Whoo Hoo quilt back and an Apron

Today I have a  Finished or Not Friday at Busy Hands Quilts and my December goal for One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts.

Firstly, Whoo Hoo train quilt is my Finished or not Friday.  Remember the puffs of steam shown on my goal setting post here that disappeared?  I didn't want to waste them so I have sewn them into stepping stones on the back which is now finished.  My dining room was the only place light enough for a photograph today so I may have just invented a quilted tablecloth with built in runner!

It is all sandwiched up (you can probably see the pins if you look closely) and my binding is pressed and ready so although I am not quite finished I hope to be by next Friday.

My One Monthly Goal for December requires a little back story.

I have recently embarked on a campaign to teach my 14 year old son some useful life skills.  He is very intelligent but has no common sense at all and although a good working knowledge of calculus and multiple programming languages may help get him into a good university it will not keep him well fed with clean clothes.  Honestly, I love him to bits but some day I'd like him to become an independent person and not live in my house anymore.  Here he is with my daughter on the night of his middle school graduation.

Since the summer I have taught him how to do his own laundry (which he does each week) and vacuum his own room (which he does when he can find the floor under all the unsorted laundry) and I have begun teaching him the rudiments of feeding himself.

We have started with learning how to read the instructions on a packet of instant food and so I have introduced him to 1 portion microwave mug cakes.  There are many varieties out there so every time he tries a new one he has to correctly interpret the instructions, this has worked really well because he enjoys eating them.  Here's what he has learnt so far:

• Microwaves come in different sizes and powers
• There is a difference between tablespoons and teaspoons
• It helps to read the instructions properly before you start
• Size matters when it comes to mug capacity
• Metal does not go in the microwave

Now he has got the hang of packet mixes we will progress to making mug cakes from real ingredients.  To celebrate his new skills and help keep him clean I am going to make him a nice new apron for Christmas, this Martha Stewart pattern is my goal for December.

Linking up with Finished or Not Friday at Busy Hands Quilts and Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal December Linkup. at Elm Street Quilts.

Garage Miscellany

Last week I cleared out the garage.  I put all of my gardening equipment in a big plastic deck seat/box, relegated outdoor toys to tubs outside the backdoor and stowed away the fold-able deckchairs in the cold room.  There was an alarmingly large collection of never used cleaning products (mainly speciality stuff that had been left by the previous owners) that went to the dump and quite a lot of odds and ends of timber which was donated to the next door neighbours, I hope they find it more useful than I did.

All that left was bikes.  Gary has reclaimed Jacob's bike because he never uses it and today we donated mine and Rose's old one to Recycle Cycles, a community project in downtown Kitchener.

I now have a weirdly empty garage.

While I was clearing out I discovered that we had managed to collect a whole load of car window cleaning implements:

• 4 snow brushes (1 broken)
• 3 squeegees (that spelling looks really weird)
• 5 ice scrapers

We only have one car.

Again I ask ask how does all this stuff creep up on you, I know we used to have 2 cars but still that's an implement to clean each window on each car.

In order to put a picture into this post I am now going to share a quilting innovation...

Can you guess what these are for?  All will be revealed on Friday, or whenever I get my quilt sandwich finished.

Whoo Hoo

I really actually feel like I need a whoop whoop for this one.  At the beginning of this month I discovered the great One Monthly Goal linky party at Elm Street Quilts.  The timing was apt because I'd just got my dreaded box of UFOs out of the basement, sorted through them and decided to make myself accountable for actually finishing a few.

I chose to set the goal of finishing a scrap quilt top that I began making for my nephews around 4 years ago and despite having been super busy clearing out the basement and the garage and fitting sewing sessions in between child minding and trips to the thrift store and garbage dump I have done it.  Here it is, I am really pleased with how it's looking.

