I love it when a plan comes together

I have 42 hair bobbles. No, wait, there’s one in my hair, so 43. Unremarkable, I’m sure, especially for those of you who are regular Rockerfellers and own hair bobbles by the handful, but let me tell you this – before I started rejanimate, there were times when I couldn’t find a single hair bobble, was running round the house grabbing elastic bands, bits of string, cable ties, anything to hold my hair back. Simply by patiently aggregating stuff and giving it a home I have rejanimated 43 hair bobbles from their previous dusty, unloved homes. They will live again.

Looking at the bigger picture, I finished the spare room today! Yes, it was very satisfying, like the final pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, or when your supermarket shopping scans through as a round number (logically, of course, this isn’t that amazing, but it always feels like you’re living an enchanted life, just for that moment).

Here’s a summary of what I’ve achieved in there:

* all make-up sorted, and old stuff brought back out
* jewellery organised in box
* drawers of dressing table cleared of junk
* boxes under bed emptied and used to store books and art supplies
* three bags of school stuff brought to school
* sewing stuff now in dedicated sewing drawer
* knitting/crochet stuff all in ottoman
* created ‘memory box’ for keepsakes
* stationery in stationery drawer downstairs
* put together plastic box containing essentials like Sellotape, scissors, glue etc to go in sideboard near stationery drawer
* found SEVEN PAIRS OF SCISSORS
* threw out three big sacks of rubbish

All from one room. As I alluded to before, it doesn’t even look that much different, but it feels much more of a calm and tranquil place now as I know it’s all organised.

January 21st: rejanimated spare room. Finally!

A Tale of a Tub

I have a confession to make about today’s ReJanimate – it cost money! That’s right, we had to buy new things for this one, but it was worth it.

Basically we have a small, functional bathroom. It’s OK – the shower is awesome, and we’ve done bits to it but always with the idea in the back of our minds that we’d redo the whole thing soon and therefore whatever we got was just a make-do thing.  Only, after our crazy binge of house revamping over the summer, we can’t face another big project, so we reJanimated it instead!

Yesterday we went to Argos and got a tallboy unit that would fit into the small space by the sink.  Now, believe me that this is a small space.  A Borrower would suck air through their teeth and say “I was really looking for something a little roomier”.  But prewar British houses are noted for their functional but tiny bathrooms, and Argos have catered for that need with lots of functional, tiny bathroom furniture.  (note – I am not sponsored by Argos, but I will be, if they want.  I can be bought.)

Once that was in situ, it looked so good we went today and got a smaller unit and a corner shelf unit.  Add to that a bit of reshuffling of bath toys (for the toddler!) and a bin reJanimated from another room and the whole thing was completely painless.  It was.  Definitely.  No water at all came through the ceiling so stop going on about it!

Here’s the things we bought:

And here’s the finished room:

I know it doesn’t look like much but it’s the first time the room’s felt done!  Needs a new blind, I think, but that’s another day’s job.

January 20th: reJanimated the bathroom

Sewing and sandwich bags

Today has been quite an exciting ReJanimate day! We started a project which will hopefully be finished tomorrow, and then I went to tackle the spare room again.  This really is a job and a half, as in order to do anything I need to do other things first, so at the moment the whole room looks worse than when I began. However, at the beginning the room was superficially tidy but in chaos underneath; now I am restoring order at the bottom but it leads to transitional mess on top!

Today I tackled what was actually a big job – my sewing and yarn supplies stash.  Any crafting fan will know that these things just multiply of their own accord – you start off with one ball of double knit and a crochet hook and end up with enough aran to knit a ships’ worth of jumpers, half a dozen balls of baby cashmerino and some pretty but unusable stitch markers you can never throw away.

I had an ottoman full of fabric – skirts with bust zips, old cushions covers and the like that I “might make into something one day” and assorted drawers of wool and needles and god knows what.  So I did a proper cull of the fabric and kept only the most promising bits (I do have a good idea for them, I promise!) and then used a high tech method to organise my knitting stuff.

