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Showing posts from January, 2012

Decluttering - The Throw Out Fifty Things Challenge!

have been on a bit of a de-cluttering binge for about a year now. We have made umpteen donations to our local charity shops, had a garage sale with the neighbours, been to five local church car boot sales (as sellers not buyers!), sold stuff on e-bay and Gumtree and sold a lot of the heavier stuff (beds, BBQ's)  from the front of the house to passers by! I reckon I have put an extra $600 on the mortgage selling all this junk! I'm sure I still have a lot of junk and recently at my local library (I love my library!!! All those free books!!!) I found this book called "Throw out Fifty Things".  (Link to book)  I grabbed it and took it home to see what this authors angle was. Its pretty simple. And I'm thinking its working for me!! Here's what I did... First I read the whole book! I find it helps to see what the overall angle is. Gail Blanke turns out to be a motivator in the good ol' U.S. of A and even though the first forty or so items she wants you t

How to choose your fruit and veges when they are in season

We are being extolled to eat more fruit and veges, grow our own and even have meatless meals everywhere you turn at the moment. And I think this is a good thing! I used to go to the supermarket as most suburban dwellers do - and week after week, month after month I noticed that the selection of fruit and veges barely changed. We had an visitor from Switzerland recently and I proudly bought some mango's, watermelon, rock melon and strawberries for him to taste, assuming that Switzerland didn't grow these and this would be a good Australian experience for him - He explained that, of course he had had all these things before, they were in his supermarket in his home town (that was three feet deep in snow at the time!) That really got me to wondering about how fresh and how good my local supermarket fruits and veges were - and where it all came from I now go to the local markets and whilst the fruit and veges is fresher and I can ask the sellers about their products - some stalls

Book Review - How to clean practically anything - Sydney Pemberton

I'm a bit frugal when it comes to replacing things - preferring to fix, repair or live with something until it falls to bit on me (Like my lucky interview shoes that fell apart when I got out of the car after the interview!) So when visiting the library one day when I saw a copy of "How to clean practically anything" I thought I'd take it home and have a flick through it. This book is about taking the guesswork out of cleaning walls, clothes, toys, antiques, the windows or whatever it is that you have decided you need to clean but aren't sure how.  Its a good reference book to have lying around to refer to when you are taking a punt rather than are confident about what you are doing. For me, its a back up. I think I know how to deal with bubble gum stuck to the side of a shoe but cant remember which oil to use; tea tree or Eucalyptus. (Its Eucalyptus for the record) And it turns out that if you can stick the item in the freezer for a few minutes, the gum

What to do when your cat attacks a bird... and doesn't kill it.

We have an eight year old cat who we got as a stray about six years ago. The vet reckoned she was about two when we got her and we did all the right things and got her spayed and vaccinated and all that stuff. She loves people and no matter where you are in the house or garden, she will not be far away. She really good with kids and will put up with the squishiest cuddles and a far bit of toddler tail fascination before bolting out the door to escape. She is well fed (despite the look she is giving me and the empty bowl below...) but not fat - but still the  urge to hunt and subsequently kill still seems to be quite strong. Last weekend, she pounced out of nowhere on a rainbow lorrikeet - thankfully my husband and a band of teenage boys were also there and managed to grab the bird before the cat had done more than pounce. Now we have a slightly mangled still alive but obviously unwell bird on our hands - what do you do? Here's what we did... We found a box - popped an old
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