Anyone who saw the previous post will notice that the design has undergone a bit of a change, before there were puffs of smoke where now there are trees.  Basically I decided that the smoke was too hard (sad I know) but also I remembered another UFO lurking at the bottom of the box and decided to kill two birds with one stone.  I deconstructed this even older project

I made these trees around six years ago, I think they were inspired by this Anna Maria Horner 'Feather Bed' pattern.  I'm very happy with how they turned out as background, I like the feeling of the deep, dark woods that they give, maybe there's a Gruffalo in there.  Also the train has changed direction!  This is because when I looked at the pictures of the design my kids originally came up with it was this way around.

I used lots of fairly haphazard techniques for the different blocks.  The train is appliqued with blanket stitch, mostly by machine with a bit of handwork.  The sleepers are strips that were sewn together then sliced length ways and flipped with the background inserted to represent the tracks.

So what of the smoke puffs?  Never fear, I think I will use them on the back for a stepping stone type effect.  I'm thinking something like this.

I'm really hoping to get the back finished over the weekend and the whole thing quilted and bound by next Friday.  If I do I can get it in the mail and with a lot of luck it may reach England in time for Christmas.  Fingers and toes crossed for that one.

Linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict and One Monthly Goal (OMG) at Elm Street Quilts.

The Basement Part 2

Over the weekend I've been very busy in the basement as we now have less than 2 weeks until men arrive to frame it.  Arghh.  Will I get everything out in time?  Things are even tighter because I've set myself the 'goal of the month' with Elm Street Quilts of finishing a quilt top and that is due very soon.

Today's offering comes in the form of 3 lists.  First is the donate list, all packed up and delivered to the Salvation Army Thrift Store

• Set of green plastics in-trays
• 2 framed Dali prints
• Cranberry glass bonbon dish
• 2 small picture frames
• 1 pair curtains
• 6 pillow covers, not used since 2005
• dog lead, found in the garage when we moved in and doesn't fit the kids
• Ornamental toy car
• Plastic bag of clothes
• Shelf with coat hooks under it
• Brush and shovel set for hearth
• Assorted Christmas ornaments and lights
• Coffee machine
• Miscellaneous plastic toys from McDonalds

This list went out to the curb on garbage day.

• Broken iron
• Broken kettle
• Broken mason jar, broken since 2015
• Suit case with broken handle
• Half a pound of party balloons

And this lot has been packed into a big plastic box for a yard sale in the spring.

• 4 Christmas side plates
• 3 glass vases
• Set of 6 wine glasses
• 5 glass ramekins (kept 14 which is still pretty excessive)
• 4 matching mugs
• 2 cup and saucer sets
• 2 antique cups
• Assorted coasters with cats on
• 'Fashionable Coasters' 20 of them in a now very rusty tin

I also found these items and couldn't bring myself to bin them.

You just never know when a moustache might come in handy, especially an edible one.

Notions

This week I've been a bit under the weather so I decided to tackle an easy one and went through my collection of notions.  They live in a set of plastic drawers with labels on the front, for easy organisation and access (theoretically), and contain mostly useful items such as zippers, elastics, snap fasteners, pinking shears and grommets (the round fixings not the dog).

It would seem that my worst hoarding problem in this section is tiny pieces of pretty ribbon.  I had (notice the past tense there) loads and loads collected from all sorts of places but most notably:

1. Little tiny pieces from the cinched in bits of Christmas crackers
2. Long skinny bits that are sewn into the underarms of tops to stop them falling off coat hangers

They have not proved to be useful so they have now gone.

This is a list of items that I have kept and I think I will give myself a time frame (lets call it 6 months from now, 16 May 2019) in which to use them up or bin them.

1. Assorted bias tape
2. Spare snap fastenings from old clothes
3. Rick rack trimming
4. Pom pom trimming

I might use the bias tape to make some festive scrappy bunting but need ideas for the rest of the stuff please.

These are the best 2 Items I found.  The first I inherited, it made me laugh back then and I marvelled at why anyone would keep a collection of these.  Guess what? 6 years later I've still got them.

