clEAn and lEAn – where the journey takes me 2

February 1, 2026January 31, 2026

dear diary ~ resurfacing in February

Saying goodbye to January and a welcome to February.

After a day or two of feeling considerably yuck, and just when I thought I had shaken off the worst, the virus decided it would linger a little longer. So I had to linger a little longer with it, sometimes on the sofa and sometimes I just gave in went back to bed and slept…the clock round in one instance.

I fully expect this was a reaction to not eating properly or getting to bed at a decent hour for a number of weeks on and off. My body was not going to wait any longer and decided an enforced rest was necessary.

I was disappointed though. At the start of the week, I had planned to embrace my patiently waiting task list, and suddenly and abruptly my plans were cut short as the cold rapidly took hold. At least I managed to go for my blood tests on Friday morning, so not all was lost.

The weather is pretty dismal here; blanket grey skies with an enveloping fog that is always lurking in the background. Drizzle competing with snow, and cold – always cold, so anything bright really stands out like the little red berries on our cotoneaster horizontalis outside the window.

There are other small flashes of colour too – the pretty pale yellow petals of the primulas poking over the tops of the terracotta pots dotted about the garden.

Still I have nothing against January, or February. I welcome the slowing down after Christmas, and like a crab scurrying away into its shell (I am a Cancerian), I love to retreat into my snug, warm home for a few weeks getting ready to emerge when the brighter weather beckons.

In my more lucid moments I have been reading and watching. Reading the Persephone book DH bought me for Christmas‘They were sisters’ by Dorothy Whipple – an engaging read but never expect an absolute happy or conclusive ending with her books, they often leave you with hope that situations might improve for the characters, but nothing more. She tells a good story though.

There is a film too from (1945) I might browse the Talking Pictures channel just in case they have it listed. We are not sufficiently in this century to have a paid TV subscription like Netflix – it would not be a good use of our money. We never had a TV at the cottage in Scotland and I actually preferred not to have one. On our earlier visits we didn’t have a phone or the internet either and were sufficiently cut off from the world to just absorb the peace and quiet. But then the longest we stayed there was only 3 weeks and most often it was only a week or weekend.

I will soon be starting the epic ‘How to End a Story‘ the collected diaries of Helen Garner but not before I have a browse through some of my recent library requests, ‘Unprocess Your Life’ by Rob Hobson, ‘Just One Thing’ by Michael Mosley and ‘The Doctor’s Kitchen’ by Rupy Aujla all in preparation to begin my next project of restoring our diet and health this month.

On the watching side, we have been viewing The Great Pottery Throwdown, Landscape Artist of the Year and the Agatha Christie adaptations on BBC iPlayer. I am also a fan of Art of the Garden on the Freeview Sky channel. I suppose anything with art in the title will always catch my attention.

We are pondering another art workshop, this one being held at a cheese and wine tasting venue in a neighbouring small town of Brighouse. An odd place for a painting and craft workshop (and there is no wine or cheese included) but they are making use of their room whilst it is not been used for tasting sessions. There is a social session and an artist led session to choose from.

Our idea is to jump in the car one day soon and check the place out before committing….and I will sneak in a visit to one of my favourite places – the large independent Boyes department store for a mooch around. You can always count on them to have something that you never knew you wanted and all at affordable prices. And yes, I do keep telling myself I shouldn’t even cross the threshold to avoid any temptation.

So how did my financial review last month go?

I spent as much time as I could in January addressing our financial position and fashioning a new budget for the year using last years figures, increasing them by a 10 or 20% margin to allow for the continually rising prices.

Once all the interest payments from our ISA savings have been accounted for we will be a few pounds richer. It always feels good to see the pounds increase when normally, all we experience, is the monthly decrease of our pension income.

I received the Vinted sales report for last year – a tidy £171 acquired on clothing items sold. Most of this is actually going to my daughter for the clothes she had accumulated but didn’t have time to sell herself. It is unfortunate she has not yet regained her pre-pregnancy size and these lovely clothes were languishing unworn in her wardrobe. Not all the clothes were advertised on Vinted as I took a lot to the charity shop as well so they didn’t miss out.

But we have yet to have the boiler service (next week), a probably large dental bill (postponed for 2 weeks), and we have a holiday upon us for a week on the North Yorkshire coast. A whole week looking out over the sea…I can’t wait.

Having a quick review of the housekeeping we managed to keep it down to just over £290 for the month, so I am pleased with that. It would be amazing to keep it at that figure every month, but I have to be realistic and I was starting January with a lot of stock in the pantry. Ideally, I would prefer to keep only ‘one in hand’, or ‘replace one as I use one’ but I have to be realistic and being ill, together with the bad weather, I realise I do need to keep the pantry well stocked for the first 3 months of the year at least as it gave us something to fall back on when we couldn’t get to town.

