Some Cleaning and a New Addition to the Bedroom

By day three of my four days off, I was starting to feel a lot more energetic.  OH had headed off up to Yorkshire on the train, and I headed off to a Zumba class at the gym.

I popped to the bank after my class to hand in the letter to close my business account, nipped into the Post Office to post my sister's birthday card and then on the way home I spotted something in a second hand furniture store that set me on another path.

I recently decided that I'd like a proper bedside cabinet, and ideally one to match our main bedroom furniture which is solid oak and from Habitat. There were a pair listed on eBay, but they were already bid up to £80 and they were out in Surrey somewhere.

Passing the second hand furniture shop, I saw a bedside cabinet from the IKEA Malm range, which matches some other pieces of furniture in our bedroom, so I thought that it might be a better solution, but priced at £25, it seemed quite expensive for the condition it was in.

When I got home I looked in the IKEA catalogue to find that new it would cost £40, but I didn't really fancy putting it together myself, so I took another look on eBay and found one reasonably locally. I offered £15, which was accepted and I just had enough out of the residue in my business account to pay for it.  I arranged to pick it up the same night.

The main reason I wanted a bedside cabinet, was to free up the small shelf that I found on the street and painted, as I wanted to use it in the kitchen for my kitchen office.  Having wound down my business, I don't need to keep so much downstairs by the kitchen table anymore, so this was the perfect choice for this spot, as it holds everything I need and also frees up space around the table.

Also, it's not visible from the door as you enter the kitchen, so it creates a much less cluttered look as you walk in, which is all good when I'm attempting to simplify things at home.

Before picking up the item, I decided to do a big clean of the kitchen, which was long overdue. It felt so much better to get on top of things in this room, as I just haven't had much time or inclination to do any cleaning lately.

The next day, I had the whole day free to clean and do laundry.  Apart from dog walks, I had nothing else planned.  The first job was to clean the cabinet I'd collected the night before. Once I'd done that, I decided to start the cleaning in our bedroom, so that I could put it in there.

It fitted perfectly by my side of the bed and neatly stores away all of the books I'm currently reading. It's not in perfect condition, but I was really pleased with it. It feels more grown up and resolved and most of my stuff is hidden in the drawers instead of being visible so it's easier on the eye.

I continued cleaning through most of the rest of the upstairs and by the end of the day, I'd got to grips with a reasonably large part of the house.  The rest I will have to tackle on Sunday/Monday, when I'm next off work.