In case anyone's wondering they are free sewing kits from hotels, and you know what? I still can't bring myself to get rid of them.

Next are these name tags, they must be 40 years old, I've not had to sew a label into anything since I left high school and my name hasn't been Kirstin Miller for the past 14 years so I'm sorry labels, you're out!

Memory Boxes

Last week when my contractor suggested December 3rd as a start date for our reno's I panicked and spent a while flinging things at random into boxes in the basement.  After some deep breathing and a coffee it occurred to me that wasn't the best approach so I went through the kids memory boxes instead.  That took a while because some of the stuff was pretty cute, I particularly like the things they write about us on Mother's and Father's Days.  According to Rose I am a chef and a chauffeur, and my favourite thing to do is watch Downton Abbey.  Oh dear, so much for 2 degrees.

I threw quite a bit of stuff out because I couldn't remember why I'd kept it, but I also kept some pretty ridiculous things.  For instance I have all of their school reports from age 4 onward.  Maybe the time will come where you have to present a full education portfolio to get into University and my children will get into Oxbridge, Harvard or similar as a direct result of my hoarding.  Ha!  I'm sure I'm not alone in this kind of hoarding but it would be good to know that for sure.

I have kept a few of the kids tiny clothes, like Rose's teeny, sparkly dance shorts that she would still be wearing now if I'd let her, but I think these might be my favourites, Jacob's first pair of shoes.  How did he get so grown up?

Books

This week I have had some news which has put rather a rocket under the clearing out project.  We are having some home improvements done, did I mention this in any posts yet? I can't remember.  Anyway, it's been a bit of a trial but I finally found someone who can do the work and he can start rather sooner than I anticipated.  I need to completely clear the garage and basement by December 3rd.  Gulp.

On Wednesday I cleared out and bagged up 169 books.  I have found this a bit hard because I do like books, but if I'm being really objective there are a lot of them in the house that will never, ever be read again.  For instance, textbooks from my first degree, I graduated in 1995 and haven't opened them since so I think it's probably safe to let them go.

I've also had the kids go through some of theirs.  Jacob has been very good and decided to donate almost everything he owns, all he seems to have left is 'The Game Maker's Apprentice', which is so old and dog-eared he can barely read it and 'Calculus for Dummies'.  How did I create such a nerd?

Tom has also done his bit and thinks he can live without such riveting reads as 'Exploring Corporate Strategy' and 'Affiliate Program Management - an hour a day'.  I fear he went though hell to get his MBA.

Rose is going through a big reading phase at the moment and finds parting with her possessions difficult so we put the stuff she doesn't read in a box and I'll take it away when she's forgotten about it.

We still have quite a few books but I feel that a house isn't a home without at least a few.  I went through the house and estimate around 250 remain.  Some more can go if I can figure out e-readers and how to own or borrow e-books.  If anybody reads this and has any observations on that I would be very interested to hear from you.

Beginning the Basement

I was considering not putting pen to paper today, I've been slowly getting on with all the sorting and throwing out but none of it has been either monumental or exciting.  Still, I committed to posting on Tuesdays and Fridays so I shall note down briefly what has been done.

I finished sorting through my magazines and after much deliberation and typing out of vital recipes I have thrown 43 out.  All I have left are...

• 5 Christmas issues with lots of great recipes that I will definitely make, honest
• 1 Vogue knitting magazine
• 2 gardening magazines
• 1 Halloween edition with good pumpkin carvings
• 8 Vogue patterns magazines
• 1 quilting magazine with some really good scrappy patterns

I've not actually got rid of the rest yet, they are far too heavy to put out in the recycling all at once, also Rose and I have been using them as a step for her to practice kick overs off.

Yesterday I sorted out the non-sewing/knitting craft stuff in the basement.  I have rid the house of a large bag full of...

