Category Archives: Organising

Fresh Eyes

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We arrived home yesterday and I am working my way through the washing.

We had housesitters staying here while we were away so naturally I left the house clean and tidy for them and they did likewise for our return. Nevertheless, it is really interesting to come home and look around the house after having been away.

It is 2 years since we moved here and it is mostly set up the way we want it. Our home is definitely not cluttered but there are still some spaces that have too much stuff or are not adequately organised for my liking. Other spaces tend to become a bit of a dumping-ground so I need to be more vigilant about leaving things where they should not be. I have returned with renewed enthusiasm to sort out some things. As always, one thing tends to lead to another and can turn into a bigger project than planned. A quick tidy up can become a major rearrangement of storage options but that is OK because it usually has a better long-term result.

Here are a few photos of some things I want to tackle. I will share how I do it and the results in future posts.

The guest bedroom. There is nothing desperately wrong with it. The bed needs to be remade and I really need to sort out what bed linen is required at the moment for both this bed and ours. I find this time of the year difficult as the overnight temperatures vary widely. The other thing that is bothering me about this room is the bed. We chose to buy it from the previous owners and while it is a good bed in excellent condition, I can honestly say that I hate it. The storage drawers are useful but not having any space underneath increases the difficulty of making the bed. The wide timber surround is also unhelpful. So, I am determined to search for a more user-friendly bed secondhand. The trade-off will be the loss of the underbed storage but although I do have some linen in the drawers it is definitely not essential.

The 3rd bedroom which is still trying to work out what it is but otherwise known as a junk room. It tends to be a collection of things that I am certain do not belong elsewhere. The wardrobe in this room is wine storage, suitcase storage and some items belonging to a community group where we volunteer. I do intend to set up the exercise equipment better so that it can be used more readily.

Our walk-in wardrobe. This is not a massive space since we purloined half of it to extend the pantry. We only recently added the shelves and hanging space and it is more than adequate for our needs. The box on the floor is administrative stuff for our volunteer work which I put here while we were away. That is overdue for sorting and rearranging and it needs to find a permanent home in the 3rd bedroom. I also want to look for a small seat which would be useful when putting on shoes and socks.

Chest of drawers. We do not have a dressing table as such as I use the large mirror in the adjacent ensuite bathroom. This large chest of drawers is shared by GMan and me. Our folded clothes are in the drawers and the top is a shared dressing table although it can be a bit of a dumping ground. Time for a clean up and decide what belongs here or not.

These jobs will take some time but I will share my progress of each space in upcoming posts.

Wardrobe Wonder

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It seems like forever but in reality it is a bit less than 6 months since we emptied and dismantled our walk-in wardrobe in preparation for the extension of the pantry. This post from October last year explains our plans.

Once the pantry was finished GMan still had to do some finishing filling of gaps and nail holes then he painted the whole wardrobe area and then it was time to decide on the fitout. After researching several options we decided on the Boaxel range from IKEA. It is very similar to the system we had installed in the wardrobes in our previous house. Unfortunately, the shelves we wanted were on backorder so that added quite a delay.

However, we picked up the remaining components on Tuesday when we went to Melbourne and we have spent the last couple of days working on assembling it.

The size of the reduced wardrobe is 1800 x 1800mm (6 x 6ft). It is not huge but definitely enough for our needs. We have a total of 3.2 metres of hanging rail as well as several shelves for shoes. I have a couple of handbags which will live on the shelf below my shirts and tops. The high shelves will be for a box of beanies, gloves and winter scarves as well as hats and a couple of small backpacks. The hooks at the end hold belts and dressing gowns.

We are really pleased with how it has turned out.

The view from the doorway.

My clothes and shoes as well as longer coats and suit bags.

GMan’s clothes and shoes.

Home From Holidays

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We arrived home from our holidays on Wednesday and I am pleased to report that in less than 24 hours after our return I had completed a significant piece of organising.

I had sorted, curated, numbered and labelled all of the photos from the trip. To be fair, I had begun deleting and curating them during the time we were away but the biggest portion of the job was after we arrived home.

There are a total of 135 photos from our 3 week trip and this is how they are arranged within a folder.

The naming convention I use is 001, 002 etc followed by a description.

We have looked at them all on the large television screen which definitely provides the best experience, apart from being there in real life.

My ability do get all of this done fairly promptly has reminded me that I should go back and do the same with all of the other folders of photos from various holidays.

A Labour of Love

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My father was a keen photographer. This was mostly before the days of digital cameras and definitely prior to mobile phones that included a camera. It is almost 24 years since Dad died and I wonder what he would think of camera technology today.

In fact, a large percentage of his photos were slides which he catalogued and stored meticulously. After his death we were left with an enormous collection of slides spanning 3 decades up until 1979. He generally had prints of photos after that time but it is the slides which I want to focus on in this post.

