Reclaiming My House

Photo copyright: Maggie May

I'd been looking forward to seeing my daughter and grandsons and when they arrived last weekend, I was dismayed that I found myself fighting off some kind of virus that caused painful glands in the neck and aching limbs and snuffles.

When I was working in the school until quite recently, I had built up a resistance to most things and was rarely ill with anything that was going round.

I think seeing me like that worried Deb a lot. Anyway, by Sunday afternoon, I started to feel better and we went out for a walk together. Then she had to leave.

I found myself crying after they'd all gone. I haven't done that for a long time.

However, I woke up feeling heaps better the next day and started to do quite a bit of tidying up.

Unused to this sudden surge of energy, I decided to do as much as possible. I collected all the old videos together that the children used to love but have now grown out of.

I filled up a small trolley and off I set to our local High Street where there are about a dozen Charity shops.

It soon became apparent that I couldn't leave the videos in the first few shops that I tried and they all told me the same story. There was no call for them and they recommended that I throw them all on the Council tip.

I went home with my load of unacceptable donations and decided that I would try ringing the largest local charity shop that was the furthest distance from me. This proved quite fruitful as they told me to come with them straight away.

Off I set with my trolley full of unwanted Walt Disney films. It did make me feel a little twinge of nostalgia when I thought of all the times my grandsons had been glued to the screen watching these films and later my granddaughters who did the same.

When I returned home with my lighter trolley I was surprised how the Spring Cleaning mode carried on and I spent the whole day tidying up.

Now what has caused this, do you think?

Well Sam has been given a date to move into his house (God forbid that anything should go wrong at this late stage.)

When they came as a family straight from Japan to live with me for almost a year, my house was completely taken over. They brought mess with them and it gradually spread over every available surface. When they moved to a different location, the children still went to the local school so came round every school morning and quite often the evening too. Quite regularly they spent the night here, so their muddles just stayed and were needed here, I was told.

I couldn't keep up with all the mounds of papers and toys and clothes lying everywhere. It seemed too much.

Amber was just five and Millie not yet three when they first came, so during those four years there was a lot of junk of theirs lying around. Why did they have at least six coats and dozens of shoes each? Not to mention scarves and hats and gloves that filled several bags. I could have started my own charity shop.

Now I am hoping to clear it up. The muddles can go to their own house and I am claiming my house back. So I have an incentive to press on with it.

All we need now is the final document to be signed and we await with bated breath......

The Environment and Bags

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

As many of you know, I am very much into recycling and saving things.

Harry and I have both taken large things to the city tip and smaller unwanted items get taken to Charity shops.

I am still putting out my clippings from my garden shrubs for the Council to pick up weekly and that seems an endless task. By the time the honeysuckle on one side of the garden has been brought under control, it is time to prevent the shrubs on the other side from taking over. Never mind, I do not begrudge the Council from taking my cuttings and turning them into compost to be sold, even though I pay for the bin hire. No I think that is a very good thing to do.

I am still saving all the paper and separating it from card. The aluminium is still going to Church to sponsor a girl in Bangladesh and I still tend to pick up cans in the street for recycling when I see them cluttering up our local area.

I sort out glass and tin for the kerbside collection and I take plastic to recycling points. Now we can take plastic bottles and plastic bags to the same point and also even silver lined milk cartons too.

I've mentioned before that it is all rather time consuming but I don't mind in the least.

I am sometimes concerned when I read that things that have been carefully separated and recycled have been seen to be squashed back together only to be sent to China or another faraway country, in containers for disposal there. Other news bulletins have proclaimed that recycled things do end up in landfill sites either here or in distant lands, but I give the Council the benefit of the doubt, thinking to myself that it is all worthwhile and the majority of recycled stuff does go to where it is supposed to.

The latest thing is to try and get rid of the use of plastic bags. They are horrible things and take years to break down and animals get their heads stuck in them and suffocate or chew them up and die. Many shops are now asking if you can manage without a bag and some even charge for plastic bags and this seems to be a very sensible idea.

I cannot resist the temptation to buy a cheap cotton bag from a charity shop or supermarket to help a cause and to save the planet and have more than the collection in the photograph. So please tell me why I inevitably get to the shops and forget to pick up the bags before I set out? Thus leaving me bag-less!

Might it be better to give out paper carriers with our goods, like they did when I was young, even if there was a small cost? Of course that was in the days before plastic bags were invented.

Photostory Friday is hosted by Cicely and MamaGeek. Why not pop over and see some really good posts?