Today I got up earlier than usual and went for a 30 minute brisk walk to clear the cobwebs in my head. Whilst I was eating my breakfast, I thought through the plan for the day which was to work on the spare room, starting with the en-suite bathroom that hasn’t been used for a couple of years. It’s become a bit of a dumping ground for spare cleaning stuff and other random items that we don’t want, most of which I suspected would end up in the recycling or bin but I kept an open mind as to what I would find.

Armed with rubber gloves and a mask, I entered the bathroom and opened the small window. I had a vision of a completely clean and clear room and I kept that picture in my mind for the next couple of hours. I knew that there was mould on the ceiling around the shower and above the sink so I sprayed it with Astonish Mould and Mildew Blaster and left the room for 15 minutes to let it do its work. It was at that point that the Really Useful Boxes turned up that I ordered yesterday so I put them aside for later sorting in the main part of the spare room.

Back to the en-suite

I moved everything out of the room and scrubbed all the mould off the ceiling and top of tiles around the shower. I couldn’t get it all off but it looked much better – I will have another go next week. I then cleaned the ceiling and tiles from top to bottom, and gave the windowsill, sink and toilet a good clean. The lino flooring desperately needs changing in there as it’s all bumpy and coming away at the edges due to a few incidents from the shower door not sealing properly. Ideally the whole bathroom needs changing snd walls re-tiling but we are going to make do for now. Here’s where I got to after a couple of hours and it looked clean and smelt fresh…

This is what the unused bathroom was like at the beginning…

I purposely didn’t show you photos of the mould… I mean, who would want to see that 😀?

Decluttering the main part of the spare room

As I mentioned yesterday, my daughter would like to move into this room over the school holidays as it’s bigger than the one she’s currently in and it gives her a chance to use her creativity to design and furnish the room. She’s got great taste so I’m really looking forward to seeing her ideas. If you’ve been following my posts, you will know that the challenge I have is that the spare room is filled with ‘stuff’ – a mix of (1) clutter that needs to exit out of the house but needs to be sorted and bagged first, and (2) things we want to keep but will have to fit into a smaller room once my daughter moves into this one.

Now, we could move everything into her existing room, but in the spare room we have a large desk, filing drawers and two bookcases (one large and one small). These not only won’t really fit, but are also the opposite colour wood to the fitted wardrobes that are in there. There are also two cupboards full to the brim in the spare room – one with games which needs a good sort out and one with all sorts of things including a Playstation and accessories, dressing up clothes, photo albums and so much more that I couldn’t even take a guess at.

I have three options:

• Somehow fit it all into the smaller room as well as the furniture mentioned above (issue: the smaller room would become my husband’s temporary office so we can’t make it too cramped).
• Sell the furniture we don’t think we’ll use elsewhere (issue: this could take a while to sell and then I have to find somewhere to put the stuff that’s in them)
• Make space in the garage and dump it all in there for later sorting (easy option meaning less clutter round the house… but then I need to make room in there… it’s a viscous circle).

What I do know is that I have my work cut out for the next couple of months, but as you know, I do love a decluttering challenge and it will yield positive results. I made a start this afternoon and boxed up some items to sort out properly tomorrow.

I’ve put the ‘filled’ boxes in our bedroom as my husband will be working in the spare room tomorrow. I have the day off so I’ll have lots of time to sort and declutter whilst playing music or listening to audio books.

Until tomorrow…

Sandra