• Unfinished craft kits
• Multicoloured feathers
• Opened bags of sequins
• Dried up glue
• Hundred year old fabric paint
• Miniature pompoms
• Tiny bits of paper
• Pencils whose lead snaps when you sharpen them
• Dried up markers
• Tiny, grubby used erasers

And much more stuff too numerous to mention.  In order to quantify it and get it into Tally Ho! I decided to weigh it, 2.247 kg of rubbish plus some recycled paper and card and a box of wooden beads far to 'childish' (her word) for Rose now she has reached the grand old age of 10.

I found a couple of little gems while I was looking through stuff, here is a tiny piece of art that my sister sent me when I was at University.  It is about the size of my hand.

And here is a postcard my Dad sent me from Norway.  I wonder what happened to his favourite green cord cap?  I do hope it had a happy second life out there.

One Finished Top and a UFO Inventory

If you read any other posts on this blog you will notice that there isn't a whole lot of sewing going on.  This is because Mrs Parker's Blog is a motivational exercise for me as I try to clear out my house.  So far it's working quite well.  I post twice a week; on Tuesdays and Fridays and for each post I must have cleared out and organised something (be it big or small) in my house.

Today's organisational challenge is my big box of UFOs.  I have decided to get them all out, post them here and set myself a time limit for finishing them, so here goes.

Here is a top I finished around 5 years ago and this is my Finish it up Friday.  It's made from a batik jelly roll I bought because I loved the earthiness of the colour pallet and is supposed to be a sort of abstract representation of satellite images of Southern Ontario that you can see on Google Maps, the black lines are roads, small green blocks are wood lots and the strips are fields.

The reason I never got further than this (apart from laziness and lack of staying power) is that I couldn't decide whether to put a border round it or not.  I had the idea to use a mitred border to almost make it look like a framed map on a wall, I even made the fabric pieces for the frame.  If I do that it will look something like this...

So what do you think?  I am still really not sure what would look best and would be very grateful for any feedback.

My next UFO is actually leftovers from another quilt, you can see the original one in this post from The Parkers Abroad.  It is based on Elizabeth Hartman's Xylophone quilt pattern in her book A Modern Patchwork.  I totally over estimated the fabric I would need for my xylophones and ended up with all these strips to use up.  I'm pretty happy with them and I love the happy yellows but I've not found a background I like yet.

Third is this scrap quilt I started for my nephews, I'd better get on with it or they will receive it when they're teenagers and not be impressed.  The train blocks were designed all over the floor by Jacob and Rose one day when I left my scrap box out.  This quilt is my One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts, my goal is to finish the top by the end of November.

And finally, this is my most recently started quilt, I blogged about it here.  It is also inspired by an Elizabeth Hartman design, Bird Bath, from A Practical Guide to Patchwork.

So now I just have to get on with finishing them all up.  I am going to see if I can motivate myself to finish some aspect ready for Finish it up Friday each month.  My aim for November is to have the scrap quilt top done.  If my 'proper' sewing machine is back from its spa break I would like to have the whole thing completed so I can post it off to England in time for Christmas but that might be a little ambitious.

So now I'm all done I'm linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts , Can I get a Whoop Whoop and One Monthly Goal then I'd better get sewing!

Magazines

Yesterday I decided to go through my embarrassingly tall stack of old magazines.  I decided to do this because we need to clear out the basement to get it framed out and because I thought it was a quick and easy cop out job.  It would seem that I was wrong and as a result this is a post about a job half done.

So far I have corralled all the magazines in the house.  I'm afraid the total comes to 61.  I think the oldest is a BBC Good Food magazine from 2000, you can tell how old it is by the picture of shaggy haired, teenage Jamie Oliver on the front.  I thought I could take a quick flick through them all and be done with it in an hour.  What a fool I was, I am not the proud owner of 61 magazines for nothing.  The moment I open them I am transported into dreams of all the perfect lifestyles portrayed on their shiny pages and I just can't let them go.

