Weekend Summary

As previously posted, I had every intention of putting the garden to bed this weekend, but I got a bit distracted on Saturday morning, a consequence of finishing Marie Kondo's book and being in the mood for a bit of decluttering. The result was that I decided to declutter the hallway cupboard instead of tidying the garden.

This was the before photo.

As you can see it is pretty well rammed to the rafters with stuff. Admittedly, most of it is packaging materials I want to reuse, ingredients for candle or natural beauty product making and some sentimental items that belonged to my mother, that I find it hard to part with.

I tackled it shelf by shelf, the top shelf probably being the hardest, as this contained part of my collection of Hornsea Pottery ceramics.  I really need to find a way to display these in the house, but haven't found one yet.  I do like them though, so I'll keep thinking about it.

Also on this shelf were my mother's items.  I went through the box and did manage to set aside a few items to donate. They were the things that had less sentimental value to me and that I would never use. A few things I put into everyday use rather than letting them sit unused in the cupboard. This was progress enough for now. I still kept a fair few things though.  I'll keep going back to these and I will probably be able to part with more as time goes by.

The middle two shelves were the candle and beauty making ingredients, so I tidied them up as best I could to make them easily accessible.  I did find several things to donate, I also disposed of a few bits and relocated a few others, so I was pleased with the overall result.

The cupboard, as you can see from the photo below, now looks a little less cluttered.

So, I've made a start on the clutter clearing for this month, which feels good.  The garden will have to wait until another day, as Sunday was way too cold for me to get out there.  I just couldn't face it. It probably won't take long once I get going, but I've got to be in the right frame of mind to tackle it.

Instead, I tackled more of the ironing mountain this weekend, as this had the added bonus of keeping me warm with the weather turning so cold.  I also made an effort to get to grips with my new digital camera, which was a birthday present from OH and I did a bit of computer housekeeping by sifting through all of the photographs on my computer, making sure to delete any I don't want to keep and transfer others into appropriate files.

We lit the wood burner for the first time this weekend and I had forgotten how lovely and cosy it makes the house feel. We've been sitting down to watch 'The Crown' on Netflix.  There's been so much hype about this series in the newspapers, that it almost put me off watching it. I'm glad, however, that it didn't, as we're finding it surprisingly well made and are enjoying watching an episode of an evening, in between watching our other current Netflix favourite when each episode becomes available, 'Designated Survivor'.

I have to admit that I do like the autumn and winter months, when you don't feel you should be outside enjoying daylight or sunshine and can hunker down and get cosy at home guilt free. Definitely my favourite time of year.

I hope you all had a great weekend.