But yes, the coffers are definitely looking good so far this year.

Not being well enough for a trip to town, I did as maybe we should all do (and I know many of you already do) shop local. But really, a tin of non-organic Heinz baked beans £1.77 from the Co-op (I had to read the price label twice), I didn’t even look at the price of the loaf, courgettes and mushrooms, just offered them up at the till and paid by card.

I desparately needed a small present for my friend’s birthday too. The present box is currently empty, so after leaving the doctor’s surgery on Friday I had to find something in the village amongst the beauty parlours, dog parlours and turkish barbers (like everywhere we are short on proper shops now).

I completely forgot about the gift shop along the main street and had decided on a cyclamen from our lovely florist. But when we got there the cyclamens were on display outside and decidedly limp from the drizzle. It is the tiniest shop but she has one or two gifts inside and I spotted just the thing, these tiny mice. I bought an extra one while I was there to keep in the present box. I know my friend will love it as it is the sort of thing she would gift to me.

I delivered it to her doorstep and declined to go inside – so as not to spread my germs.

Of course just lying down not being able to participate in real life for a few days left time for thinking and daydreaming….. and thinking and daydreaming of organising and running our home. Some readers will know that I am very much a fan of Lean and using Lean methods to run my house. It is a system developed by Toyota in Japan many moons ago, and in my mind there are many good things practiced by the Japanese and Lean is one of them. It is a system I used at work with my team to good effect, but it works just as well for running an efficient home.

There are many strands to the whole concept. I will briefly explain:

Streaming, the idea that everything is progressed as a stream that is followed through from beginning to end – cooking, laundry, shopping;

Kaizen or continuous improvement where you look for ways to be more efficient and create solutions to any problem areas;

Muda, meaning waste and this encompasses anything from money, time or ingredients and especially the environment. Reducing this waste is particularly beneficial;

Seiri and 5S; Sort, set in order, shine or clean, standardise and sustain. This speaks for itself – wouldn’t we all love a home that ran itself efficiently by just following a few simple rules;

And lastly, you manage all this with the help of a simple Kanban board a home’s central dashboard if you like.

It is a while since I have really used these principles and I am eager to get back to streaming the management of our home again. Last year and 2024 were ususual years for us with a lot of coming and going with plenty of house selling and buying within the family and, as is quite the case, things move on and my systems and streams need an overhaul.

I have a few more areas of our finances to improve on and streamline before I move onto this months topic – our diet. You cannot have missed the number of TV programs, magazine articles and books all talking about the disadvantages of eating ultra-processed foods and the many advantages of eating well. It is something I researched last year and also signed up to the Zoe programme, started a few years ago by Tim Spector (who is also running the TV programme What Not to Eat). So no doubt I might have a few posts talking about my health journey.

But that is another day another post.

Have a good week everyone, back soon x

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January 3, 2023

dear diary ~ back to busy

Yesterday was a long hard day. DH was unwell with a very bad sore throat and swollen glands – whether it is a strep throat or not we will have to wait and see, but it is quite bad and swallowing very painful and I don’t think he is just being a wimp. As usual he didn’t really jump on it soon enough and it has taken hold. If it had been me I would have dosed myself up with Vitamin C and zinc, hot orange and honey and been gargling away with salt water at the mere suggestion of a sore throat but DH tends to wait until it is far worse before finally jumping into action.

So I was doing all the ‘action’ yesterday whilst he laid prone. I sent him to bed for a while mainly so that I don’t have to follow him around the house continually wiping doorknobs and banister rails with dettol wipes as strep throat is highly contagious and I certainly don’t want it; I feel I have had more than my quota of illness last year.

When there was a lull in my nursemaid duties I took down all the Christmas decorations around the house and the baubles from the tree – but left the lights on the tree, mainly because it is too big and heavy for me to move and I didn’t want to look at a bare tree for a few days until DH is recovered enough to remove it. I haven’t packed the baubles away yet as I usually give them a good clean with a cloth or soft brush and do any repairs before putting them back in their boxes – so that is today’s job.

I had to pop down to our local co-op for a few necessities, plain yoghurt and milk and picked up a packet of toasted tea cakes to have with a hot cuppa on my return. Luckily, I had two offers on my co-op card – one for milk and one for the yoghurt so it reduced the bill from £5.30 to £4.60 (which is still an extortionate price for 3 items in my mind). I enjoyed the walk – we are not far from the village centre – it was pleasantly warm in the sun but there was still a bite in the air and I was glad of a hot drink and a toasted teacake when I got back home. Once I had thawed out a bit I hung the two throws I had washed outside in the sunshine – it is the first day since Christmas that I have put in any washing and hung anything outside.

