2016 items in 2016

Now there's a few things that MOH says that simply fill me with dread; one of them is "we need to have a clear out" because while he says that, what I hear is "we need to clear out some of your junk!"

We have a different philosophy towards things, while neither of us like to throw things that work perfectly well away, I have a tendency to find an alternative use for something, or a reason to hang onto them a little longer. 

Remember my allotment shorts with the hole? Yes, exactly.  

And I do tend to have more things than MOH as well. So it's been building up and I knew it was coming. Then last we he said.

We need to have a clear out... 

To be fair he has a point, but still I'm hearing my version of those words.

I read recently (I forget where) of someone who while decluttering their life committed to throw away the same number of items as the year - so 2010 items in 2010, 2011 items in 2011 and so on - until they reached the optimum number of things for them.

And I wondered how that might work for us. 

Now I'm not planning on making this an annual exercise - or at least I don't think I am - but I am curious as to what the number might be. So with Spring around the corner and the tidy bug rising I'm going to keep a count of the things we get rid of. 

Keeping count

So I mentioned my intention to MOH casually, like you do, and his reaction was that it seemed a bit extreme!  See, I can't win [smiley face].

He (bless him) thought we probably didn't own that many items, or at least that many we wanted to get rid of.  I however suspect we might (that's the Royal we there) but he's just oblivious to it, clearly I could have convinced him he was wrong but well, we all know that in married life it's important to choose where and when to put our OHs right. 

And isn't it funny how we somehow have switched roles?

Now there's a challenge and a number to aim at I'm looking at things in a new light and things I no longer need, won't use again or are seriously past their best (and I can see no viable use for) are being rounded up. MOH soon recovered his position though and is threatening a t-shirt cull - as long as he counts them, I'm fine with that.

A spreadsheet for that

I also happened to mention that I had a very clever spreadsheet to help track the number of items we get rid of and what our new target is. I've kept it simple - it can be a bag of things to the charity shop, as long as I know the number of items it has in it, I'm fine. I don't need to detail every single item, although I did briefly consider it.

He knows me well and wasn't surprised to learn there was a spreadsheet, so we're currently going through the enthusiastic, teasing and annoying stage where I'm constantly being asked if it's in my spreadsheet. I know him well too, and he'll soon get bored and then he'll think it's useful.

So this year I'm going to see how close we can get to getting rid of 2016 items. That can be by giving things away, selling them, donating to charity or if they're past their best throwing them away. 

However tempting it is I won't be including things that we'd normally throw away because that would defeat the object - although if I'm very close to the target later in the year I might revise that!!  We'll see how we go.

I'm also conscious that it's the middle of March already and so I've missed the start of the year but, hey that's where we are and I don't think even I can wait until January 2017 to start this!  

88 items down already

So after a clear out of our bookshelves following their DIY makeover and generally rounding up things already earmarked for the charity shop I've already got rid of 88 items, with another twenty or so at least ear-marked for similar treatment.

So with just the 88 items gone already, my total is already down to 1928 items left to find... Wish us luck - I'll let you know (every now and then) how we get on!

Do you think us brave, mad or is this something you'd consider as well?  Leave a comment and let me know

A DIY makeover for my bookshelves

And hopefully a slightly more interesting post than that title sounds!

In our study (aka my craft room) we have two Billy bookcases and two of those shelves are devoted to my collections of Good Food and Olive magazines which are growing. The oldest magazine dates back to 2003, a year after we bought this house and clearly when my recipe know-how was starting to fade a bit...

And with so many magazines, it was getting hard to keep them upright so I had a plan.

I headed off to the big orange DIY store clutching my measurements and managed to get there on a day when the big cutting machine was working. Handing over the sizes I wanted cut I waited for the man to do his stuff and left with lots of smaller bits of MDF!

Back home I got to work to insert the cut MDF as uprights

Even though my measuring - and the cutting - was accurate, there were some variations between the space and the MDF upright, so I added some draught excluder to the top of the MDF to help wedge it in place.

This worked well and ensured the uprights stood firm, and I took a moment to work out what to do next.

CONTEMPLATING MY NEXT MOVE

That was to carry on and repeat this for the second shelf before putting the magazines back in place.  I've left the MDF unfinished and unpainted as it's already a close match to the colour of the unit, and I think it works well.

With the uprights in place, there was only one thing left to do - and that was to step back and admire my morning's work.

It looks like there's enough space for my subscriptions to carry on for a little while yet!

Planting a strawberry border

Now that we've started to mark out and dig over the perennials bed on the allotment, I can start to think about moving some of our strawberry plants from the garden over there. My plan is still to plant them as a border on the top and left-hand edges in the photo below. We've still a little more digging - and grass clearance - to do but I'm hopeful that we can get that done soon.

OUR PERENNIAL BED IN THE MAKING

The bed already has the small apple tree and just one of the three artichokes that I bought at the same time as the purple sprouting broccoli. You can just see its grey-green leaves amongst the canes on the top right, sadly I lost the other two along the way. There's also some rhubarb - by the sticks in the foreground of the picture - which moved here to avoid being on the bottom of our new compost bins.  The sticks are supposed to stop MOH walking over them, but that doesn't always work.

Anyway back to the strawberries.

I was out in the garden yesterday looking for potential candidates to move to the allotment. And these which have been growing between the paving slabs at the back of our garden are prime suspects. 

They're hardy plants as I leave them to fend for themselves over winter, so I was especially pleased to see this new growth.  Soon I'll be digging these up and carrying them five minutes down the road to the allotment in a trug, where I'll replant them.

Strawberries like a sunny, sheltered spot and I plan to dig in some compost when I replant them.  Usually strawberries are planted as a patch, but I think they'll look great along the border - and that'll make it easy for me to pick them too.  After planting them I'll mulch them with some straw to preserve moisture and in anticipation of fruit later in the year.

The good thing about strawberries - apart from the ripe fruit - is their runners, because that's new plants for nothing. Every few years when the older plants are less fruitful I retire them to the compost heap and let the new plants take over.

I find strawberries to be a forgiving plant - I grow them in pots, borders and inbetween paving - and they're a crop I'd always choose. There's many Strawberry plants to choose from, each with differing characteristics. By choosing a variety of plants you could be eating home-grown strawberries from May to October.

If you don't yet grow your own strawberries, what are you waiting for?  There really is nothing better than eating a strawberry straight from the plant!

This is a collaborative post but all views are my own.