My den!

This is my "den" it's a tip as we would say in the UK... our word for the dump see the floor..... it's meant for standing on right.... there is a lot of stuff just there!

Some of the shelves are tidish!

The desk.... believe it or not one of the random sheets of paper there is an essay from Marla about being sidetracked!

Under the desk!

Some more of the shelevs at one end of the desk!

Some  of the more disorganised shelves- ie wasted space!

Now I'm pretty certain there is enough shelving in here for everything currently in this room and MORE but I'm a bit stumped about sorting it.... I'm wondering what the clutter ratio is...... keep, trash, donate?

I don't often blog

Avid readers of this blog may have noticed that they're not actually required by my prolific blogging to be THAT avid really.. this is more of a trickle of a blog rather than a stream... It's not that I don't do anything interesting or that I can't think of what to WRITE, I just firmly believe that you really wouldn't want to READ about the minutea of my life... When I first had a blog over on LJ it was sparse and then when I blogged on MySpace it was more kind of to get my thoughts out in the world... I guess Twitter does that for me now... And since no-one has actually commented over here I have no idea if people are reading this!

I feel kind of like I'm shouting into a large cave and hearing my own voice echo back at me... and finding myself underwhelmed by the response I keep going back outside to play!

I suppose if like so many of you I themed this blog I'd have more to write about and a direct audience, however I've thought about themes a lot and always come to the conclusion that I just like it how it is... if anyone reads it or not...  I like how I can be eclectic and just ramble as I often do :)

So with all that if you read to the end you can kind of see this is a non-post.

I shan't click delete though....

From A.

*clicks Publish Post*

Here is the new pooter!

It's here so I am returned!:D

A

Audioboos

I have recently become a boo convert... I love booing.... I boo nearly every day it just helps to get my thoughts out there in the world... so if you are astute you may notice my new boo-link on this blog :D

Al
x

A girl's gotta do...

... what a girl's gotta do to keep her house in order so her head is in order too!

I really struggle with this... when I was a teenager I really didn't... I filed bank statements, information from savings accounts, birth certificate etc all with precision accuracy... but quite frankly I was obsessed... I got a buzz from doing it and I just thought it would be the same foreever... I didn't bank on moving away from home and coming back to LARGE piles of post every holiday, or having the building society write to me once every month during a financial crash to tell me the intrest rates kept decreasing.... basically there was more paper and I stopped dealing with it as it arrived and let it pile up!

No MORE! I am going to sort it out starting TODAY... even a drawers worth of paper sorted is better than nothing... I am going to get a shreader if I can afford it so that I KNOW it's dumped and gone... especially all that sensitive data!

Also I am going to get my head around my finances.. I am pretty good... but I am used to having a regular job... just now I don't so I need to NOT SPEND LIKE I DO!

So today's list is a few things

1. Bin some paper- 15 minutes of sorting a couple of magazine racks and finding homes in folders or scrapping the paper that is in them (NOT ALL OF THEM AT ONCE!)
2. Take the "european cardboard mountatin" to the municipal tip!
3. PUPA the living room so I can sit down and relax!
4. Change/wash bedsheets
5. Shine sink and hob.... put dishes away in kitchen so it's not a public health hazard!
6. Sort the rest of the washing.... label bags with days for this week!
7. Water poor droopy plants
8. Spend some time in the backyard getting some vitamin D
9. Post some pictures of pretty backyard to adoring fans
10. LOVE YOURSELF by taking a walk :D

Well I think I have put down enough things on this list...

Hope you enjoyed reading :D

A x

Well, well, well...

A busy weekend... Saturday- a piano lesson, cleaning at my mums and a housewarming/welcome back pudding party.... followed by croquet on Sunday and helping my mum write a letter... therefore I have hardly been at home... and boy does my stash and dash show!

Anyway... I will get back on track today- I have blokes in the garden finishing off my mud pile and then I'm going to pop out there myself and tidy it up to my satisfaction with all the pots in the relevant places.

