The conservatory is getting untidy again and making me feel uneasy whilst I’m working in there, so today after shutting my computer down, I decided to do something about it. The sun was still shining so I opened all the doors and took all the clutter out. I like to be honest with my readers, so I’ll own up now to moving some of it to another room, but my logic today was that I want to have one room that doesn’t have clutter in it, and I’ve decided that this is going to be the one as I have more control over it than the other rooms. I am in there a lot and most of the time I’m responsible for what ends up in there. Here’s the ‘before’ photo… which not as bad as photos earlier in the year but still drains me of energy when I walk in.

We do want different furniture eventually but for now we’re making do with what we’ve got so that we can use it and get a feel for the space. I’ve been wanting to move the small table next to one of the chairs so that when I sit down with a cup of tea I have somewhere to put it. I didn’t think it would fit that way round… but moved it today and it worked; it actually opened up the room a bit more. To make this change I had to move the exercise machine and weights further along. They also should really be somewhere else, but we have no room in other rooms at the moment.

The conservatory tends to get things dumped in it that I use in the garden e.g. chair covers because they haven’t got a home, a bucket of gardening stuff because I can’t find the key to the shed, and random items. I’ve been tidying and cleaning different sections of the conservatory over the last few months including cleaning the windows the other day, but have never really dusted the ceilings as they are too high. I put the music on, took out my new microfibre long-poled duster that I bought earlier in the week and swept it across the glass ceiling panels and then the walls. The telescopic pole was perfect to get into the hard to reach areas as it extends to 100 inches.

I gave the windows a wipe over again with the Minky M cloth I bought the other day (it’s so quick). One of my readers was asking me how this works on the outside of the windows and so I tried it on the conservatory door. I just needed to wet the cloth a bit more, but the glass panes came out sparkling clean with minimum effort and no streaks or smears. Once I’d dusted the furniture and swept the floor the whole room felt much cleaner.

It’s not perfect as I still need to do the desk but that shouldn’t take long tomorrow, and the bucket of gardening stuff crept back in this evening (temporarily of course). Overall, I felt happy so I rewarded myself with a slice of birthday cake from yesterday and a cup of tea (and it was nice to be able to put it on the table next to me!).

The other amazing thing was that the clean and clear room attracted the rest of the family to join me and we chatted and listened to music. I lit a candle as the sun had just gone down, and it felt calming. One of us had to perch on the arm of the chair though as we have limited seating in there, so we didn’t stay in there for long. It was a lovely moment though and I’m starting to see how we could use this room as a non-TV room when we just want to chat.

Other progress

The dishwasher took a back seat on everyone’s list today so I eventually got around to doing it this evening. I also cleaned all the counter tops etc. so I can come down to a clean kitchen in the morning.

Until tomorrow…

Sandra