Making Progress

The bathroom renovation is underway.  After the demolition on Monday we were left with nothing more than bare studs.  All of the ceiling, wall sheeting and floor was ripped out.  We wanted to make absolutely certain that there was no underlying water damage before we went to the expense of new tiles and fittings.

The new wall sheeting and ceiling are installed so we are now going forwards with the project.

This shows the recess in the wall of the shower which will hold bottles of shampoo, conditioner and shower gel.  I first saw the idea in B & B accommodation.  It makes so much sense to me.  Any shelf or soap holder built into the tiles is a hazard that you can bump yourself on and the hanging shower caddies gather soap scum or rust.  The tiled recess will simply be cleaned with the rest of the tiles and I love the simple, streamlined look of it.

Finally, I would like to thank all of you who took up the challenge of introducing yourselves.  I will respond to each of your comments and look forward to lots of discussion in the future.

Are You Hiding?

Slowly but surely more of you are choosing to follow this blog.  Some I know through your blogs but others of you remain a mystery.

Then there are those of you who are not followers – please consider subscribing.  To subscribe you can just click the button ‘Sign Me Up’ on the right hand side of the blog.

The best part of the blog is being able to have a conversation with you about topics that are raised and share ideas.

So, my challenge for you today is to post a short comment and introduce yourself.  Information you could share may be:

• How you found this blog
• Your location (in general terms)
• Ideas for future posts
• Your interests

I look forward to hearing from you and creating a dynamic community where we can learn and share.

What are you waiting for?  Just click on ‘Leave a Comment’.

What to Keep?

From my own experience and what I have read, I think the most difficult thing to declutter and keep under control is paperwork.  It seems to be so insidious.

After my post the other day, titled ‘Gone From the Office’, Angasagain asked, “How long do you keep bills and bank statements for? Some of my filing sleeves are bulging but I’m not sure how ruthless I should be.”

The first thing to remember is that there are legal requirements regarding documents relating to tax returns.  In Australia, you need to keep all taxation papers and relevant documents, such as bank statements, for 5 years after the completion of the tax year.  This may be different in other countries so it is important to check the local laws.

I have set up the suspension files in the filing cabinet with one for each year.  At the moment we have:

Current year 2011-2012

5 previous years

2010-2011
2009-2010
2008-2009
2007-2008
2006-2007

When the next tax return is done, I will discard (shredded) the 2006-2007, add 2011-2012 to the previous years and create a new “Current year” which will be 2012-2013.  This is based on the principle of 1 in, 1 out.  If you do not do this regularly you are likely to find that you have 20 years worth of tax returns bulging out of the filing cabinet.

In conjunction with the annual cull of tax stuff I also get rid of the relevant year of bank statements.  Remember to shred all documents carefully to protect your security.

For all other paperwork, I find the best method is to ask yourself why you are keeping it and what possible scenario could arise where you would need to refer to it.

Household bills – we usually keep for 1 – 2 years so that we can compare them with the same period of the previous year.  I do not keep a record of how much we spend on particular bills over an entire year but some people do.

Product warranties, instructions and receipts are kept for the life of the item.  I would suggest setting up a 6 monthly schedule to review all of these documents and discard any that are no longer relevant.

In order to reduce the amount of paper, we choose to receive whatever bills possible via email and save them in the electronic format.  We only print them if required.

Being a good gatekeeper is essential.  Stop that paper before it gets in the door.  Consider putting a ‘NO JUNK MAIL’ sticker on your mailbox.  What will you miss?  Store catalogues advertising stuff that you didn’t even know you needed?  Flyers advertising services that you do not require?  If you seriously want to follow what grocery specials are available, I believe these can be accessed online although I personally have not done this.

Everyone’s requirements will be different.  This may depend on whether you are renting or have a mortgage, are studying, employed or receiving Centrelink benefits.  The most important thing is to review all paperwork critically when it arrives in your home and decide:

Do I need to receive this information?
Do I need to retain this information?