Anyway, after 2 days of sitting around reading I'm nearly done.  I have a big pile ready to go, 8 more to look through and carpal tunnel syndrome from typing out vital recipes that I might not be able to live without.  Actually, I did come across a nice sounding spinach and feta filo pie which I might do Gary for Christmas so it's not all been a waste of time.

So in the absence of any proper clear out news here is a picture of Rose in her full witches regalia ready for Halloween.

Junk Drawer #1

This week really has been a total write off for me.  We recently had a Home Energy Evaluation done and are now trying to figure out how to make our house more comfortable and efficient to run.  I have 120 days to get insulation and a new furnace installed.  Anyway, with chasing contractors around for quotes and Rose's party prep there still hasn't been a lot done on the decluttering front.

So today, just for something to write about I emptied the junk drawer and the pen pot that lives on the kitchen counter.  Here are the contents...

In Good Riddance, Showing Clutter the Door, Susan Borax and Heather Knittel say that you need a junk drawer for 'household items (that) defy categorisation' I confess that mine is for stuff I can't be bothered to put away properly and don't want to get rid of even though I should.  They have a list of rubbish items commonly found lurking in the junk drawer.  As you can see I am guilty of the following.

• Rubber bands
• Twist ties
• Miniature sticky notes
• Pens that don't work
• Unidentified keys
• Paper clips

I am also a hoarder of key rings and expired coupons (not shown here, they live in a different junk drawer), small things that are too good to throw away like tiny torches from loot bags, hair clips for 2 year olds, spare buttons from clothes I don't own anymore and anything half decent from a Christmas cracker.  I am also building up a formidable collection of glasses cleaning cloths and yet my glasses are always filthy.  Am I alone in all this?

I had a good tidy up, put some stuff back where it should actually go and threw some stuff out but if you examine the newly tidied junk drawer (below) you will still see a big ball of rubber bands.  How can I throw it out when I've been building it since 2014?  Anyway, you just never know when you might need 600 rubber bands, perhaps I'll need to escape through the dining room window on a home made bungee rope one day.  There, I'd better keep them for fire safety reasons.

Scrap Metal?

This is a complete cheat's post and comes to you courtesy of my husband and father-in-law.

I've been quite busy over the last few days getting things ready for Rose's birthday party, making llama bags for favours and prepping jewellery for the girls to make.  As a result I've had no time for de-cluttering.  The men on the other hand have been busy going through the big pile of tools in the basement.  They have done very well and this is the resulting pile of things that will be going.

On the whole I am very impressed.  However, I did find this rather humble looking bag in the keep pile.

Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to what's in it? No? 63 Allen keys that's what.  Please understand that I am only revealing this to prove that I am not the only person around here with a weak spot, see Drowning in Gloves and Winter Wardrobe.  I told Tom how many there were in the bag and in the name of accuracy and thoroughness he went round the house searching through untouched tool boxes, bedside tables and other likely Allen key habitat and found a further 18.  Wow.  That's a lot of IKEA furniture.  Here's a picture of some just to prove I'm not fibbing.

What on earth am I going to do with them all? Is there a special place where you can send Allen keys to retire or must they all go into scrap metal and be melted down to make new Allen keys?  Perhaps I could try to sell them all back to IKEA then buy some furniture with more free Allen keys.  Please help, all Allen key disposal/recycling/crafting ideas warmly received.

Winter Wardrobe

The weather here in Southern Ontario is being typically capricious for this season.  A couple of weeks ago it was a balmy 26 degrees, but now we are barely in double figures and it snowed on Tuesday.  Here's photographic evidence and more can be seen in my Instagram feed.

So time for the biannual wardrobe change over I think and a jolly good clean out while I'm at it.

