Sandra Madeira

This statement has some truth to it, and sometimes I use it as an excuse for having so much. I had a busy working day today and then this evening I was faced with this stuff that I’d placed by the door to put in the garage.

If they are things that I’m not sure that we want, should they go into the garage? I decided to make some decisions on the spot instead of avoiding making them like I usually do.

The inflatable outdoor game set is something the girls bought a couple of years ago with their pocket money and it’s been hanging around in the garage and various rooms since. They don’t want it so it’s got to be a candidate for the charity bag (once deflated).

The exercise ball is a useful item to have in the house but not if no one uses it. I think I originally bought it for pregnancy yoga or something about 16 years ago. I just googled what you can do with it and it has multiple uses so I think we’ll keep that in the house. It’s good for exercise, posture and some people use it as a desk chair. I just need to find a home for it so that it doesn’t get in the way. I’ll set myself a target that if I don’t use it by the end of April, I’ll put it in a charity bag.

The ice cream maker (in the carrier bag) is missing its lid. I have no idea if the missing part is in the house or garage. I don’t remember ever using it – my husband may have made ice-cream with it a couple of times when the girls were small. I’m going to put it in a box in the garage with a label saying ‘if spare parts are not found by Dec 2020, please throw me away!’

I need to live with less

…but with my car boot already full of items that I need to donate, where do I put things now? It has to be the garage. Also, when charity shops actually open again, are they going to want the hundreds of bags that people will possibly drop off at the same time?

I read a really good article the other day that my friend sent me about minimalism, which is about committing to owning less rather than constantly decluttering, which I initially thought was the same until I read more of the article. It got me thinking that I need to part with more, and stop moving things from room to room for later sorting. I also need to get out of the habit of keeping things just in case.

Is ‘keeping things just in case’ so wrong though? At the moment it’s proving to be quite useful when we can’t get out to buy what we need, e.g. the table I’m using in the garage, the plant pots for my seedlings etc.

Lots of thoughts going around in my head at the moment. Is anyone else wondering what’s going to happen when we all emerge from our houses, heading for the charity shops armed with lots of bags of unwanted stuff? Maybe it’s just me thinking that it’ll be an issue, or maybe I’m just trying to think of excuses to not get rid of things.

Until tomorrow…

Sandra

Today I kept hearing the words ‘I’m hungry’ from the girls. I was working, and although we had a small jacket potato with a little bit of left over chilli at lunchtime, it still didn’t stop them being ravenous by tea time.

I made the mistake us mums make and asked them what they wanted for dinner. They said that they didn’t want anything in the fridge, freezer or cupboards but luckily they left me alone downstairs long enough to come up with a few dishes from what was in the fridge, which gave me an idea for today’s post.

I didn’t declutter the fridge as such, but instead decluttered the ingredients that were scattered about the fridge with a view to making a selection of dishes for everyone. This would allow me to get rid of some leftovers and other foods about to go out of date. There was a part of me that really couldn’t be bothered to cook, but something came over me when I thought about how we could end up throwing a lot of it away. Whilst listening to an audio book, I found the energy and enthusiasm to do the following:

• I chopped up a whole iceberg lettuce (we threw the last one away so I was determined to use this one)
• I got out the leftover roast lamb (almost gone)
• I made my special mini roast potatoes which only take an hour from start to finish (we have a lot of potatoes for some reason)
• I chopped up an ‘almost whole’ cucumber that I knew wouldn’t get eaten otherwise
• I got out some cherry tomatoes as we had two packs
• I made a bowl of fusilli pasta (yes, managed to get some in the supermarket last week)
• I stir fried some chicken breast and then added left over tin tomatoes, tomato purée, ginger, lemon, garlic, mixed herbs, black pepper, chicken stock, spring onion and cashew nuts (my own made up recipe which turned out better than I thought).
• I cooked some asparagus
• I cooked some spinach that we had left in a bag

I don’t get excited about cooking but I did feel pleased with myself this evening.

When it was ready, I called the girls down and they didn’t complain, they just ate it. What they put on their plates was completely different to each other, but they seemed happy. I even have some left over chicken for tomorrow!

There’s a bit more room in the fridge now, making it easier to see what’s going out of date.

I hope you’ve all had a good day at home.

Until tomorrow…

Sandra

I’m trying to find the positives in my situation today, which, in comparison to what’s going on in the world, I shouldn’t complain about. I’m feeling fed up (which hopefully my readers will know is not like me). Firstly, I trod on my most comfortable pair of varifocal glasses and the arm snapped off. Then later this evening, I bit on something hard and heard a crack in one of my side teeth (top left, pre molar I think). The inside of it felt loose. I was really worried and rang the emergency dental-line number. They told me that due to Covid-19 they are only taking phone consultations. She was very nice and advised me to buy a temporary filling to put over it and to ring back tomorrow if I still need to speak to someone. She wasn’t trained as a dentist – just taking the call.

So, I left my dinner (which I hadn’t eaten much of at that point) and went to the nearest pharmacy that she suggested which happened to also be a large supermarket with queues of shoppers with trolleys outside. The pharmacy part was going to shut in eight minutes so the helpful security guard let me straight in rather than queue. Can you believe that they’d run out of the suggested ‘Toofy Pegs’ temporary filling pack. I rang the second one on the list which was in the town and they had one packet left, so I drove straight there.

It was getting dark and although the motorways had a fair few cars on them, the streets in town were empty, until I got to the small chemist. There was a takeaway shop nearby, lots of cars and people queuing outside the chemist. Everyone was spaced out inside and outside. I met a lovely lady who’d just celebrated her 60th birthday in lockdown a couple of weeks ago.

I got home and tried my best to attach the putty/cement filling to the tooth but it’s very wobbly and sensitive and such an awkward place to hold the inside part of the tooth in place. I now have a little bit of white cement stuck on the inside of my tooth but I’m not holding much hope that it’ll stay there. It didn’t stick the first couple of times so I had to re-soften it in order to put it back. My eldest daughter (15) was lovely and tried her best to help me.

Before all of this happened, I had just spent 1-2 hours in the kitchen cleaning and tidying up after my family had cooked for me yesterday. More or less got it back to how it was a couple of days ago. Then I heated up some of yesterday’s leftovers and… well… you know the rest.

I’m just hoping that when I wake up tomorrow, it will all have been a dream.

Until then…

Sandra