Please tell me how you go about deciding what documents come into your home and more importantly what gets to stay and for how long.

Filling The Freezer

I spent yesterday afternoon in the kitchen and here are some of the results.

A batch of pastry used to make 12 mini meat pies

and 3 meal-sized pies (pastry tops only)

Trifle – using leftover sponge from when I made a Dorothy the Dinosaur cake 6 months ago.

Zucchini and carrot quiche – to use up some of the eggs we have in abundance.

Banana cake – more eggs

Lemon Delicious – eggs and lemons

It makes good economic sense do do a batch of baking while the oven is turned on.

I also made refried beans in the slow-cooker, lasagne sheets (more eggs),  spreadable butter, chopped up chillies to dehydrate them and picked 2 kg of cherry tomatoes from the neighbour’s garden.  They are now frozen waiting for me to have time to make tomato sauce.

The freezers are full and we have plenty of food for the days when I don’t have the time or energy to cook a meal from scratch.  Do you do a big cook-up in one go?

 

Too Busy

No time for blogging tonight.  I have been busy doing rather than writing.  Watch this space – there will be more about my day tomorrow, complete with photos.

Hope you have had a great weekend.

Ticks All The Boxes

Missy stayed with us last night and this morning we took her to Noosaville to meet up with some friends who are a hiring a boat  for the day on the river.

We debated which way to come home and decided to take a drive along the Mary Valley from Eumundi, through Kenilworth and Conondale and back to Maleny.

Kenilworth is the home of a cheese factory which has excellent products.  We called in and sampled some of the specialty cheeses.  These are lovely for a particular occasion but we really did not need any at the moment.

However, I did buy a 2.5kg block of matured cheddar cheese.  We got a discount (not sure why) and it worked out an $10/kg.  That is about the same price as I usually pay at Aldi and considerably cheaper than standard cheese in the supermarket.  This is a rich, full-flavoured cheese made from local milk in an independent factory which is about 30km from our home.  Also, by buying a larger quantity there is less packaging than buying 500g blocks.

I used my food processor to grate half of the block and here it is in containers, ready to go in the freezer.  I had a little put aside which will be used in the lasagne I am about to make.

The remainder has been cut into blocks, wrapped and frozen.  I have kept some cereal bags and use them to separate items when freezing.  They can be re-washed and re-used many times.  Here is one flattened out and ready to use.

The cheese is wrapped in the cereal bag and sealed in a container to go in the freezer.

As the title says, this product ticks all of the boxes:

Locally made
Lcoally produced ingredients
Minimal packaging
Close to home – so minimal transport costs
Independently owned

What are you able to source that is produced close to where you live?

 

Renovation Preparation = Decluttering

In preparation for the bathroom renovation I emptied the vanity unit tonight.  I did not think it was too bad as I had gone through the contents fairly recently, however I proved the rule that you do really need to empty a drawer/cupboard/room completely when you a decluttering.  Otherwise it is easy to just ‘tidy it up’ and not really get serious about the worth of the contents.

Here are some ‘before’ photos.

The drawers

Drawer 2

Drawer 3

I systematically went through everything and ended up with 4 piles – rubbish, recycling, rehoming and keeping.

Here is the rubbish pile – even I could not seriously keep 3 tubes of sunscreen that expired at least 5 years ago!

The recycling – although it is not a lot, I did salvage what I could to be recycled.

The rehoming pile is pretty small – extra deodorant which should be in the stockpile box, exercise band which is going with the other exercise equipment and a medicine glass (I do not need 3) which Belle may want.

The rest is packed in a crate which will probably live in the office for the duration of the renovation.

When the new vanity is installed I will look critically at the storage of some items and revamp it.  Some of the small white baskets are cracked so I will look for alternatives.  I will wait until I see the exact dimensions of the drawers.

It does not need to be as radical as renovating a bathroom but when you are decluttering it is definitely worth removing everything from its location so that you can look at it all with fresh eyes rather than just seeing each item. where it is normally stored.