My mother, along with my siblings and I, realised that we could not continue to store these slides forever as they were not easy to access and view and their relevance would quickly fade with passing generations. While the slides were broadly catalogued, most of them did not identify specific individuals. We were all involved but Mum and my sister undertook the bulk of the work to do the first round of discards. This included any that were badly damaged, were of unknown places or people. The next step was to scan/digitise those which we felt could be worth keeping. Mum created digital folders for each of her 4 children containing copies of all of the photos which included that particular child. It is now nearly 4 years since Mum died and the responsibility for the preservation of the images from the slides passed entirely to me and my siblings.

I had all of the digital copies and my sister had all of the physical slides. When we were together at Christmas we went through them again to check that none had been missed in the scanning process. I then brought the slides home with me as I could see that there might have been some useful information on the frame of each slide, however, I needed a magnifying glass to check. This is what I have been working on intermittently for 2 weeks and that step is now completed.

I have cut each slide in half. I am not really sure why but it just feels better to have done this before discarding them in the bin and ultimately to landfill.

The next step is to curate the collection and choose the best photo where there are several of the person or group of people. I will make sure that each digital file includes the names of people in the photo as well as the location and date as best as I can ascertain. I will sort them into folders as part of my larger project to organise all of my photos.

I know that my children and grandchildren may not want to retain all of these photos, however, by doing this I will be providing them with an organised, curated collection with no expectation that they retain them. They will easily be able to see what they want to keep (if any) and discard the rest.

In the meantime, I am looking forward to enjoying some of these relics which have not seen the light of day for a long time and sharing the stories behind them with other family members.

This is a particular favourite – a style statement from a holiday in 1975.

Loaded Up

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I certainly had to be organised this morning as we headed off bright and early to Melbourne. We usually catch the train if we have things to do in Melbourne but today we had several errands which really necessitated a car so we combined them into what turned into a mega-trip. I even plotted our route to the various locations to make sure that we made the trip in the most efficient way possible.

Ready to go.

One of the bags on the left was some things I needed to drop off at our daughter’s place. The other contained bags of fabric scraps which I can drop off at a specific point for textile upcycling. Our packed lunches and water bottle were in the esky which is always handy in case we happen to but any groceries that need to be refrigerated. Finally, the plastic tub contained an assortment of buckets and large jars as I was going to stock up on bulk dry goods at Graina. They offer a discount of 20% on Tuesdays if you bring your own containers. It is definitely worthwhile doing a bit of planning and preparation.

After dropping off the bag to my daughter and doing the grocery shopping we then headed to IKEA. Our goal was to buy the components to build the shelves and hanging space in our walk-in wardrobe. This was only partially successful as the shelves are currently out of stock so it will be another 4-6 weeks before we can get them. However, it is good to have all of the rest of the components ready to go.

We then ditched the car in favour of public transport and caught a tram into the CBD to drop off the fabric. I also had a bag from my daughter as well as the 2 bags of my own scraps. Our last stop was Cheaper Buy Miles at Footscray where shopping can be a bit like a lucky dip. Today I picked up some rice cakes, dark chocolate, bacon and cream.

By the time we arrived home it was 8.5 hours since we had left (1.5 hour drive each way). I was tired but pleased at what we had achieved in a single trip.

The foodstuffs unpacked on the bench in the pantry and ready to put away. We are well-stocked with dry goods for a few months.

Yesterday we were in Bendigo with a similarly mixed list of errands, including medical appointment, chemist, Aldi, greengrocer, Bunnings and Specsavers. I am now looking forward to several days at home with a couple of local meetings and appointments.

A Mixed Bag

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They say that variety is the spice of life. Well, today has included a bit of everything.

I have done a bit of ironing, some sewing (paid alterations) and tackled what I mentally refer to as Operation Photos. I dream that one day I shall have all of my photos digitised, sorted, labelled and categorised. I know that it is not going to happen overnight but I now know how I can break it down into bite-sized pieces and feel that I am slowly, inexorably making progress.

These are slides of my siblings and me that were taken by my father over a period of 2 decades. The sorting began when our mother was still alive and my sister and I are continuing the process of making sure that they are properly recorded in a manner so that we can all enjoy the amazing memories which are preserved in the slides.

I am the eldest child and as far as I am aware this is the first photograph that Dad took of me. According to his notation on the edge of the slide, I was 8 days old.

Finally, we went out to dinner this evening at an historic hotel in Castlemaine which dates back to the mid 1800s.

I chose field mushrooms with salsa, guacamole, cauliflower rice and fresh green salad.

This is definitely a meal that I would consider replicating at home.

A Continuing Quest

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A sense of order in my sewing room seems elusive at times but I do continue to try. These shelves contain most of the fabric and sewing equipment that I have on hand and it could certainly be arranged a bit better.

I am not a massive fan buying heaps of matching containers to ‘organise’ spaces in my home. I generally use whatever I have on hand but it is also important to consider what stuff actually needs to be kept and organised and what actually needs to be decluttered and moved out of our life.

