Phone Box Thursday: West Richmond Street, Edinburgh

I spotted this phone box with its door missing on the day I first did the Great Edinburgh Winter Run.  Because the event is so busy, Dad had parked further up the Pleasance while I did the race, and so I was able to grab a picture of this one as we went past afterwards.

Red phone box
Red phone box, West Richmond Street, Edinburgh, 9th January 2016.

(Coordinates 55°94’58.9″N, 3°18’20.0″W.)

According to Google Maps, this one was still there as of June 2017!  It needs a bit of TLC, though.

Update from a December 2021 revisit: the phone box has a door again!

New shiny things

After a couple of days of dribs and drabs of small deliveries of house stuff, the big Ikea order arrived today!  Most of it (I’ve already assembled the replacement lamp) is still sitting in the middle of the living room, as there’s no space to assemble the units or put them in their eventual places yet.  And just when I thought I’d reclaimed that bit of living room floor.  Oh well.

I also finally finished the wardrobe cull.  It’s amazing how much stuff I realised I just didn’t like or want to wear, and in total I’ve probably got rid of about 75% of my clothes.  To be fair, I am now spending a lot of time online, fantasy shopping for replacements, but I’m trying to be good and only (mostly) buying things I actually need.

Now that the Ikea order is here, one thing I can do is start putting stuff into its proper storage boxes.  Hopefully I’ll have a properly functioning dressing room, at least, by the end of the week!

2018 Ciders #13: M&S Devon Farmhouse Cider with Raspberry

We’ve finally got to the last of the ciders I drank the night we moved in!  Not to the end of my birthday ciders, though.  Not yet.

M&S Devon Farmhouse Cider with Raspberry
M&S Devon Farmhouse Cider with Raspberry.

I remember this one clearly, despite my tipsy state.  It tasted exactly like raspberry yoghurt, which was really interesting and no bad thing at all.  I think out of all the M&S ciders, this is the one I’d most like to try again sometime.

On with the cull

I spent today getting on with my wardrobe cull.  I got rid of a lot of dresses, underwear, scarves and hats, and a lot more shoes – I’ve now got the previous total down to 59 pairs.  That’s a pretty big drop, and it means my new shoe shelves will look really neat and uncluttered.

Well, at least until I replace all the thrown-out pairs with new ones!

No, I’m kidding.  Like with everything else in the house, I’ll be instituting a one-in one-out rule once my shelves are full, in order to avoid things getting back into the chaotic hoarding state that has made this house move so stressful.  Neither Geth nor I have ever been in the habit of throwing things away, but that has to change from now on, for my own sanity.

I’m quite looking forward to seeing what it’s like to live without mounds of stuff everywhere!

(Justified) excessive spending

I spent a lot of money at Ikea and other homewares suppliers today.  There should be lots and lots of shiny packages arriving this week.  It’s all stuff we need for the house, though, so I don’t feel guilty about it (I know I shouldn’t ever feel guilty about spending money on stuff I want as long as I can afford it, but broke girl habits die hard!).

I bought new shelving (the Kallax units for the boardgames, plus a couple of things for upstairs), a new kitchen bin (I’m fed up of the ridiculous balancing act required by our current small one), a lamp to replace one of the ones that packed in earlier this week, a magazine rack for the downstairs toilet, hanging shoe storage for our tiny hallway, a wardrobe rail to replace a broken one in the wardrobe that came with the house, a new rug for the dressing room, a chair and mirror for my dressing table (my old director’s chair that I got for my ninth birthday has sadly seen its last days), hooks and other stuff for making jewellery storage, and approximately 1,000 pretty storage boxes for the various shelves in the house.  I’m so excited about the packages.  All the packages.

I’m not done with homewares buying yet, but I definitely think that’s enough for this week.

De-hoarding

Well, I didn’t want to start doing the mega wardrobe cull until I’d hit my Slimming World target, but after weeks of chaos upstairs with having to clamber over stuff and not being able to find anything, I admitted defeat and started putting stuff in binbags and donation bags today.

