clEAn and lEAn – Page 3 – where the journey takes me 2

A bit of a mixed day today. At 5am DH took elder daughter and SIL to the airport as the train to Manchester is currently not running from here – not even sure why. He then came home and went up to their house to put another coat of paint on their hallway and landing doors whilst they are away – they are on to a good thing here I think!

In the meantime I did some more of the washing that has come from the same daughters – 4 big bags of stuff that she has never had time to do on the weekend after their normal washing and I volunteered to help – I must need my head seeing to sometimes. They are predominantly jumpers, thick socks, hats, scarfs and gloves and when they are washed and clean I am not sure she has any space to put them away. I had them out on the line yesterday in the sun and they dried very quickly and they will not need ironing thank goodness. Washing

I also watered and fed my planters outside as we need to empty the water-butt to move it – the scaffolders are coming on Thursday and Friday to erect the scaffolding ready for the rendering next Tuesday. At last we will be closer to getting our leaky wall done and making it waterproof by the winter – it has only taken us the best part of a year to co-ordinate all this as the date has kept moving on due to the really bad weather at the start of the year. The fact that they will clash now with the Bank Holiday and my mum’s visit next week is not insurmountable just a bit irritating when we have waited so long… but such is life.

I had a quick run round with the Hoover whilst DH was out – DH fixed it yesterday as the handle had almost seized up and would not pull down very easily – now it is working freely once again whatever he did worked. In fact yesterday was quite a ‘fix-it’ day – the boiler engineer came early with the part for the boiler so we have hot water again which is really helpful when you are doing a lot of cleaning in cupboards – boiling the kettle all the time was such a bind.

Whilst he was here DH removed the outside light ready for the rendering men next week only to find it was rather contorted inside with the heat and beyond repair – it is over 30 years old so not surprising – so he ordered a new one from eBay. Meanwhile, I was decluttering and cleaning one of the pull out drawers in our laundry room when the runner broke – drawer (also more than 30 years old) would not move in or out, luckily we had a spare runner and Mr Fix-it stepped in again, maybe it will last another 30 years! Whilst he was busy fixing the drawer the washer flooded slightly at the end of the wash cycle through the drain cap – Mr Fix-it managed to screw the cap on tighter as I grabbed a cloth and started mopping up but he reckons the seal isn’t good and has perished slightly so we needed to order a spare. The Hoover was the last straw and the beginning of a few expletives! I will say no more.

At 4.30pm this afternoon we both jumped in the car and headed to Meadowhall our nearest shopping mall – they have a Neal’s Yard store there and I needed night cream. I use the Frankincense Intense with the serum – love the smell and it suits my skin – I also had some Boots No 7 vouchers given to me so I stocked up on the basic face creams that I use to eek out the expensive Neal’s Yard cream.

I was delighted to find the cotton wool pads I use were also on offer in Boots – buy one get one half price so I bought 4 and in Bodyshop the olive shower gel is cheaper if you buy in multiples so I got 4 of them saving £6. None of these items will go off as we use them all the time.

I was really pleased with myself that I only bought what I went for – I had a little browse in WH Smiths which incidentally is looking much cleaner and smarter these days – they have new lower fitments and the whole place seemed far more open and airy and organised. I can’t help myself with stationery and books it is such a temptation. Remembering the piles of stuff I have already at home waiting to be sorted I knew I didn’t have need of anything and walked out empty-handed.

A plus point surely.

Day one – begin at the beginning…

I decided that I should begin at the beginning but like a tangled ball of wool I am not sure where that is exactly. But a start must be made.

I am already making sure I rise by 8am – perhaps that is late in your book but in mine I love that extra hour of sleep I have now that I am not going to work and it suits me – I feel more refreshed. I will adjust this back to 7am soon as I think early risers do get more done but for now I am just enjoying some rest.

As soon as I am up I wash and dress so that I don’t mooch around in my dressing gown (which in my case could turn into an all-day attire if I am not careful). It is remarkable how quickly you form a routine and I don’t want to get into bad habits that I then have to try and dismantle.

a Monk's Guide to a clean house

It is strange that we had the visit to Mount Grace priory – I was quite intrigued by the life of the monks especially as I have been reading a tiny book entitled A Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and Mind by Shoukei Matsumoto. He is a Shin-Buddhist monk who talks about the ritual of cleaning and how this helps to have a calmer, happier life creating a refuge from today’s busy world. The monks have few possessions but what they do have they keep well maintained and clean – everything they have is of value and valued. The ideas in the book are that your external environment is a reflection of your internal environment – your body and mind.