I read quite a bit in my resource books about cleaning out your clothes.  One good technique is to take everything out of your wardrobe, get rid of 5 coat hangers and then put back only what will fit on the remaining hangers.  Another is to throw out everything you haven't worn for one year.  I'm feeling quite good about streamlining my possessions right now so I decided to disregard both of these methods and just go on a trashing binge.  I did pretty well and managed to get rid of all this...

• 8 summer tops and t-shirts
• 4 hoodies and sweaters
• 3 skirts
• 2 pairs of trousers
• 2 dressy tops
• 2 pairs of shorts
• 5 pairs of tights

Summer stuff has been stowed under the bed and in the back of the spare room closet and everything else is sorted into trash and donate.

My problem area in the wardrobe department is jeans and I'm only writing about it in order to shame myself into getting rid of some more.  I have 2 pairs of skinny jeans (1 white, really?), 4 pairs of boot cut and 3 pairs of gardening and painting jeans.  A grand total of 9.  3 pairs don't really fit, in fact I bought 1 pair 4 years ago after a few weeks of very strict dieting and they haven't really fitted since the day I tried them on in the store.  Also, why 3 pairs of gardening jeans? I don't spend that much time in the garden.

I fear that this is not the full extent of the jean hoarding and when I tackle the basement I will find more in my sewing stash waiting to be turned into something else.  They may be waiting a very long time!

Am I the only person who holds onto denim or do other people?  Do you have an irrational fear of throwing other items of clothes out?  Please tell, I'd love to know that I'm not the only one.  Tune in next week to discover if I have managed to part with some more of the Jeans.  After all I can always buy some more!

More Shoes?

Rose was quite taken by my shoe sorting and arranging the other week and wanted to join in.  So here are 11 of her 12 pairs of shoes (her indoor school shoes are at school so not included in this picture).

She's cheating a bit because she pinched 3 pairs of old sneakers out of the donate pile in the garage so she can look like she's all carefree and bohemian with no need for possessions.  Nothing is further from the truth believe me.

She is getting rid of 3 pairs of sneakers (that are too small, I'm sure that doesn't count) and 2 pairs of sandals.  Here's her newly amended shoe selection.

This slimline selection will not last long as I owe her a pair of birthday boots and we'll be off to the store for snow boots soon.  Winter lasted so long last year that the soles of her old ones wore right through.  In April I resorted to filling the holes up with silicon bathroom sealant to try to keep us going for a bit longer.  This technique didn't work for me, if anyone out there has any tips for prolonging the life of a pair of well loved shoes please tell.

Finishing up the Closets

I thought of writing 3 more posts about finishing off the closet clear out, but the idea of that is so dull its making me reach for a bottle of something strong so I'm just going to write a list of everything.

• 7 Jackets (1 bought in 2010 with the labels still attached)
• 1 summer dress worn once in 2012
• 1 strange wrap style sleeveless top, don't know what I was thinking
• 1 unfinished silver top made from old t-shirt, unfinished because looks terrible
• 1 boys hoodie with only 1 sleeve, unfinished mending/conversion job
• 2 age 10 girls dresses, given to us and never worn
• 1 feather trimmed cape, Rose's not mine
• 1 iron that stopped working 3 years ago
• 1 box that its replacement came in
• 1 pop up gazebo that's still in the shipping company packing from our emigration
• 3 backpacks
• 2 lunch bags
• 2 sneaker bags
• 8 matching blue kids size coat hangers
• 5 matching white kids size coat hangers
• 1 fancy girls coat hanger
• 13 assorted plastic coat hangers with age/size printed on
• 1 light bulb changing pole with fittings

Lessons learned this week

• Buy less clothes in sales that don't really fit properly because they are a bargain
• Insist that coat hangers are removed from clothes before they leave the store

So much unwanted plastic seems to slip into the house unnoticed these days, especially with the kids, and coat hangers are the worst.  You know the ones I mean, the flimsy ones with age/size on coloured plastic bits stuck on them.  The problem is that they really don't last very long or look nice in the closet/wardrobe but you can't take them anywhere for reuse.  There must be acres of landfill filled with those alone.

