Organising

I've spent quite a number of hours this morning on the Real Simple website and Lakeland. I am now £50 poorer and determined to get more organised. I'm getting a shelf to lift my cookbooks onto and a plate shelf so that I can stop almost breaking things whenever I try to get plates down. Also on the list: tongs, a moisture remover for the bathroom, a handheld shredder, a sink tidy, and a plastic bag dispenser, as the IKEA thing isn't working out so well.

But for today, I started simply by sorting through some plastic tubs and am now trying to get rid of a whole load more things on Freecycle. I'm getting rid of:

3x trainers
1x boots
1x wellies
2x shot glasses
3x wooden bowls
1x beach towel
1x large plastic tub

I also have one huge CD wallet full of CDs and a smaller wallet half full, but I think I'll try to sell that on Ebay, since the wallets on their own go for a tenner. I have some other Ebayable items, so I might have to get on that next.

But first! I finally hung up the hook that "Santa" got me from India. Yay! It looks great. I did try to hang a second hook in the kitchen, but I was up on a ladder, and I have no drill and I dropped the screw and it all went a bit wrong. So that might have to wait for another day...

Freecycle

I can't tell you how much I love my local Freecycle group. I just got rid of all of the cardboard stuffing from the shower box. This means that I can fold the box into a size that the recycling team will actually agree to collect! Hooray. Plus the people are generally lovely and quite funny and have all sorts of interesting reasons for needing my miscellaneous crap. Just fantastic.

Shower: The update

I had a hot shower this morning. As lovely as the bucket bath is, nothing beats a warm shower first thing in the day...

Triton t80si pumped

So, last weekend, our shower died. Well, we think it died. We couldn't see anything too wrong with it, but there was no more hot water. Rather than spend £50 on a plumber and £100 on parts, we just decided fek it. Our shower is mank - who knows how many years it was in the bathroom before we moved in. So we decided to buy a new one.

And because apparently only a very small number of shower models do both the heating and the pumping of water, we were fairly limited in our selection. And because we are scared of drilling, we opted for the easiest choice: a brand new version of exactly the same shower. Genius.

The boyfriend ordered the shower from Plumbworld, and didn't want to open the box at work in case all sorts of miscellaneous bits spilled out. "But I'm not really sure how I'm going to get it home," he said this evening when he rang after work, "because it's almost as big as me." He did manage to navigate it home on the buses, and this is what we found inside:


The weight was split 50/50 between shower and shredded cardboard packaging. I guess Plumbworld are reeeeally worried about damage in the post.

Anyway, we read the instructions, we tested the old shower *just* to make sure that we weren't just being silly, and then we took the old one down and put the new one up. The holes were in the same place on the wall, we'd already taken one apart, so we knew how to put the new one together. It was super easy.

Too easy. As of tonight, the shower is working and is lovely and hot, but will it last!? I don't want to count my chickens just yet. It all seems to good to be true... only tomorrow's shower will tell...

Just because there hasn't been much updating lately...

We had some friends round for lunch this afternoon. The place is starting to look quite nice from time to time.

More white walls

Freecycle

Freecycle is such a brilliant thing. Tonight, a lovely man came round and collected the massive piece of wood we've been keeping lying around since we moved in. It was once part of the "bunk bed". Who knows what they are going to use it for, but it was quite a good piece of wood, so glad it could go to a good home...

Ow

Finally we had a day of DIY. Oh but the pain. My thumbs hurt, my back is aching, my wrists feel funny... I am going to sleep extremely well tonight. BUT we did get some stuff done. I built a non-children sized chest of drawers (OMG no more folding underwear to make it fit!) and Steph painted a couple of the walls in the "blue room". Then we moved all of the clothing-related things (cupboards, clothes, shoes, etc) into the bedroom. The living room now looks about 10 times bigger, hurrah! Still loads to sort out though... a task for later on (or maybe tomorrow)(or maybe next week). Pics below.

Upgrade!

Prettier laundry basket!


Stronger magnets!


Better plastic bag management!

Oh the excitement as one afternoon's shopping on Ebay gradually makes its way to me in the post.

New things

Some of the exciting new purchases for the flat include:


Picture hooks and bookends!


A new computer! Still a work in progress (especially its positioning...)


Lightbulbs!

Whilst in Sweden over the weekend we also purchased coat hooks! These will be on the wall once the wall is painted, so it may be some time before you see these. £55 for that Dwell coat stand was too much. But if you have already bought it, don't fret. It will still find a handsome spot in our living room.

A new IKEA chest of drawers should be arriving soon and the entire living room will change as a result. Pics soon to follow.