I have a number of seeds from plants I have grown this year.... nasturtiums came up trumps... but only the orange ones.... lots of seed pods on those though... and the lupinsv have given me a good dozen or so... despite being since ravaged by aphids... which has made me not happy! The most mysterious seeds though are the fritilary which I would love to make lots of seedlings out of but I have NO experience of planting... everything online says they are difficult to get going and it takes a few years before flowering (since they create bulbs) but I am prepared to have a go and see if I can get any white ones which would be FAB! :D

I shall take and post pictures of the garden and the most sucessful plants of the season soon.

Any plant related advice welcomed!

Love A x

When I got here....

The house when we took it over

Well this is what my house looked like when we got it it had been unoccupied for a while... it was full of stuff... the carpets were rotting, the plants had grown wild, the ivy had grown up the back of the house and across the roof cavity.. there had also been ivy on the front and the whole place was dripping wet, not from rising damp but from neglect and a few niggling problems that had been part of the building process over 30 years ago.

The only reason I am telling you all this is because this is what it looked like when I fell in love with it... it was broken and had no heart, but I walked through the door and thought... yes this could be my home. I need to remind myself sometimes that the only reason I don't often feel like that about it now is because it is too full of MY stuff rather than it being a bad house.. I could see past the previous occupant's stuff to the potential the house had, but I guess this is harder with my own things.

This is one of the reasons I want to FLY! It's realising that it is my stuff that got my house this way and I will have to get it storted myself. It is a WONDERFUL home when it is sorted, but you CAN'T sort clutter :D

I'll post up some more exciting pics soon.

A x

The Time of Bed

... why oh why do I stay up to this late hour... it may not seem late but if I want to get up at 6.30 when I supposed to I really need to start hitting the pillow a bit earlier... so if you see me sneaking about online past about 10pm tell me to shove off won't you... nicely mind ;)

A x

Babystepping....

today I need to shine my sink... my house creeps in and out of tidiness.... I basically have too much clutter... bills, paper... boxes of crayons... But I LOVE cleaning. This is no exaggeration... I am not happier than when I have the vacuum cleaner in my hand and am running round the house with it... but if I have too much stuff I can't put away I can't vacuum and the mess soon piles up. I have a deadline for cleaning out some rooms here. What used to be my craft room and study needs clearing out so someone else can work in there I plan to get this done for when this person visits in November, I figure a bit at a time this is plenty of time to get it clear and sorted.

I will blog again later when I can show you some pictures of the rooms I love in my home.

I promise I will also revisit the original intention of this blog which was to talk about the actions associated with we are what we do

So long from me for now....

A x

FLYing

Well I have found "that FLYlady thing" over at www.flylady.net

For those of you unfamilar with FLYlady, it's a home mantainance system but rather than focusing on the "perfect" home focuses on how our homes got to be in CHAOS (can't have anybody over syndrome) in the first place and tells us not to do it all at once but to work through at out own pace to get things done that everyone needs to get done around the house.

I can't explain any better than the lady herself so just click on the link if you need to know more... but basically I'll be posting pictures of my lovely home up here as I get the house from disorderly to beautiful.. my end goal is to send my pictures to YourHome magazine!

A
x

Just before...

... I do a piano lesson I thought I'd blog quickly to let you know my CRB arrived in RECORD time :)

I'm STILL ALIVE!

Hello World,

I am now excitingly twitter based, and also creating the website of the Operatic Society. There are other things I am doing too, but mainly I thought I'd tell you all that I'm back bloging here. Not sure what to blog about exactly yet... there may be pictures and exciting tales about my life... that you probably won't want to hear but if you don't, then don't read!

Al
x

I need a new photo online.

So I am uploading one here :)!

Goodness Me!

I have been away so long.... for no good reason I am online every night!

