Still...

...madly cleaning... Another room half done... I don't think there was a box, drawer or cupboard I left unturned in the junk room study today... P took to the outdoors and weeded one side of the garden bed on the corner of the house while I went mad turning out cupboards - every so often we would break for a cuppa... I am now starting to make some sense of the mess I have created. We are having a council collection so what isn't going to the op-shop is going out on the naturestrip.

I have had to giggle as people cruise passed looking at your rubbish to see if there is anything worthwhile taking. Although this morning we did have the neighbours asking if they could have something of ours... I said to P - that we will probably see it turn up outside their place next council collection day...

I am looking forward to the day when I can say I am finished this obsessive house clearing cleaning... Unfortunately I haven't had much of a chance to do anything else but I know that I am going to feel so much better when it is all done. Though to look at the place it looks like the bomb has just hit. Once I make a start I become quite driven - my mind races onto the next thing... P says very littlebut I think he is hopeful that one day soon things will return to normal - but tonight I started talking about moving the furniture around - so I think he has resigned himself to 'it won't be over until it's over'.

I have thrown away things I have had for in some cases 20 plus years and two shifts. I went through my sewing patterns - really how many shirt patterns did I have to have - the op-shop ladies will probably groan when they see them come in.

I did the Knitwit (stretch fabric) course in the late 70's early 80's - as did many, many women- and until today I had the certificate to prove it. Knitwit stores and sewing with stretch fabric was the BIG thing in those days as it boasted that you could make a skirt in under an hour (which I did - and wore it out to lunch a couple of hours later). Sewing the Knitwit way broke all the conventional sewing rules as you used stretch fabric and therre was very little finishing as in other more conventional fabrics such as cottons, linens etc. Overlockers also broke into the retail market and became the 'must have' for stretch sewing - I never quite went that far - I bought a new Janome sewing machine with a stretch stitch instead...

Time fell away as I looked at the patterns but I realised that if this was the first time I had looked at them in six years - and I hadn't sewn them in the last 20 years then what was the point in keeping them - so into the op-shop box they went. The box runneth over...

I still have quite a stash of mainly tracksuit material which I have had since my girls were little - guess what is going next????Although I did see a pair of fleecy track pants on the new season rack in one of the shops - perhaps I should just hang onto the fabric I have a little longer. But who would wear eye shattering lollypop pink I would never know - but someone must be going to if the multiple pairs I saw hanging there were any indication... Does my b*m look big in this????

Back to the work week tomorrow and perhaps another room next weekend...