Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 7 August 2022

OG – I hope by now you are feeling better.

LINDA – Socks are annoying. One always disappears. . . to be found later tucked inside some other washing or worse, lurking in bottom of laundry basket! Another Tale. . . yeay!

Fine sunny day; rain expected rest of week.

AQ -- My OH took on the Herculean task of pairing them all up afterwards -- when he'd finished, he had two odd ones!!! There must have been about 30 pairs! (I never wash them with anything else, as they pong!)

Rusty, you're a great friend.

Sunny here & the temp is rising.

Goodness me, where is everyone?? I've been out on errands, then sat in the garden trying to calm down my OH who has had a Really Bad Day, trying to sort out three problems and being told by no less than all three, that they will Ring Him Back Later. Out of the three, only one of them did. We now await the excitement of tomorrow, will any of the others do as promised? And if they do, is it to be good or bad news? <sigh>

As promised:

The Tale of the Cupboard Which Took Over the Kitchen.

This story begins innocently enough, as they often say. All that happened was, we bought a new cruet set (Salt & Pepper) and so I put pepper into the right one, then looked at the salt and thought "Now, where did I put the salt last time we needed to refill?" The Table Salt, as we call it here, comes in a tall plastic dispenser and is too big for the cupboard where I keep the pepper, stock cubes etc. near the stove. So, for years, its been put into the Overflow Cupboard which is the largest one in the kitchen, and has all sorts of things lurking, extra biscuits, rice, bags of pasta, and other things which I'll come to later. Now, for the last two springs, I have cleaned all my kitchen cupboards out, wiped, and restocked neatly. But always left the Big Overflow Cupboard till last, and then, ahem..... forgotten about it.

So with trepidation, I moved a few things on the top shelf of the Big Cupboard - lots of pasta etc, but no salt. Rooted about on a lower shelf, where there are the tins of tomatoes bought as bargains, extra bottles of vinegar, my OHs Jam Sugar etc. No salt. In desperation, had to start actually taking things out. Its a real Aladdin's Cave! So I soon had covered several worktops with the cake tins (rarely used, but necessary), tins of soup, packets of pasta, large plastic containers for when we make cake, large plastic containers for when we go south with goodies for the family, etc. etc.

After a while, decided to wipe down the shelves, and return things to them. But got sidetracked - do I really need things which make jellies into interesting shapes? What was this strange plastic lid actually from? Began to put things on one side, which meant that not all of them went back into the cupboard. Decided that said cupboard needed sorting out and reorganising, and that I would return tomorrow and Do It Properly. Next day, got taken up with events and didn't get around to The Cupboard until the afternoon. We had been dodging things on the worktops and by now, on the floor, for two days.... ...

In order to reorganise, I would have to empty the entire Cupboard. Its the biggest we have, and goes from floor to ceiling, with some shelving and a space in it which is supposedly to put my ironing board into - but I think it only spent about a fortnight in there once before coming out and being permanently propped into a corner of my kitchen. I used some of the big plastic containers to sort of bridge the gap and then put foodstuffs on top! So I set to. It didn't take long for me to notice that in the past, I have stuffed small paper bags and plastic carriers into some of the spaces between things, Just In Case I need One. But what was this? There seemed to be strange, plastic confetti appearing! I realised with not much joy that some of the carriers I had so carefully saved were in fact the new kind which biodegrades on its own, after a while. The mess, when I began to extract them, was pretty unbelievable. Everything had to come out and be evaluated, or put into the bin, or to disintigrate where it was, on the floor. All available surfaces were filled, except for the very important space, by the kettle, where I make tea. I began to be glad that no one was due to visit us!

That was yesterday, and I had to hoover up some of the mess, wipe up some of the rest of it. and then decide how to reorganise the shelves and the items, which strangely, although there are now less (some in the bin and some in a bag for charity) will not now fit back into the Cupboard. I still haven't got down to the bottom of the cupboard where my iron resides, although I'm hoping for no surprises there. We can now see the worktops again, and tonight I sorted out the many Useful Bags I had saved, by throwing a lot out, and stuffing the rest inside each other! I have, at least, the satisfaction of knowing that all is clean and mostly tidy. But I still have a small pile of cake and flan tins with no home to go to.

And. We don't have any salt!

Rusty - great that your friend has progress. It must have cheered her up, to see that there is light at the end of the tunnel. We must have used up the salt at some time and I've been inefficient, as I usually write these things straight onto a permanent shopping list I keep going pretty much all of the time. Memory like a sieve these days.

Bjane - Glad it made you laugh! My housekeeping has always been rather hit & miss! My tidy side will spend ages arranging things, but my lazy arty side will not care about leaving things to do, till tomorrow. I'm a split personality, both shy and when I want to be, extrovert.

By the way, my poorly thumb was much better when we got home from Wales, after being squashed. Left me with what used to be called an interesting scar.

I hope everyone with covid is now improving- we've heard about two people here who we know, in the last week, who've gone down with it - its still about.