November tally!

I can’t believe where the month of November went. Seriously if feels like it’s only a few days since I wrote up October tally, and now November is over. I swear the days have wheels attached to them, because I sure can’t catch up.

So how did I do in the month of November (that I’m sure was only 8 days long 😉 ).

NOVEMBER TALLY of things “out-the-door” =  23 items!

  • 1 bead bracelet
  • 14 KLM Delft Blue Miniature houses – shipped to a friend in – A Tiny Village 2
  • 3 DVD’s – part of my Watch a movie program declutter project
  • 1 down duvet – that I am still debating if there is anything I can use it for, rather than “toss” it – any good ideas out there?

In addition, my neighbours mum popped over for a cup of tea, and while she was here it turns out that a couple of the clothing I was planning on getting rid of worked out for her. So she “ran” out of here with:

  • 1 pair of running shoes
  • 2 scarf’s
  • 1 pair of pink super soft socks, that just never fit me 😦

So there it is, 23 items out-the-door for the month of November.

P.S I’m still sitting on this pile of things, waiting for my neighbour to have a look, that I was hoping would count in November.. guess the pile is making it to the December tally instead!

2014-12-07 10.35.49

Another book installment!

Now that I’m not sitting her ogling the TV all the time, there has been time to get back to chipping away at my “reading myself out of my bookshelf” task.

And here it is – another 12 books out-the-door 🙂

2014-12-04 10.01.15

A busy bee…

I take my hat off to my step-mum these days.

We are moving into that time of year where it seems like there is not enough time to get everything done. Now add a renovation project to that…

Things are moving along at my step-mums new place, and I’m sure they will be done shortly. To get there we’ve had a few days filled with looking at some of the materials that are going in, and now the tiles, paint and wooden floor should be in place. We’ve done some measurements, and I think we are ready to order the kitchen counter, whenever my step-mum finds one she likes 🙂 A new closet for the guest bedroom has been ordered, and sometime this week, I believe we will be picking up the newly painted kitchen fronts. I have to say, she is a trooper. I’m totally impressed with how much she have managed to get done, is such a short time.

Part of buying a new place, is the selling of the old. The first showing is on Sunday, and I’m hoping it will sell quickly and at a price she will be happy with. There are always some stuff that needs to be done, to make sure a place make a good impression, and my step-mums been a busy bee. Even so, there are still some stuff she needs help with, and yesterday a friend of mine and me, went over there and did some work on her closets (drawers removed, hanging rods added), so that it presents correctly during the showings.

It’s incredible how much work there is every time one decides to buy and sell property. There a a zillion thing to think about, and the moving itself is just part of it all, which I’m sure most you know everything about. I’m just glad it’s not me! This time around, I only have to help out a little 😉

You can see how December this year will be a little busier than normal! So stay tuned and I’ll keep you posted 😉

A wonderful mention!

Last night I found out that I had gotten a wonderful mention from Laura over at The Next 50 Years.

Saturday was her 1 year blog anniversary!

Laura decided to honour some of her fellow bloggers, and could you believe it, she choose me first. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it, I was completely floored, and honoured.. and did I mention floored?  Not only that she would choose my blog, but also for her lovely words. You can read her post here.

Laura found me December 23rd 2013, 10 days after I started my blog. She have practically followed me since the beginning.

I love Laura’s outlook on life, how she embraces single living, how she completely nails it in some of her single living specific posts, how she makes me grin or even laugh out right.. and not to forget… she makes me think!

It’s wonderful meeting bloggers and making new friends. And I can’s say how much I appreciate Laura being a part of my world. Should I ever be in her neighbourhood (in the US), I’d love to stop over for a cup of tea and a chat 🙂

Congratulations on your 1 year anniversary, Laura!

I hope you’ll continue to share your thoughts with us for years to come, I know at least one who will enjoy that 🙂

I invite you all to mosey over to Laura at The Next 50 Years, for a looksie 🙂 Enjoy!

A new property…

My step mum have bought herself a new place to live. It’s on the 3rd floor of a 7 floor building, and it’s a bit of a rehab project!

There is a lot of things that needs to be done to it and fortunately she have found some workers that starts on Monday. They will take care of painting the ceilings and walls, opening up some walls, changing the wooden floors, tear down some old cloths cabinets and a few other bits and pieces.

Even so, I’m sure there will be more than enough small projects for the rest of us to do 😉 Like yesterday!

The kitchen needs a tiny overhaul (cherry colour, with worn out kitchen counter). My step mum wants it white and bright. So we have decided that the easiest way to refurbish it, is to keep the original kitchen (as the units are pretty OK), and paint it.

So yesterday a friend of mine and I went over there to take down all the kitchen cabinets doors and drawer fronts, as they are to be delivered to a place that specialize in spray-painting old kitchen units. All the fittings had to be removed and the fronts had to be cleaned thoroughly to make them ready for the paint place.

