Getting ready to go

Mum & Dad are coming to house and cat-sit while we are away, so we thought we had better tidy up a little to decrease  the death-trap hazard-rating of the front room.

The titanic spare-bedroom, front-room and under-stairs, clearout is now reaching its culmination, after boxes out of the loft, trips to the recycling centre or Oxfam (3 or 4 so far) and an eBay sale of model train pieces that ends this Sunday evening. On this, seemingly endless voyage of wading though "stuff" of ages, some delightful treasure discoveries. But its mostly been an excess of computer cables, shredding of documents, empty boxes, old christmas-cracker toys, puzzles, incomplete packs of cards, bin bags. All accompanied by Tommy the cat making himself comfy in a heap of empty or part-full bin bags, right in my way.

Finally: new boxes of stuff in the loft, boxes under bed in spare-bedroom,  all in the space vacated by the preceding clearout. These to make decisions on our return (there's more model trains, train track, cameras & camera-pieces, telescope, printers, for example): either to sell or, more likely, simply to forget until the next time we need a clear out.

With tins of paint now under the floorboards, and the front room still overpopulated with chairs its a vast improvement.

Time to set up the blog with a family photo to get it going! Clara refuses to participate by declaring "Not now", as apposed to the usual "Later", both of which are typical responses to requests to tidy her room and mean exactly the same thing: "never".