Category Archives: Organising

In the Garden

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The past week has been full of activity which didn’t leave a lot of time for writing.

Lat week we had our first overnight guests as well as other visitors for lunch one day.

Meanwhile GMan has made a start on refashioning the garden a little. This photo shows the garden as we inherited it although the trees have grown somewhat. In fact they had grown so that much of the canopy was actually above the gutter. They are deciduous and as it is autumn (or officially winter in the past few days) much of the debris was ending up in the gutter. What wasn’t in the gutter was on the patio and subsequently being walked into the house.

So we agreed that these two specimens needed to go. This is the result. The next step is to hopefully dig the stumps out so that we can add some plantings more appropriate to the location and space.

Yesterday morning was a trip in the ute to the local rubbish dump to take a load of tree cuttings. The weather did not co-operate and this was the view. GMan persevered and had it unloaded fairly quickly.

We know that there will be more removal and renewal of plantings as we gradually decide on our preferences for the garden.

We would like to devote a bit more space to food production and some of this may be at the front of the house in the north-facing space but that requires some realignment of existing elements. In the meantime, we planted some broccoli seedlings this afternoon and rigged up some temporary fencing to protect them from the dog.

Fun with Furniture

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Yesterday we picked up a couple more secondhand finds. A pair of bedside tables to complete the guest room from one seller and lamps from another.

I am convinced that there is plenty of suitable pre-loved furniture and home decor available if you are prepared to look around.

In fact, the other success actually came from within our own home. When we moved here there was cube shelving along one side of the walk-in wardrobe which was not terribly useful in my opinion. So, yesterday we moved it out of that location and into what is going to be my sewing room. Now I just need to unpack all of the boxes of fabric.

It is a very good replacement for the storage we left behind in Queensland.

Kitchen Reveal

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I finally have the kitchen pretty much the way I want it so now I can show you a few more photos.

It is a fairly simple layout with the stove and refrigerator along the back wall and plenty of bench space on either side of the stove. There are good-sized drawers for storage.

The island bench includes a large sink. There are also cupboards and drawers below the bench.

The bench has an overhang suitable for a breakfast bar, however, I am yet to decide whether to utilise this feature as the dining table is a mere couple of steps away. At the moment I have some of the bulk buckets stored under here whilst I work out the best spot for them.

The butlers pantry is adjacent to the kitchen and includes a sink and dishwasher as well as the microwave, open shelving, bench space and cupboards.

We have future plans to extend the size of the pantry but that is a story for another day.

More Progress

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Since my last post we have continued to make progress in setting up our new home. A huge achievement has been to pass all of the unpacked boxes and packing materials to other people for reuse.

Meanwhile, I have continued to successfully trawl Facebook Marketplace to source items I need.

Today we picked up this dining table and chairs. We plan to sand, paint and update them at some stage but at the moment we don’t have any workspace in the shed – and it is too cold to consider working out there. I think that will be a project for the warmer weather.

Hanging the artwork above the table was another achievement for today.

The curtains were a new buy as I decided that the semi-sheer ones that were already hung were not really suitable as we approach winter. The creases have not really dropped out yet but once they do we will adjust the position of the curtain rail to suit the length of the curtains.

A couple of days ago we picked up this desk to use in my sewing room.

I am working on finding homes for everything in the kitchen and the office and will share a bit more about those spaces in upcoming posts.

The New Castle

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We have now been in our new home for 6 days. I had delusions that I would share the unpacking journey with my readers, however, the reality has been a bit different. I have been either flat out unpacking boxes, too exhausted to think straight or actually out and about shopping or a brief stint of frivolous entertainment.

All of this brings me to the point where we are now. Most of the boxes are unpacked. The exceptions are boxes of books, wine and sewing supplies. None of these are critical for the immediate functioning of the household.

I listed the packing materials on Marketplace and most of them were collected yesterday. We will drop off the remainder tomorrow.

We have bought and had our new washing machine delivered. Our other purchases were 2 side tables and lamps for our bedroom. These were sourced from Marketplace – different sellers. The side tables will be restored and refinished eventually.

Our bedroom is now essentially complete.

The guest bedroom is also ready for use.

The flip side is the completely disorganised large lounge room. This room won’t really be in use for about 3 months – until the new lounge suite arrives.

I have yet to start on the room which is earmarked to be the sewing room.

The butlers pantry is a work in progress. The main part of the kitchen is not fit to be photographed yet.

Now that you have a bit of an overview, I will get back to regular posts with updates on the progress. Stick with me and follow the story as it unfolds.

New Bedding

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This time next week we should have the keys to our new home.