Even though it’s not a hard job or a difficult job, I have found that regardless of what it is that has to be done in a house, it always seem to take much longer than you originally think 😉

Tomorrow  we are delivering the fronts to the paint place, and I believe we will get them back in about a week or so… so I guess I know what the next weekend project might be 😉  After the other workers are done with the painting, mind you…

Hmmmm, seems like I can’t seem to escape from kitchen projects 😉

2014-10-17 15.06.362014-10-17 15.06.48

 

An utter mess…

With all these small projects I have going, you know… the photo collection, my dads boxes, DVD project and collection all sorts of stuff in boxes for my neighbour to have a look, before I get rid of them, my house is in shambles. Serious shambles! And I just can’t procrastinate any more (which I have done a serious job at the last couple of days), and today I just need to get it done.

Do you ever find that you have so many things you are working on at one time, that you are suddenly overwhelmed with stuff?

Well that’s been me (and my living room) the last week or so. Right now I have so much photo stuff stacked around my living room table that I can hardly get to my sofa any more, without stepping over piles. Or for that sake put down my morning tea, without having to move several stacks away..  even just writing this post I have to dig out some space on my table for my pc…

Well enough of that, I’m going to put everything back where it came from, clean up the place and start over, one item at the time, one box, one album!

I might not have the same progress on the projects (you know – out of sight, out of mind) but at least I’ll have some piece of mind when I’m sitting in my living room.

Oh yeah, I should probably let you in on one more incentive! My neighbours mum is coming over on Friday for a cup of coffee… another good reason to get my house in order, wouldn’t you say? 😉

Waterlogged?

When I lived in the US a few years back, I had this small water feature sitting on my kitchen bench. Just a little something to give me the sound of a small trickle of water.

When I moved back to Norway, I did install it, but a couple of months into using it here, the bowl started to leak, and I never really found another bowl I like to use the water feature with.. so I packed it away.

And now that I have a decent outdoor water feature.. I see no reason to keep this in my closet. So out-the-door it goes!

I can’t really count this item, as it got counted in my July? toss, I obviously just didn’t get it out-the-door after all, hmmm 😦

2014-01-11 11.21.04

You’ve covered me for years!

I’m sorry to say, but my old goose down duvet has to go. There is a ridiculous amount of down and feathers that are flying around every time I change the duvet cover. And I have to admit, it’s getting a bit tedious having to vacuum “half the house” just because I want a clean bed 😉

In Norway the normal bedding exists of a fitted sheet that we sleep on, a down/feather or synthetic duvet, covered with a duvet cover, that we sleep under and a couple of pillows.

It’s not the norm like I’ve seen in US, to just sleep under a thin sheet, or sleep under a sheet that’s between us and the duvet/blanket. Because I don’t use that extra sheet, I change the duvet covers pretty often. So you can see how flying down/feathers is becoming a problem.

I’ve had my duvet for years, so it’s not really all that surprising it’s throwing in the towel. Thankfully I have an extra duvet laying around so I don’t need to go and buy another one (which is really good as they are expensive over here, if you want a decent one).

My dear duvet!

Today I have to say goodbye 😦 I’m sad to see our parting ways, because you have served me well all these years.

You have always been there!

To keep me nice and warm on chilly nights. You have been around for sad days and sick days, allowing me to hide under the covers. You’ve been around for snuggle days, reading or watching tv in my living room. You’ve even been outside with me once or twice, on beautiful winter days just sitting enjoying the weather.

You’ve seen me at my best and my worst, and you’ve followed me from home to home.

Sadly this is the end of the road for you. I would have loved to reuse you for something, but I’m not sure what that would be right now. Refurbish you is to expensive, compared to replacements. And you know that your goose down brother, who is “hanging” around in my closet, is chopping at the bits to come out to play.

So long, my trusted friend!

TV Detox – How am I doing? And a new project!

Have I stayed within my allotted 1 hour a day? Hmm, probably not quite. Have I stopped hanging in front of the TV all day, absolutely!

Remember about three weeks ago, I decided I needed to do something about my TV time? And I did! The first couple of weeks I did really well, I more or less stayed within my allotted hour, some days the TV never came on, and sometimes I watched a couple of programs rather than just one. But on average, probably no more than 1 hour a day. Which was my goal!

This last week though, there’s been a slight change, and mostly because I have added another small declutter project to the mix 🙂

As you probably know, I started this year with an intention to read myself out of my bookshelves, and this have so far been a pretty successful endeavour. I though I could take a cue from this, and try a similar thing with my DVD/Blu-Ray collection.

I’ve decided to watch myself out of my movie collection. This means, I will go through my movies one after another, watch it one more time, then decide which one of these categories it falls into:

  • keep – great movie will watch it again – worth being kept as a physical disk
  • copy – good movie will/might watch it again – worth copying it to a PC hard drive
  • toss – good to crap movie probably won’t watch it again (or know I won’t) – get rid of it

Now, I know this will play a little havoc with my TV time. But since I’m doing this with a friend, it will mostly be weekend watching, not a day to day thing 😉

Sounds like a fun project, yes?