If anyone out there has any coat hanger solutions, knows anywhere they can be taken or wants to start a campaign for only producing coat hangers from recycled materials please let me know.

Drowning in Gloves

The front hall closet is home to baskets and bins of all the hats, mitts and other paraphernalia that help keep us warm, dry or shaded when we go out.  Everyone was available to help at the weekend so we changed over ball caps for toques and went through the giant box of winter stuff that vacations in the spare room closet in the summer.

I'm starting with a list of everything I found in all the closets.  There may be more that I've not found yet lurking under beds and in other forgotten corners but this is plenty for now.

• 26 toques (see this post for definition of toque if you're not Canadian)
• 38 pairs of gloves
• 9 neck warmers
• 11 baseball caps and summer hats
• 4 pairs of earmuffs
• 4 scarves that don't belong to me

That's a total of 91 items of outerwear between the 4 people living in this house.  These statistics suggest that I have 2 problems.

1. I don't seem to be able to pass a bin full of bargain Thinsulate gloves without buying at least 2 new pairs.  This goes for tiny stretchy ones in all different colours too.
2. I like to knit and have a knitting-itchy-hats-for-children-who-don't-really-want-one habit, might be in training to be someone's grandma.

If it's neither of these things then i think there might have been an outerwear breeding programme in the cupboard.

I found these tiny gloves that belonged to Jacob when he was 4, not sure if he's going to wear them again.

To illustrate the extent of my glove-retention issue here's a picture of the rest (except for the pair in Rose's school bag).

We've gone through it all and got 3 bags all packed up and ready to be donated to people who need warming up this winter but somehow there are still 62 items.  I could blame it on Rose who insists that she NEEDS 8 winter hats but really its me and my glove thing.  I've got 8 pairs in the closet and 6 'just in case' upstairs.  I think I need help!

I've reread this post and it has struck me how ridiculous it is that I own 14 pairs of gloves just for me, I shall endeavour to cut that further to 7/8 before I get to the thrift store.  I might regret it when the apocalypse comes and there is a world glove shortage but for now I'll probably be OK.

Sunscreen anyone?

Front hall closet done.  It actually took a lot less time than I thought and nothing too, too bad in it either.  Just 3 things that really illustrate the dangers of having high shelves and keeping attractive baskets in hard to reach places.

First, and I have to say this demonstrates my general lackadaisical attitude to house work quite well,  I got out the step stool to wipe down the top shelf of the closet and I found these pushed right to the back.

Must have been placed there by the previous owners to make whatever odorous items they kept on the top shelf smell even more odorous.  Guess I've not looked up there in 3 years then.  Oops.  Anyone out there who likes a scented sachet? I definitely recommend these, after however many years in the closet they are still very, very pungent.

This next photo doesn't need much explaining really.  I'm clearly paranoid about harmful UV rays which is probably not a bad thing, but it might be best if I could find a single, visible place to keep the sunscreen in order to avoid acquiring so many bottles.

And finally, in January 2015 Jacob and I purged his room of GOOS (Good On One Side) paper and rather than throw it all out I made handy dandy notebooks which used to travel around with us as things to do when we ran out of activity books in restaurants.  I blogged about it here in The Parkers Abroad.  See the one on the top, it has Jacob's Christmas list for 2014 on it.  Fancy wanting an iPod touch, how quaint, he would be less than pleased to receive one this year.

I'm not throwing them out.  I shall write lists on them for the next 2 years.  Or just maybe sometime in 2021 I'll find them in the bottom of another attractive storage basket on a very high shelf.

Does anyone else own 10 half used bottles of sunscreen?  Does anyone else find the previous owner's belongings in their house 3 years after moving in?  Please let me know and reassure me that it's not just me.