Sounds good to me so with my cards spread out on the desk I have chosen to first of all declutter and clean my house as I agree with Shoukei that a tidy clean house not only makes for a tidy clean mind but also gives me some sense of order to my life. It seemed sensible to begin in the kitchen and in particular to start in the food cupboards.

In true Kondo style I removed all the food from the cupboards – tins, packets, jars and storage containers and covered most of the table and the worktops with the contents. I was quite shocked seeing it all spread out before me on mass like this and it made me wonder how the two of us would ever eat such a mountain of food and why was I going shopping each week for more?

Decluttering the food cupboards

I think the main problem is that some of the packets, jars and tins of food get overlooked as often we might need other ingredients or more time to make something – sound familiar? I have jars of fruit compote to make crumbles and tins of evaporated milk to make rice pudding yet we don’t really eat puddings I just like the idea of them!

I noticed that with one particular cupboard we tend to use the food at the front and ignore the items at the back – that old 20:80 rule even applies to food it seems. Recently through lack of time I have made a sketchy menu plan then bought the items to make the dishes rather than making dishes that use up some of the older items.

I also found the remnants of items I have bought for our various visitor’s benefit that we don’t eat and I have been left with the surplus when they have gone home.

The items out of date were the easy ones to dispose of (the guilt not so). Most of these items were for baking which I have not done for ages and when Little L came and we baked we were limited in what we made by what I could find still in date!

decluttering the cupboards Then I put red stickers on anything with a use by date in August and September so I can make a menu plan to include these and find suitable recipes.

Finally I refilled the storage containers and grouped together any multiple items. The visitors foods I will off load onto the visitors!

I couldn’t decide whether it is a good idea to carry some stock or not. My keep it simple, lean and minimalist side says just keep exactly what you need and only buy it when you need it therefore reducing storage space and preventing waste when things go out of date. My thrifty, just in case side, says stock up when there are offers to save money and also in case of emergency like getting snowed in. Though I must say I can’t ever remember having such an emergency that we have not had enough food.

In the end I decided that I would take the lean approach to keeping a stock of the most used items which is to keep one in hand and when you start to use that one you then replace it. Some items I use very little of such as honey or flour so I will continue to replace these as I am getting to the end of the one I am using. For some basic items like instant coffee, butter, jam and cereal I will continue to buy in multiples when on offer as the savings are beneficial and I might keep an emergency kit of baked beans, tinned fruit and other bits during the winter months in case of bad weather.

After a thorough clean and sort I rearranged some of the cupboards (DH will love this as he hates it when I have a move round as he cannot find anything). I am still in the process of switching things about a bit and trying some items in new places as well as using up the red sticker foods. Once eaten I probably will not be replacing all of these items – as they are nearly out of date we obviously don’t eat them very often and most of it is ‘puddings’. The olive oil is the end of a bottle – for some reason we had opened a new one before finishing the old one.

I have designated one cupboard as a ‘stock’ cupboard to take the duplicates – think of it like a mini supermarket – so when we finish something we can check if we have one already before putting it on the shopping list.

So far my cupboards are looking a whole lot leaner and certainly a lot neater – it is a bit of a work in progress at the moment but when I am satisfied with the outcome I will post some pictures. I am actually enjoying the process but I really need to change my shopping habits in future to make sure the food we buy is the food we eat.

In conjunction with this exercise I have been going through my recipe folders looking for new recipes to try and at the same time doing a bit of decluttering here – only keeping the ones I know I would make. The test for this being would I make this for tea tonight? – if the answer is no because it is too long and complicated or requires ingredients we would not normally buy such as buttermilk then it has been removed and put in the recycle bin.

DH thinks it is hilarious that I have spent so much time clipping recipes from magazines then spending more time putting them into a folder only to spend yet more time removing them. He is right of course so much wasted time when I know I will only make 20% of them.

I am a slow learner!