In preparation for the much cooler nights I bought some new bedding the other day. The most important item was a new feather doona which is predominantly goose down but very lightweight. I added a new doona cover which is a heavy textured cotton on one side and regular poly cotton on the other. It is navy which will co-ordinate nicely with the patchwork quilt. There are also 2 new pillows which I knew I needed but it seemed silly to buy them earlier and then have to pack them.

This close-up shows the textured pattern on the doona cover although the previous photo is a more accurate reflection of the colour.

A Week Later

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The last week has slipped by while we have been occupied with packing.

Our primary focus has been sorting, cleaning and packing up the contents of the garage and workshop.

Most of the big items will be moved by the removalists but GMan has packed quite a bit into the ute as we will be driving both cars to our destination and it seems somewhat pointless to take an empty vehicle.

Although we will not be leaving Queensland for about 6 weeks, the packing of the ute need to be finalised before the beginning of next week as it will all be relocated to a friend’s carport when we leave this house.

An important consideration was making sure that everything was covered and secured for the impending trip. After careful consideration, we decided to buy a new waterproof tarpaulin to cover the contents. There is no risk of it flapping or blowing off as it is securely tucked under the heavy boxes at both ends as well as being tied to itself with the ropes going right underneath the entire contents of the ute. The tie-down straps over the tarpaulin then anchor everything.

Countdown – Cooking

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Removalist day (17th March) is fast approaching and it is time I gave some serious consideration to the kitchen and food.

It will be almost 8 weeks between the date that everything is moved and when we actually move into our new home in Victoria. In that time we will be housesitting near our existing home, spending a few days with family and then house-sitting for a week in Brisbane before spending 5 days driving to Victoria and another 10 days in an Air BnB before our final relocation. All of this means that although I will have the capacity to cook meals, my access to a full range of ingredients and implements will be somewhat limited.

So, this morning a made a list of some of the major ingredients I have. The next step is to create as many meals as possible that can be frozen and fairly easily reheated or finished off with the minimum of ingredients.

The first cab off the rank was a batch of chilli con carne using up diced onion, mince, kidney beans and refried beans from the freezer. It made 5 serves.

Ingredients

1 large onion, diced
250g mince
500g kidney beans
1 cup refried beans
1 can crushed tomatoes
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup water
2 teaspoons beef stock powder
1 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoons smoky paprika
1 teaspoon powdered chilli
Tabasco sauce – to taste

Method

Gently saute the onion in a little olive oil, add the mince and stir until fully browned. Add the remining ingredients, combine and simmer gently for about 30 minutes. This will allow the flavours to combine and thicken slightly to a spicy, rich sauce.

NOTE: Adjust seasonings to suit your taste.

Building a Box

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Just when you thought that all of our attention would be focused on decluttering and packing for our impending move, you discover that we actually spent some of our time making, or at least repairing something.

Even though my father died over 20 years ago, his legacy lives on. We have 3 boxes which came from his workshop which we have used to store various items. 2 of them had been in our woodshed for several years and we discovered that the base of one of them had completely rotted.

We are planning to use these boxes to pack things from the workshop in and transport them to their new home on the tray of the ute.

The boxes had originally been made by my father from various scraps of masonite and the reinforced with metal angle.

GMan removed the rotted base of the box and metal angle surrounding the base by drilling out all of the existing rivets. He then cut some offcuts of pine to make a frame to fit inside the base and screwed the metal angle back in place.

The final step was to cut a new base. This was cut from a piece of scrap plywood which we sourced from a neighbour. It had been one of the signs for our combined garage sale a week earlier.

The view of the completed base.

A final view of the inside with a reminder of the source of the plywood.

With the plywood in place and secured with nails, the box is as good as ever and I expect it will last for many more years.

Countdown – 4 Weeks

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It is now exactly 4 weeks until the removalists collect our worldly possessions and pack them into a container to be freighted interstate.

This is both exciting and scary as I look around and see what still remains to be done. On the up side there are now 31 cartons packed and sealed. One of today’s projects was packing up the bottles of wine. I collected several cartons from our local bottleshop which made the job fairly easy.

I have also begun to tackle the kitchen. Most of what I have in the kitchen is used fairly regularly so I am loathe to pack too much just yet. However, I di manage to almost fill a carton with plastic storage containers, some platters and random things like icecube trays.

The pile is definitely growing and I even have a couple of completely empty cupboards.

Meanwhile, I am making baked potatoes for dinner. This is fairly unremarkable apart from the fact that I am doing them in the airfryer for the first time whereas I have previously used the slow-cooker. I will let you know how they turn out in a future post.