Shoes

So I actually decided to begin not by emptying the closets as planned, but by sorting out my shoes. I was quite surprised to discover that I'm the proud owner of 14 pairs of boots, shoes and sandals not including numerous pairs of slippers. That's even more than Rose who has only 12.

Here they are in all their glory.

Rose modelling her favourite pair of my boots

I did some brief googling and discovered that the average woman owns around 20 pairs of shoes so my 14 are by no means excessive. My problem is that I am completely aware that I only wear half of them on a regular basis and some not at all and if you'e going to own 14 of something they may as well all be fabulous or functional. Also (and more importantly) it's Fall which is my favourite footwear season and I want to buy some more.

I will be keeping the back 2 rows, they are my everyday, wear them until they fall apart shoes.

The rest are questionable.

• Only one pair is a definite keeper, the nude, suede wedges. Love these and do wear them about 3 times a year, honest.
• Also only one pair is a dead cert for the trash, the odd blue coloured heels that I last wore on a trip to Manchester in 2011.

Some of the others are more difficult to part with.

• My wedding shoes.
• The sandals that I bought at great expense for my first date with my husband.

I don't remember if I ever wore either pair again and I certainly haven't worn them since we moved to Canada in 2012. Francine Jay (author of The Joy of Less, see resources) says that "once something has memories, it's a bugger to get rid of" How right she is. But I guess I still have the husband (who probably has no idea what shoes he was wearing on our first date) so do I need to keep the shoes? I think that's 2 more pairs to donate.

• The not very attractive brown heels. I was going to keep those 'just in case' and because they are comfortable but writing that down is embarrassing and makes me sound very old so they are also going.

I am left with 2 maybes which are tricky.

• The cowboy/biker boots were much worn and loved over a period of 10 years from 1992. I'm pretty sure I'll never wear them again but they are now moulded to the shape of my feet and I'm having problems with the 'memories' thing, they remind me of when life was simple and unencumbered.
• The barefoot trainers were my everyday walking the kids to the beach shoes when we lived in Grand Bend. If I'm completely honest they pinch my toes a but they represent a lifestyle that I cling to the hope of one day returning to.

I can't decide about these so I might start an undecided box in the basement, is that cheating?

So bearing all that in mind here are my remaining shoes.

That's 4 pairs out the door. Can I indulge in a new pair now? How many shoes are too many do you think? Here in Southern Ontario quite a number of pairs is necessary because of the extremes that the climate throws at us. Looking at my collection now, I've got to say that it's a bit dull. I'd probably better go out and get something sparkly just to jolly things up a bit. A girl has to have some fun right?

Where to start?

* * This page, in fact this entire blog, is under construction. Forgive the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors* *

As we are reaching the seasonal changeover for outerwear I've decided to start my organising journey in the coat/shoe closets and yes, there is an 's' on the end of that closet. We have three of them and yet we still have 6 feet (tee hee) of boot mats by the front door. There's got to be some decluttering mileage in that.

My plan, which will be the method for all my organising efforts over the next few months is as follows...

• Empty each closet
• Give it a jolly good clean out
• Put stuff back in, hopefully less than I took out
• Get rid of anything that I don't put back in

Easy!

Over at A Bowl Full of Lemons, which is an excellent blog with lots of very good tips for a clean and tidy home, this is week 4 of the very excellent 2018 14 week home organisation challenge. As the name implies I think that this is supposed to be achieved in 1 week.

Mmm.

I shall leave you with a before picture of each closet and be back on Friday with an update.

This is the hall closet by the front door. It doesn't look too bad right now does it but I am really not sure whats in those red and brown baskets.

This is the other hall closet. It doesn't look like there's much in there right now does it.

And this is the coat closet in the spare room/office. Needless to say this closet does not get opened much and I could find almost anything hiding in the back.

Forgive the terrible photos, it was a miserable day today but if I keep procrastinating and waiting for everything to be perfect I'll never start this thing.