We just had a tin of Heinz mushroom soup for lunch as it was easier on DH’s throat being quite creamy and for tea I put a meal together from bits and pieces we had in the pantry and fridge – some baked potatoes which we had with a little butter and grated cheese and I roasted the last two parsnips, some leftover cherry tomatoes, a few chestnut mushrooms and half a red pepper in a tin whilst the potatoes cooked. I made a nice creamy rice pudding too whilst the oven was on – I always use brown pudding rice, rather than white and a tin of evaporated milk, rather than ordinary milk for extra creaminess.

No matter how poorly DH is he never fails to eat, unlike myself as I usually can’t face food if I am ill. Eating always makes him feel better and there was a glimmer of hope that he might have improved a bit and be on the turn by bedtime last night. Maybe the rice pudding clinched it!

I have eggs to use up so I will make some plain sponges for the freezer today in preparation for the upcoming birthdays. I am not sure how to make a Paw Patrol cake for little Freddie though and will need to approach my friend Google for some ideas. If Sainsbury’s or any other supermarket do one already then my daughter might buy one instead; the sponges won’t be wasted, they will always come in for another birthday another day.

After a difficult conversation with mum last night (complaining the carer had refused to take the recycling down to the bins – however, when questioned further it turns out the refusal was merely the carer saying it didn’t really need doing – mum can always be relied upon to make a crisis out of a drama) I sorted through my collection of wool and found a pattern for a little baby jacket. Our fourth grandchild is expected in May so I am starting early and making the 6 months size in the hope I can finish it before baby grows out of it! As the sex is unknown (both my daughters have always wanted surprises – which is fine by me) I will have to make the fronts when baby arrives as the buttonholes are on different sides depending on gender.

I found a lovely knitted bag pattern going for 10p in a shop that was closing down last year and I am hoping it will use up some of the leftover DK wool I have, I also fancy making myself a bobble hat if I can find a pattern.

So on with the day today – there is a lot more clearing and cleaning to do around the house before it will look anything like tidy and if I am lucky I might get the decorations back into the loft or at least back into the boxes.

Better get on with it then….

August 29, 2022

dear diary >> busy doing nothing

Well I know I was busy all day but it felt like I had achieved very little. But….the pastry did get mixed and we now have some lentil pies and a quiche base in the freezer – I could have made more but silly me had not noticed the plain flour jar was running low. To compensate for the shortfall I added in some spelt flour and it has made a nice pastry. I used to prefer wholemeal pastry but it is quite heavy on our digestion these days so I switched to Doves Farm organic white which is unbleached. We don’t have pastry very often these days as too much of it does seem to take longer to digest.

I should have titled this post a ‘Tale of two candles‘ as I spent a good two hours in the broom cupboard trying to accomodate my excessive amount of assorted candles (many of them I inherited from my daughters) and make a ‘pleasing arrangement‘ as DH would say.

As always when organising storage there is always the odd thing that just doesn’t quite fit and in this case it was the very annoying two tall pillar candles. Too tall to stand upright on the shelf and just a smidgen too long to be contained in any receptacle that I have. In the end all I could do was lay them on their side -but this is not ideal as they roll about a bit.

The short stubby ones and the tea lights all fitted quite nicely into the 3 storage boxes and I found the best way of storing the long thin ones is upright in glass jars. To make room for the candles I had to adjust the three shelves in the broom cupboard so the top shelf had a larger gap to fit two stacked storage boxes and the bottom two shelves had a narrower gap. But whilst solving this problem I unknowingly created another and when I came to close the cupboard door the contents of the storage container fastened to the door were now too tall for the narrower gap between the bottom and second shelf and the handles of the cleaning and bottle brushes no longer fitted comfortably between the shelves when the door is closed but hit the shelf and stopped the door closing.

So now I have removed some of the taller cleaning brushes and will have to find a new home for them….argh!

I am quite pleased with the result though and all my candles are now in one easily accessible place. The two infuriating pillar candles will be lit as soon as the evenings draw in a bit more. I don’t really want it to feel like autumn yet as I think it is going to be a long, cold winter – what a shame we cannot bottle this summer heat.

My next task is to re-house the coolbags as I would like to get rid of the old kitchen cabinet in the garage where they currently reside. It is a base cabinet and sticks out a long way but does a good job of storing the cool bags and keeps them dust free. They would fit in the cupboard that has all our cleaning products like car shampoo and oven cleaner but I think the smell might spread into the coolbag over time. I am not sure I would want my picnic sandwiches to taste of metal polish or patio cleaner!! Another storage problem to mull over.