Most of the baskets that you can see previously belonged to my mother for a variety of uses and I have managed to re-purpose them. The shelves have also been moved from other areas of this house as I chose not to use them as the previous owners had done so.

Even the drawers, cupboards and 2 glass shelf inserts had been by left unassembled when we bought the house. I found the glass shelves particularly useful as they divide each cube into 2 smaller spaces.

When we were on holidays our travels took us directly past an IKEA store in Queensland so I took the opportunity to purchase 2 more sets (4 glass shelves) to further increase the functionality of the unit.

I installed them yesterday and am looking forward to some more re-arranging to improve the storage of my sewing fabrics and patterns.

Here is a close-up of one of the new shelves. The existing baskets are a perfect fit in these spaces.

Refreshed and Ready

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We are on our way home from our holidays and will be back in familiar surroundings by Wednesday afternoon. Relaxing in motel accommodation with no specific demands on your time provides plenty of opportunities to plan.

I have been jotting down notes on my phone of things I would like to do once we are home. Some are small tasks that will literally take 5 minutes. An example is updating the rainfall chart which has not been done since we went away. We have a rather clever electronic rain gauge which automatically records the rainfall from midnight to midnight each day and does not require emptying. The weather station which is indoors records this data for a maximum of 30 days so all of the information will be stored for when we arrive home. I then transfer these records into an Excel spreadsheet which is useful to be able to compare the data year on year.

There are other much larger projects but they will still depend on me taking the first step. Some have been being discussed at length but a new year is a good time to get the ball rolling. One such project is replacing the gas cooktop/900mm electric oven with an induction cooktop as well as a smaller (600mm) built-in oven. The very first thing I need to do is to contact our electricity supply company to ensure that the amperage of our supply is sufficient to support the induction cooktop.

I have a number of sewing projects that I am keen to work on and it will be a matter of prioritising them.

The holiday has been fun but now I am ready to make a start on new projects – large and small – as well as continuing with existing assignments. You are sure to hear more about some of them as time goes by.

Black Friday Bargains

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I do not generally participate in the madness that are the Black Friday sales. This phenomenon which began in the USA as the shopping day after Thanksgiving has infiltrated retailing in other parts of the world, including Australia. I find it more than a little ironic that this shopping mayhem follows the day which is supposedly about gratitude and togetherness.

Black Friday and the extension which has become Cyber Monday are just more opportunities for retailers to bombard us with their consumerist messages.

However, these year I actually inadvertently shopped during the Black Friday sales. They were things I was planning to buy anyway so picking them up at a reduced price was nothing more than good luck.

The first was the exciting purchase of 5kg of laundry pre-soak. It comes in 2.5kg bulk packs which I will decant into an original container which I have had for a number of years.

The other buy was another glass preserving jar which GMan uses for his sourdough starter. He had one and really needed a second jar. When I received a Black Friday sale email I checked for the specific size and shape of jar and decided that it was a good time to buy. I also found these cute wooden lids which will transform some of my smaller preserving jars which have been mostly gathering dust on a top shelf.

They are now useful small canisters as the wooden lids have a rubber ring which creates an airtight seal.

All of this cost me less than $100 and are things that I needed and will use. The fact that I bought them during the Black Friday sales was a bonus.

Unveiled

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Last week I was watching as the builder was putting the finishing touches to the pantry. Then there was some final sanding and painting to do.

The final step was to rearrange things. It was a big job and I took my time and there is still some more tweaking as usage patterns develop. Now it is time for the big reveal.

Since it is a long, narrow space it is impossible to photograph an overall view.

The extended benchtop, drawers and overhead shelving. Note the LED strip lighting under the open shelving.

The full wall of open shelving on the other side. The height placement of the shelves was specifically determined according to the height of what I wanted to store.

Since well before the pantry renovation began I have been dreaming of how I would organise the new, improved version.

Let me show you a few closer details.

I previously had these plastic tubs full of plastic storage containers in the corner cupboard. It was a reasonable solution but having them in a deep drawer is even better.

I spotted these 3 cute glass jars in an op shop recently and immediately decided that they would be perfect for GMan’s collection of teas – black, Earl Grey and green tea. All ready for making tea and coffee. The mugs are hanging just out of sight to the right of this photo.

I have reinstated the ‘breakfast corner’ with the kettle and toaster together near the entrance to the pantry.

The far end of the extended bench is home to the Kitchen Aid stand mixer and airfryer, both of which are used frequently.

Other regularly used appliances are stored on the open shelves. I have placed them at a height which makes them within easy reach and simple to access.

The storage buckets of bulk dry goods stand on the floor.

There is space to store the empty glass jars and bottles.

Teatowels and aprons in a drawer close to where they are used.

The addition looks completely seamless as we were able to match all of the components with the original. I am beyond ecstatic to see this all come together and I am really looking forward to the increased functionality of my kitchen and pantry.