Untangling threads with history

We’ve been continuing to clear my MIL’s house, and sorting through what is no longer needed. It was the home that MOH spent his teenage years in, and holds many memories for the whole family, and it also has plenty of stuff, as family homes do. A fair amount of that has come back with us, and that includes some craft stuff which, as you can see, needs sorting.

What’s strange though is that now this untangling is soothing. Previously I’d not had the patience for it, and my dad and even MOH would help sort out tangles in wool, but over the past few years I’ve found the patience - and the satisfaction - of untangling reassuringly mindful.

A while back I bought a large bag of vintage threads, where thankfully the embroidery threads were neatly organised and wound around strips of cardboard. Remembering this I dug them out to add this jumble of threads to those.

And before long, they were unravelled and some new cardboard strips with notches cut out held the once tangled threads. Not all of the threads survived it, but a large proportion did, and they are much more usable like this.

I noticed though that the two strips of cardboard I’d added to, had much more character than my saved birthday cards. Or they do now, maybe my birthday cards will hold the same attraction in years to come, who knows.

The blues above are wound onto a card that once held ‘washing and boiling elastic’ and which ‘outlasts any garment never needs replacing’ - the mind boggles doesn’t it. The greens and yellows I added to the 'knicker elastic’ card which once held ‘the latest Improved Rubber Thread.’

Aren’t they a find? And I wonder if any of the packaging around today will seem as dated in the not too distant future!

A new, bigger rug - eventually

Just after Christmas MOH answered the door for a delivery and returned to announce he’d bought the house a present. Those words alone were enough to fill me with fear, but hoping I was wrong I braved it. My fears heightened when I saw it was a rug - MOH and I have quite different taste, and he proudly admitted that he’d copied the decor in his flat (which I liked) from one of the paint catalogues - fair dos and all that. Usually I opt for more modern styles than he does, but that’s not always the case. But seeing the package, the fear was real.

He was keen for opening it and showing me, but I’m wise to this now and instead he showed me a picture from his email confirmation. He knew from the look on my face, which clearly I didn’t hide very well, that I wasn’t keen. In fact I was so not keen that it didn’t make it out of the packaging, and spent all its time with us propped up next to the front door. He tried the ‘I don’t know how to send it back’ trick, but as he’d shared the confirmation email with me, I could help there and printed off the return label for him. He’s ever the optimist and left it to the last possible day before making arrangements for its return, and still it never made it out of the packaging, or out of our very small porch. I’m not sharing where its from, or the style/design because I’m still scarred.

NOT THIS RUG

I know his intentions were good, and his reasoning was pretty solid too - but even so, not that one, not ever.

Having broached the subject of a replacement rug in quite a unique way, we started conversations about replacing the one that was already there. It was cream-based and past its best, by a long way, I knew that and even a shampoo didn’t really help it. It was time to replace it - we were agreed - but I still really wasn’t keen on his tactics, or the actual rug. But anyway, there wasn’t going to be a new rug in the house until the offending one left, never to return.

And it went. And stayed went.

I’d been browsing websites looking at many, many rugs. He wanted a rug that didn’t show the dirt, I wanted one that wasn’t too dark and would lift the space. We looked, and became experts on the many, many rug sizes; measuring the floor to see where it might go - and finally we settled on this distressed Kamran Cayenne Red Rug from Ruggable. So while it’s lighter than MOH wanted, and the most traditional style I’ve ever chosen - the fact that it is washable is in its favour.

It’s a two part system - the top that you can see, which is light and flexible and a sturdier ‘under rug’ pad - which really acts like a large piece of velcro. There’s a knack to pairing them, and the video makes it look simple - it took me longer than I thought it would, and while I’m particularly fussy it took me a couple of attempts to get it matched with the overhang even - or at least with the pad not showing.

And before you make the same comment as MOH, yes it’s distressed and yes it’s meant to look like that. I know that I’m in for this conversation many times over with MOH, but you know it never gets old…

It’s a much bigger rug than we’ve had in this space before, and MOH is pleased he can put his feet on the rug, rather than on the wooden floor. He said walking on it feels ‘crunchy’ and that may settle down I guess. He’s already identified a potential downside of having a larger rug, and that’s it could be easier to spill things on - just as well it’s washable, hey?!

It looks pretty good, I think - and MOH agrees, which is just as well as I’m hoping we’ll get many years use out of this rug - and hopefully our next rug purchase, whenever that might be, will be less traumatic all round.

