Category Archives: Organising

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.

Progress

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I am excited to share that we are making some progress in the quest to sell our current home and relocate interstate.

We now have an unconditional contract for the sale of our home. This will be finalised in a little less than 6 weeks so the pace of sorting and packing will step up a notch or two in the coming weeks.

On the flip side, we are working on negotiations to purchase a property in our preferred location. There is still more to be worked out before I can discuss that any further.

Tomorrow will be a complete departure from packing issues as we sort out some medical matters. Fear not, GMan and I are both in good health.

I will be back in a couple of days with some updates on our adventures.

Let’s Talk Packing

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I guess you thought from the title that I meant packing up an entire house.

No, just planning for a 4 night trip away. However, it will be to an area of distinctly inconsistent weather but it seems to be bordering on the cooler side (for summer) at the moment.

Two pairs of shoes.

A dress which can be worn with or without a cardigan.

Two pairs of trousers – emerald green linen pants and a pair of white slim-fit pants.

Two 3/4 sleeve tops.

Lightweight black pullover and cardigan.

White cotton shirt.

Short sleeve top.

Two scarves that will add both warmth and interest.

This is to cover predicted temperatures from 9C to 29C but mostly between about 15C and 22C.

It is interesting to note that the majority of the items were opshopped. The leather shoes were new last summer and one scarf and one top were bought new several years ago. The other scarf and cardigan were inherited from my mother. I made the white shirt from fabric that was given to me.

Packing Priorities

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We now have a contract for the sale of our home. While the contract is still conditional for a couple more weeks, it is time to really start moving forward with preparations for our move.

I have been sourcing previously used packing boxes and today I packed up 9 boxes of books from the bookshelves in our office/library area.

With a little over 7 weeks until moving day most of my focus is going to be on preparing for the big day and blog posts will mostly reflect that over the coming weeks. I will cover various aspects of how we handle the preparation.

It is 17 years since our last move. We have spent much longer in our current home than anywhere we had lived previously. However, we have decluttered and simplified during that time and it will be interesting to see how that impacts the moving process.

When we came here both of our daughters had left the family home but only relatively recently so we still had quite a lot of possessions that related to them but that is no longer the case.

More information on our future plans will unfold over the next few weeks.