Bags.  Revolutionary, I know. Who would have thought of using a bag to keep things in? You can also use them to carry your shopping home, fact fans!  I use big clear sandwich bags – one for each project-in-progress (so much nicer than ‘unfinished’, don’t you think?) and one for each lot of wool.  Add to that a little plastic box from Poundland for hooks, scissors (I’ve found five pairs in total sincee I started rejanimating!) and it all now fits into the Ottoman nicely.  Ahhh!

January 19th: reJanimated sewing and knitting stuff

  

Cabinet Neatening

You know how other people’s medicine cabinets are always really alluring and intriguing? Well, I’m saving you all the trouble of coming round and asking to use the loo just so you can snoop in mine by putting on the Internet for the ENTIRE WORLD to see. Alas, it’s very not interesting – some bad-back painkillers, half of a twin pack of digital pregnancy tests from 2 years ago (seriously, have you seen how much they are? I am never throwing that away!) and about 10,000 ibuprofen, which glut is caused by the Ibuprofen/ paracetamol fear – now you’re only allowed to buy 32 at a time in the uk, you see them cheap and think “better stick a pack in my basket” and end up with a mountain of packs, all with two out of them. Come the apocalypse/collapse of civilisation, I shall set myself up as a kind of healing shaman type of person, headaches and pregnancy quandaries a speciality. Of course I can only accurately predict one pregnancy, but after that, word of mouth will secure my reputation, and I’ll just tell everyone else to come back in three months, by which time it should be obvious. I also have these kickass Japanese ear-scrapers I bought at the awesome Chinese superstore in Vancouver, so I can do ear-cleaning as a sideline. Ooh, doesn’t it make you feel good to have your post-apocalyptic career all planned out?

Well, until the apocalypse I’ll just have to content myself with rejanimating stuff. In case you haven’t worked it out, today I sorted out the bathroom cabinet!

January 18th: rejanimated bathroom cabinet.

ReJanimate in no time at all

OK, I have had no time at all, seriously – full day of teaching topped off with a parents evening and a late train home.   Luckily I’d done my task for the day early and it was one thing you can do really quickly and easily – go through your jewellery box and dig something out!

I have all these nice pairs of earrings, organised nicely, complete with backs…and I totally forget to actually wear them. So in an attempt to look halfway smart for parents evening I found some smart little studs and they finished off my ‘look’ (OK, this is a look that starts with snow boots so it doesn’t take much to finish).

I’m sorry, this is short and pictureless, but it’s late and I just didn’t want to miss a day!

January 17th: reJanimated some earrings from my jewellery box.

Play and Display

Remember when you were a kid? There were always bits of your school that were just too depressing for words. Certain rooms or corridors that would just fill you with so much dread you’d just want to lie down on the floor and die. Or is that just me?

Anyway, I was beginning to feel that maybe outside my classroom was a bit like that. To be fair, there was some excellent work on display out there, but as it’s a small area and there can be up to 90 kids crammed into it at any given time (omg, seriously, open the door and children fall through it like rabbits from a magician’s sleeve) so everything gets torn and wrecked.

Then I was reading some research about what type of classroom layout was most effective (yes! For fun!) and another little quote caught my eye. It was from a girl complaining that everywhere she went in her school was beige and she longed to see colour. Now, my school is by no means all beige (mould is BLACK!) but it’s not exactly like living inside a packet of Skittles, IYSWIM. So I looked around and realised that area was ripe for rejanimating.

Here’s my new display board:

and here’s some frankly fancy lettering I did on the other one:

I mean, that is SMART. I ought to be a professional display makerer, which is definitely a thing.

January 16th: rejanimated my displays.

Crochet away!

I realised something today that has set rejanimate apart from other decluttering exercises – I’ve avoided making any lists. Normally I’m completely Rimmer-like when it comes to things like this – spend hours making a list or timetable in multiple colours and when it comes to the task in hand, just do whatever is the metaphorical equivalent of writing “I am a fish” a few hundred times. (This analogy will only work if you know Red Dwarf, and if you don’t, what are you reading this for? Go and watch Red Dwarf!)