Giving the HF500 a dusty test drive

This post contains items gifted by HooverDirect.co.uk for the purposes of this review.  All views and opinions are my own.

I’m very much a fan of household items that are functional, fulfil their purpose and which don’t dominate your living space.  So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that when I was offered a H-FREE 500 Twin Battery 3 in 1 Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner (this is the top of the range from this series) to review I was keen to see if a compact hoover could deliver great performance (spoiler – it can).  When it arrived, I was surprised at just how compact it was.

As you can see from the picture below, it’s not a usual sized vacuum cleaner box – it’s just a bit more than half way over the height of the radiator.  And in that box, there’s a lot of vacuum cleaner.

It’s also really well packaged.  The items are separated by cardboard with each piece in its place, getting so much into the space available is a pretty mean feat.  Add to that, that for my area, all bar two bits of the packaging are recyclable in our kerbside bin, and that’s also good news.

In the box, along with the unassembled cordless H-Free 500 is a crevice tool, pet brush, additional filter, two battery packs, a dusting and upholstery tool (which is stored on the handheld), a bag for the accessories and the quick start guide and manuals, as well as a wall mount and screws (not shown). 

The instruction manual shows clearly how to assemble the cleaner, but it’s really intuitive and so you’ll not be surprised that I went ahead without referring to the manual, looking at it to check that I was on track.  When it’s fully assembled (see the picture below) it’s a fully sized cordless vacuum cleaner, which I was keen to put to the test. 

I expected to need to charge it though before I could get started, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover it already had some power, but more on that in a moment.  First let me show you the cordless hoover in its compacted form – it was easy to switch into this mode – and you can see it’s clearly reduced in height, which will make it easy to store.  It’s also pretty sturdy standing alone in both set-ups, another plus in my view.

What’s equally impressive is the dual battery – that allows you to have the second battery charged and ready to go, I can see that being a real advantage.  On the Hoover Direct website, it says that ‘each battery pack gives up to 40 minutes of power in auto mode, 25 minutes in standard mode, or 8 minutes in turbo mode’.  The other thing to note about charging the HF500 is that it can be plugged in anywhere, so there’s none of this ‘returning to base’ for a charge which gives it even more flexibility which would have come in really useful for my MIL’s house move at the start of the year.

But back to giving it a test drive. 

As you know I’ve been working from home in my ‘top’ office for a while now, it’s a room that I’m using so much more than in all the time we’ve lived here.  That’s true for MOH and our spare room too though to be fair.  What we’re finding is that our house gets way more dusty than we noticed when we were out at the office each day (or maybe it doesn’t and we’re just noticing it more, who knows!)

My ‘top’ office also doubles as my yoga space, and recently it was when I was supposed to be emptying my mind that I noticed just how dusty part of the floor was.  Embarrassingly so, but in my defence it’s where our washing dries and at this time of year it’s put to good use  – yet another use for my ‘top’ office, which despite the picture I’m painting really is a nice spot to work in.  For a start it’s not the kitchen table and it gets the warmth of the sun from being at the front of the house – but back to the dust.

What the HF500 does really well is switch easily between carpet and non-carpet.  The LED lights really do help you find the hidden – or in my case, not so hidden – dust.  And reassuringly it’s definitely much cleaner now – my yoga sessions can go back to being much more relaxing.

I also want to share more about the dusting tool – and once again my home office set-up provided the perfect place to test the handheld mode.  Removing the pink tube – I forgot to mention how much that made me smile when I opened the box – and fixing the dusting tool in place, I was off – there was no stopping me – skirting boards, radiator pipes and my ‘borrowed from the office during lockdown’ footrest.  It’s amazing how much the HF500 picked up from these areas alone – and clearly I’m going to claim that it was my plan all along to have somewhere where the difference is obvious… ahem.  But I’ve also tested its pick-up power in much higher traffic areas – and therefore more often cleaned areas - of our home, and even there it’s making our space much cleaner, and that’s no bad thing, especially when it’s easy to achieve too.

So it’s a big thumbs up from me, and I know MOH is itching to get his hands on it too to give it his own test drive, and well, who am I to argue with that? 

View this product on Hoover Direct.

*  With thanks to Hoover Direct for providing the Hoover H-FREE 500 Twin Battery 3 in 1 Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner for the purposes of this review.