing I want to do when I stop is write more words.  Or speak. Or use my brain for anything.

Developing a housekeeping plan

With Housekeeping Therapy, the things I need to address are:

1. Defining my philosophy
2. Getting on top of the current chaos
3. A system for keeping the chaos under control
4. A longer-term plan to keep said system running smoothly

I know that I want to get some help with the heavy cleaning in order to leave me more time for all the reading and writing I need would prefer to do to progress with my career. Hiring a cleaner really is a longer-term ambition, though, as our home is nowhere near the state in which I would be happy to ask someone to help keep in under control. But, I am putting a time-scale on achieving this goal and it looks like aiming for November 2008 would be reasonable. This gives plenty of time to develop light cleaning and tidying routines and to attack the bedroom in the AT Fall Cure.

Regarding my philosophy, this is slowly developing in my head, helped enormously by thoughts on the subject posted by other AT/WT/Ht-ers. I am also going to weigh in with a post on this topic, but don’t have time right now.

For developing a system, I think I may have found the help I need. I was in London over the weekend and found a book that looks perfect for me. It is called Houseworks and is by Cynthia Townley Ewer, the founder of organizedhome.com. I’ve only read the introduction, but looking at the table of contents and flicking through, it looks like a wonderful and practical resource for a housekeeping dunce like me.

That’s all for now - my lunch break is over and I’ve got to get back to the grindstone. (I’m currently churning out museum labels for what is possibly the most hideous collection of porcelain one is ever likely to encounter, a task which is amusing and nauseating in equal measure. Never before have I had to use the word ‘puce’ with such frequency.)

Housekeeping Therapy Questionnaire

Yup. Still in bed. Still procrastinating. (In my defence, it’s really cold outside the duvet). Here are my answers to the Housekeeping Therapy questionnaire that scb has prepared:

How would you describe your housekeeping style (3 words)?
1. Slovenly
2. Chaotic
3. Anxious

Who is your housekeeping Iconic Figure? Martha Stewart? Felix Unger? Oscar Madison?
The only person I recognised in that list is Martha Stewart, but have googled and found the other two are characters in The Odd Couple. It would probably be a mix of all three.

Why?
Martha Stewart has things looking nice (flowers, little homely touches, etc - her home probably smells like a fresh spring breeze, too), Felix Unger can probably find things at a moment’s notice and Oscar Madison represents my natural slobbish tendencies. Oh dear, this isn’t helping. I need a cleaner.

Who would you consider a role model when it comes to housekeeping? That differs from the question above in that I want you to think about someone you know, whose style you might want to emulate in some way.
I’ve been racking my brains and I just don’t know. I honestly never take any notice of the level of housekeeping when I go to visit people. Maybe I should - if they are quietly judging me (as I believe they do), I should probably return the favour.

Why?
See above.

All this leads up to — what do you want from the way you keep your home? What level of cleaniless/tidiness is important to you on a daily/weekly basis? What purpose (other than keeping the health inspector from pounding on the door) is this to achieve — for example, do you need to be company-ready at a moment’s notice?
OK. Now we’re talking. Being company-ready at a moment’s notice would be great. I am hugely embarrassed at the mess that greets people when they visit. On a daily level, I think I’d like things just to feel fresh and clean and organised. Fresh and clean are the keywords, in fact, as being in such an environment lifts my mood.

What, if anything, is standing in the way of that level of cleanliness/tidiness being achieved?
As I have mentioned before, I do actually like cleaning in moderation. What I don’t like is having to do a major tidy before getting down to it. My ideal would be to have a tidy home, in which the general cleaning is done by someone else (a cleaner!) and the finer details (windows, polishing knick-knacks, etc.) are done by me.

Are the obstacles:
1. Physical — is there something about the way some part of your home is arranged or organized that isn’t working for the function(s) that area needs to fulfill?
The only physical problem is that I still haven’t finished my DIY stuff for downstairs, so there are random piles of wood around and the tools are still easily at hand in the understairs cupboard (where the cleaning stuff should be) instead of in the shed. I’ve just got to get on with it and get it finished. I could also do with having a general clear out.

2. Psychological — is there something within yourself that’s keeping you from dealing with what’s necessary to keep your home the way you want to? Is there some form of motivation or reward that might help?
Does tiredness come under this heading? Housework is always bottom of my to-do list and I’m usually completely shattered at the end of each day. Going back to the ‘getting a cleaner’ idea, that would be a motivation to keep things from crisis level. I would be too embarrassed for anyone to come in and clean when the house was a tip, so I would be motivated to keep it tidy if I knew someone was coming each week to hoover and dust, etc.

Oh, and just to slip this big one in here, I also smoke in the house. That kind of does away with the ‘fresh and clean’ thing right away. For various reasons I don’t want to talk about here, I am not at the point where I want to (or could successfully) quit, but I can certainly do something about the impact it has on our home.

3. Equipment — is something not working for you, e.g. vacuum cleaner not up to par, or somesuch?
Nope. Everything is fine in that regard.

I didn’t think this questionnaire would actually help, but it has really clarified my thoughts. At first glance, getting a cleaner seems like a ridiculous idea as this house is tiny and I should be able to look after it myself. There are also the usual guilty thoughts of palming off one’s ‘dirty work’ on someone else. Also, we are not wealthy. On the other hand, maybe I just need to accept that I’m a chaotic person and that my energies will always be directed away from the drudgery of domesticity. Yes, I enjoy cleaning when I do it, but do I want to spend the time doing it? Probably not. I’m not a person with big reserves of physical energy, but I have a busy brain that spurs me on. This year, for example, on top of my usual chug-along work for museums, I have two books to research and write (one with a client, one on my own), other work for clients that I don’t know about yet, vegetables to grow, clothes to make, people to see, sleep to do… Maybe now is the time to accept that I can’t do it all.