Anyway, the lack of list means you can digress, which I was glad of today. It looked like it was going to be another boring one, just carrying on tidying the spare room, and I did get somewhere with that, emptying two boxes and a basket (and once again refilling the wheelie bin the moment it is emptied…), but then, I digressed.

In trying to find space in a drawer for my rejanimated sewing box, I found a very-nearly-finished amigurumi cat I made ages and ages ago. All he needed was some eyes and a nose. Years and years the poor little guy had waited and now, not only was I poised and ready to rejanimate, but I had a tidy, organised sewing box next to me.. As Jez in Peep Show says, “fate – it does the hard work so you don’t have to”.

And here it is:

January 15th: rejanimated a nearly-finished crochet cat

Sew far, sew good

So, here’s yet another best thing about ReJanimate – you do something every day.  Yeah, I know, that’s kind of the point, but I realised today that some of my projects have had the side effect of creating more mess or disorder somewhere else (why does this happen?  All things tend to entropy.)

But instead of looking at this mess and being all OH WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE MY LIFE IS BUT A VORTEX OF DISARRAY AND DESPAIR I can be all Zen about it.  Because – ah, ahhhh – I know, for a fact I will be doing something tomorrow.  I don’t just intend to do something tomorrow, but have in fact committed to it. 

And so I didn’t walk into the spare room, take one look at the work to do in there and run out screaming, I just took some of it as today’s job.  And the more often I do this, the easier each job gets, as I begin to find I know exactly where some things go, because I sorted that out some days ago.  I don’t have wrapping paper in four places in the house, or three boxes of stationery, or, or…and what’s yet to come will be easier still.

It’s paying off!

Today, then, I went through the spare room wardrobe, I emptied two boxes of random crap, I got another bag to take to school, I found a bag of make up to ReJanimate and I tidied my sewing box:

January 14th: reJanimated sewing box.

The last 10%

It’s easy to start something – I should know, I’ve started many, many things over the years – but it’s the finishing that’s hard.  And that’s been exactly the problem in this house.  We did a lot of work over the summer; new flooring, new fireplaces, wall plastered and painted, and got it 90% done and them…stopped.  Partly it was because we ran out of money, but actually the jobs aren’t particularly money-related – it was more to do with the fact we were sick and tired of doing it all.

So today we reJanimated a few things that were the last 10% of a job: hung the pictures on the staircase, put some curtains over the front door, cleared out the bottom half of the airing cupboard and sorted the curtains for the dining room.  Phew! None of them big jobs but just requiring an input of time and energy that we didn’t have without the inspiring power of ReJanimate to make us do it.

So there’s a task for you, gentle reader…finish the last 10%!

January 13th: reJanimated the staircase

Filing for (total) dummies

Now, I’m the first to admit I’d secretly love a proper filing system – little tabs with labels on, everything in chronological order, stickers that say things like ” Receipts (toys) (2011-2013) (A-C)” and so on. But years of abandoned systems and shattered dreams, both at home and at school, have taught me that such systems languish unused while I just sling every piece of paper in a box.

So it was thus that it came to me – why not make myself a filing system that is, essentially, fling everything in a box?  It’s not as if there are filling police out there, pulling handbrake turns in their Audi Quattros as they receive an urgent call-out to the house of a woman who just put her P60 in a pile which also includes the last three copies of CBeebies magazine, the instruction manual to a sandwich toaster which got thrown out in 1996 and the car insurance documents she snappily told her husband two weeks ago that she hasn’t seen, and if it’s that important, he should have put them away himself, shouldn’t he? 

Therefore, this is my new filing system:

You’ll notice there are folders in this box – I’m not an animal – to divide it up, basically, into work stuff, kid stuff, money stuff, car stuff, and don’t-lose-this stuff.  It ain’t elegant but I know where everything is and we will actually use this, which is much more efficient than a beautiful system we don’t use.  Done. 

January 12th: ReJanimated filing system.