Counting them, I probably have around 200 movies, which are movies and not series. Some of them are really old, and some are really crappy – you will probably have a laugh when you see pictures of them – so hopefully it won’t be to hard to cut down a little on my movie collection.

My biggest challenge when it comes to cutting down the amount of DVD/Blu-Rays are my series collection. Not sure how to handle those yet. You see, I have collected a few series over the years, especially sci-fi series, that I kinda would like to keep. Most of them are in CD/DVD albums, so they don’t eat all that much space. Hopefully when I get good a getting rid of movies, I can start chipping away at the series as well. We will have to get back to that…

But we were talking about movies! So far we have watched 4 movies, or rather watched 3 movies, one was so bad we couldn’t stand to watch more than the first 5 minutes 😉

Result? 3 out-the-door and 1 maaaaybe copy (probably not).

2014-11-13 10.20.30

A little bit of this, a little bit of that

It seem like I can’t seem to concentrate on one thing these days, If you saw my living room and guest room you would have a laugh. There are stuff all over.

I told you before I started on my kitchen, that it seems like I’m working on a “zillion” projects, and that’s exactly how my house looks 😦

I’ll clue you inn on a couple of them.

Dads boxes:
After dad passed away last year, there was a few things that ended up in my house. Some things I held for my brother, which he have received during this year. Remember I told you about them earlier in “My Grandfathers cabinet” and “Hand over“?

There was also a couple of boxes, with letters, pictures, films, audio tape, and other stuff dad had held on to, for sentimental value. It’s a mix of stuff from his life and stuff from his mothers life (she passed away quite a few years ago).

I did look through it last year, but I realized that because of some of the formats he had, like old 8 mm films and old Tandberg audio tapes, I would have to find someone that could help me figure out what on earth was on that stuff, and I packed it all away for later.

Well, I decided that later is now. It’s time to figure out what to do with it all. And I’m slowly going through his boxes.

A couple of friends of mine have (or been able to get their hands on) some old equipment, and I have found out what’s on the 8 mm films and dias (negatives in frames). I have to admit, its kinda weird, and fun to come across people you know, and see them 50 years younger 🙂 The films I have already delivered to a company that will make them digital, the dias I’ll probably deliver to the same place next week or so. I’ve found a photo place that are not to expensive, and I’ll probably have them scan some of my stuff, rather than me go out an buy a very expensive photo/negative scanner.

I’ve also found out some of what’s on the audio tapes, but here I’m running into a bit more trouble. There are hours of tape, and the places I know that can digitize this, is hugely expensive, so I’m kinda hoping I can find someone with an old Tandberg player that I can borrow, so that I can digitize it myself… we will see… I’ll leave that for later.

Some of the stuff in the boxes are from my dad’s mum and even some from his dad’s, mostly letters and some pictures. And some are letters to and from my dad. The letters are a little strange to go through, because most of them are from family members that are sadly no longer with us. So reading them is like being hit from all sides. And it’s hard to decide which ones to keep and which ones to let go.

The same with the pictures, there are pictures of people there, that I know nothing about, and there are pictures of people, that are family members. I know I can’t keep it all, so I’ll have to pace myself going through them.

This is one of the things I’m working on right now, my dad’s boxes. And I know, it will be an ongoing project to decide what to keep, and get most of it digitized.

My photo collection:
The other thing I’m working on that are creating havoc in my house, is my own photo collection. Starting on my dad’s stuff, I realised it was time to tackle all of my photos as well. It’s been a plan of mine for a long time, to do something about my photos. I don’t know if you remember, I mentioned my plans for my photo collection in the post “Who the hell am I keeping it for?”

My photo collection consist of, tons and tons of albums, loads of negatives, loose photos (not yet put into albums) and boxes of old inherited photos of people I barely know (or don’t know as it is).  Somewhere along the way, I also decided I wanted them digitized.

In the article mentioned above, I realised that I, in reality, am only keeping the photos for me, and that I therefore do not have to keep everything…  and the conclusion was to keep key pictures as real photos, scan a few more and then get rid of the rest. And that is the task I’ve just begun.

And here is where the mess comes in. I’ve pulled all my albums and photo boxes out on the floor, And so far that amounts to 9 huge albums and 4 boxes, in my living room and 6 albums and several boxes in my guest room and a bunch of unused albums. Throw that together with my dad’s boxes and you understand my problem, yes? 😉

How am I doing with this task? Well so far I’ve only created the mess, but stay with me over the next few days (weeks), and I’m sure I’ll have a progress report or ten for you.

So there you have it, the stuff I’m working on right now. I have a funny feeling, this is something that will take quite some time, before I am where I want to be with this, but I have to start somewhere, right?