Well I'm at ParkviewCLC today and all my classmates are making blogs..... on blogspot... I may put links up to them and there must be an action for that but I can't think of it now... I may find out later :)

Take care all!

Time again to blog....

.... I'm not sure what this action is... I again have time to blog... which will be good I intend to do a list of my actions as a HTML section on this blog to save me having to think hard about what I have done.. I'll just update the code and then be done with it!

I have however bought fairtrade.... and getting quite excited about christmas... must go clean my room... will blog again later. :)

Action 40

Join something well... I have more than once.... I have joined the a few societies since I left school and the most important one is the following...

Revelation Rock-Gospel Choir

The vid is a rehersal I was part of last Easter..... I smile to see it... I was there getting excited... feeling very fatigued and smiling from ear to ear!
River of Dreams is a great song...... watch and listen!


There are lots of things to thank "rev" for but the main one is friendship... I have so many lovely friends that have made the last 5 years of my life so special! Thanks Rev!

Action 40 will appear again watch out for it!

xx

Actions 01 & 25

Well on the plastics front I have done both well and appalingly over the past few days... if you're all wondering where I have been I was ill last week during the English Half-Term break... woohoo what fun....

Anyway
Action 01... big tick for not using any carriers on my trips at the weekend to IKEA and to wilkinsons... however I did but some plastic crates when I was there.... so this brings me onto.... Action 25.... use a mug not a plastic cup.... oops... I used 4 today out of sheer laziness... a mug will be taken into to work tomorrow... I'll get a nice cuppa too!

I would also like to take this oppurtunity to to dedicate my use of Action 41 for today to a special friend ((who you can find somewhere on this page much like the duck in the Usborne children's books which I throughly recommend for anyone looking for christmas presents or sources of material for Action 02!))

Keep smiling everyone and wish me luck in my new role as a teacher!

Action 80....

.... today I chose a new friend... a new bank! I was fed up with my old bank (sorry HSBC) and being an ethical sort of person I chose a bank with an ethical policy more in line with my own feeling on fairtrade, animal testing and human rights. Hello Co-op then (hello co-ops nice interest rate as well)

So the question is does changing my bank make me feel better... the answer is yes... I am doing business with my bank... when I work I know where my money comes from... I know what I do with it... I want my bank to spend it responsibly as well! It's my money after all.

Things I've not been so great at today are the leaving the lights on... and the not shutting the computer down and leaving the chargers plugged in... but hopefully this will be helped by me having secured my power lead to my desk now making it easier to find and plug things into and more importantly out of! Without having to untangle myself and my chair from the afformentioned's cabley bits!

Oh well tomorrow is another day... that's only 15 minutes away! :)

night night

Well this is new...

....here I am writing a post from my DS! woot... proper post to follow! :-)

So I promised.....

.... I promised to do something worthwhile with this blog and have been formulating a plan for a while this came to me after a discussion with a friend that I hadn't been blogging... I felt this blog needed purpose... so I rang him back about 60 seconds later insipred with the theme for this blog.

The Begining
Well the day I was 21 (13/04/2005) I stayed in all day working on my dissertation! Anyway one evening that week I had friends round... my dear friend Mary had bought me a book.... it was an unassuming small volume called Change the World for a Fiver by a group call We Are What We Do
anyway it was the best present I have ever had I read it then and there cover to cover and got very excited about the concept!

From then until now I have tried to carry out some of the actions in the book and to date I have bought about 6 copies to give to friends... (thats an action my the way no 47!)

The Idea
Anyway fastforwarding to that conversation I have decided to blog my actions... to see at the end of each day where I won out... where I slipped up... keep account of just where I am making a difference.... to this end I also promised at Oct.06 to keep this blog daily... to the nice people from Cafod for the LiveSimply campaign.

So here I am blogging to explain what my blog is for... comment welcome I just hope I can live up to my promise.... I'm off to shred papper for the compost heap.