For the past few years, NAH and I have made a new family tradition - the big New Year Clearout. This involves tidying up, putting away and getting rid of anything that's surplus to requirements. As a result the first charity bag through the door in the New Year gets filled to the brim with clothes, books and anything else useful they might like to have.
We've had a couple of variations on the theme this year. Firstly NAH would like to use part of the garage as a workshop, so he's sold some of its contents through the intranet at work to clear some space. Secondly, we've fitted in a trip to IKEA to fetch home Billy (see picture - aren't IKEA's product names amusing!) to store my vast booklog - now over 50 volumes. A miracle happened during our visit - everything we needed was in stock and I didn't get into a bad mood. I just find the whole IKEA experience very annoying and so we keep our visits to a bare minimum.
We've still to complete our endeavours, but already I can see the floor by my side of the bed again, I can also sit down in my study and pretty well everything we own is in it's allotted space. Oh, and NAH is beavering away in the garage at the moment on one of his projects, so I think we've got things off to a good start.
I have stipulated in my marriage contract that I am not to be made to shop in Ikea on the weekend. You may think I am joking, but I assure you, I am not!
ReplyDeleteHi Julia,
ReplyDeleteI think that's a most sensible approach. We also discovered last week that a restorative coffee and cake smoothed things over half way round the store last week!