DH was busy ironing again – his reward was spending time at the computer (his favourite pastime). He also mounted the second water butt on some bricks with a slab on top which is much more stable than the plastic feet that come with it. This butt is not connected to a drain pipe but we pour in the ‘run off’ water we collect whilst the hot water is coming through in the kitchen. It is surprising how much you can lose down the drain. We are also keeping a bucket in the shower to collect any clean water there when showering. It rained…only a little yesterday early evening – I am hoping just enough to top up the water butt (as we have a hose pipe ban here now) and freshen up the borders and planters and save me having to water today.

Today we /me/or he is making Leek and Potato soup to use up the plentiful supply of potatoes I have and the remains of the leeks. If I have chance I will prepare the tomato soup ingredients at the same time.

This afternoon we are downing tools and going up the road to see two friends of ours K&R. R has recently come out of hospital after an operation and at the moment cannot drive so they are both stuck at home as K had to give up driving because of a macular problem. We have been taking K with us when we go shopping to help out as she is well in her 80’s now but today we are just visiting and having a cup of tea and a catch up chat.

August 28, 2022August 28, 2022

dear diary >> a matter of opinion

DH and I agree on most things, but it is of no surprise that we have a difference of opinion when it comes to what constitutes ‘pottering’ and how long it should continue for. He thinks two hours of minimal activity is all I should be doing at present and of course he is right but I am an all or nothing person and once I begin a job I can’t bear not to see it through.

And I get sidetracked easily.

I am a great supporter of the Lean method where continuous improvement is part of the approach. I am always looking for better ways of organising and storing things and often have a move around much to DH’s dismay! Sometimes, even I have to acknowledge a task will take far longer than I have time for in a day, but if I stop what I am doing then I know it is going to end up as another project on the unfinished task list as other urgent housekeeping chores call for my attention.

Yesterday, I maybe overdid it a bit. I only intended to sort out the collection of small plastic plant pots in the greenhouse, that I had washed before our holidays, and keep only the useful ones. Dobbies, one of our local garden centres, have a recycling point for old plant pots so I have put aside the ones I don’t want to drop off on our next visit.

We have quite a useful space at the side of our house behind the shed where we can keep our wheelie bins and bags of potting compost tucked away from view. I also put the old mini greenhouse here as it is a sunny positon but much cooler away from any direct sun which is great for potted cuttings and hardening off. I keep the larger empty plant pots here too and anything a bit unsightly but the whole area was a bit of a mess because DH had not been able to get to his ladder easily and after he put it back in position the objects he had to move did not quite make it back in their place (need I say more…). So I started tidying up this area and as I went along I found a few problems that required a little DIY from DH whilst he was doing other bits and pieces in the greenhouse and now the area is looking much cleaner and quite tidy.

Before our holidays DH put in some ‘Christmas potatoes’ – I am not sure if they will actually be ready for Christmas day but they are growing well and needed earthing up. My few outdoor tomatoes are at last turning red – it has been a long wait. I haven’t grown this variety before, a dwarf stocky bush tomato that does not require the removal of side shoots called Totem. They are very sturdy plants that stood up well to the strong winds we had a month or so ago. The Zinnias in the top photo have been battered by wind and then scorched by the sun… but are holding on, they are such beautiful rich colours and one of my favourite annuals. I have more in the front borders and they are mixed with a rather lovely colour called ‘Green Envy’. I was quite pleased to see that Carol Klein recommended this variety on her Summer Gardening program (I just love her enthusiasm for plants it is contagious) it is such an unusual colour but looks good beside the vibrant reds and purples. The plants that have done the best this year on the patio are the geraniums – they seem to thrive in hot dry weather but then they do grow an enormous amount of them in France and Italy.

Today I must, must, must make the mushroom and lentil pies to freeze and the quiche bases (I know I have been saying this all week!). I will rub up the pastry mix this morning and then do the filling in the afternoon. If I get chance I have had an idea for storing those candles I mentioned. I need to gather them all together in Marie Kondo style to see what I am dealing with in terms of space required. I do have quite an assortment of candle holders too and maybe I don’t really need all of them. We shall see.

I am hoping that DH will be doing a bit more fixing and mending. When we got home from holiday I found my watering can broken. It is a Hall’s plastic red one with a long bar attached to the spout that you hold to carry it and it had snapped clean in two as you can see in the photo…..rendering it unuseable and there was no way it could be glued back together. It seemed such a shame that it would be of no further use and would end up in landfill at the tip. However DH to the rescue – he came up with a solution…..

…… a bit of a Heath Robinson fix (just like his dad) using this strong metal strip of rust proof aluminium and some screws or maybe they are rivets. I am delighted though and so pleased it could be repaired – in fact it should be stronger than before even if it does look a bit strange.