I’ve come a long way with my hoarding problem over the years, but I still find it hard to let go of stuff, especially clothes.  I think it’s partly because I was so broke for so many years post-graduation – during that time, even a £5 Primark top was a hard-earned purchase, and it feels almost disrespectful to my struggling younger self just to toss the item away, even if it’s old and full of holes.

I’ve been trying to mitigate this by using the digital hoarding method – taking a photo of each piece so that I still ‘have’ it.  I’ll probably never look at these photos again, but knowing they’re there makes getting rid of the physical stuff a lot easier.

I threw out a lot of shoes today.  My previous total of 91 pairs first went up to 95 pairs, because I found four pairs that I thought I’d previously thrown out but it turned out I hadn’t.  I’ve now got it down to 77 pairs, and I reckon I’ll be able to get it down further when I finish the cull job tomorrow.  It’s especially tough to get rid of shoes, because I love shoes, but I’m trying just to keep thinking about the lovely neat shoe shelves I’ll be able to have up in the dressing room (not to mention, I must confess, the shiny new pairs I’ll be able to buy).

The biggest motivation for all this de-hoarding is the fact that I can’t wait for the house to look nice and uncluttered, so that I can finally relax and properly feel like this is home.

Storage junkie-ism

We’re having to buy a lot of new stuff for the house anyway, so I’ve just treated myself to some new makeup storage:

Sorbus makeup storage
Sorbus Acrylic Cosmetics Makeup and Jewellery Storage Case X-Large Display Sets. I had to copy ‘n’ paste that ridiculously long name off the Amazon website.

It’s going to sit on my dressing table, once I unbury the dressing table.  And buy a new mirror for the dressing table.  And buy some new lights for the dressing table – well, it’ll live there eventually.  In the meantime, it’ll have to perch precariously on the bathroom windowsill.  I don’t mind, though, ’cause it’s pretty, and I’ve been desperately wanting to organise something pretty – everything else is so functional and crammed in at the moment.

Also, all my lamps have decided to pack in at the same time for some reason, so I’m currently sitting in the dark.  I will be doing the giant Ikea order this weekend, so hopefully there will be more storage organising (and light) soon.

Phone Box Thursday: Wood Hill, Northampton

This is another phone box set I spotted in Northampton on Hallowe’en 2015.

Red phone boxes
Red phone boxes, Wood Hill, Northampton, 31st October 2015.

(Coordinates 52°23’71.8″N, 0°89’55.7″W.)

I think these ones are very pretty with the flowers, autumn leaves and memorial in the background.  It’s nice when red phone boxes are still a feature of town centres.

Update March 2022: added coordinates.  These ones were still standing as of November 2020.

Tetris and other block puzzles

You know those games (physical or digital) where you have to get a ball from one end of the board/screen to the other by moving blocks around so you can slowly work the ball through the path?  I’m terrible at them.  It always takes me ages.

That’s how I’ve felt about working on the new house for most of the last week.

The current project is to get everything into its correct room, if not its correct place.  What this means is I’m just constantly moving boxes around, trying to clear paths for other things to be moved through, filling one room and then another in an attempt just to have some tiny space to manoeuvre stuff.  It’s really tiring, and I feel like I’m going round in circles.

A big part of the problem is that there’s so much stuff that doesn’t have a place yet.  We’re going to be building new wall shelves out of our old Ikea Billy bookshelves to house the DVDs, videogames and some of the books, and I’ve designed a wall of Ikea Kallax units for the boardgame collection.  As such, until these units are in place, our books, DVDs, videogames and boardgames have to stay in boxes, and there’s a lot of them.

I know, logically, I am making headway.  I’ve spent today making rows of all the boxes that go in different areas, so once Geth gets home tonight and helps me with a couple of heavy lifting jobs, I’ll be able to fill the study with all the Stuff That Goes In The Study (as opposed to the all-kinds-of-everything totally random stuff that was in there before) and use that as a dumping ground to help me sort out other rooms.  After that, over the next couple of days, I can move my magazine Kallax upstairs, then move all the boardgame boxes to the space where their Kallax storage is going to live, and that will mean there’s a bit more breathing room around the piles of boxes of books and DVDs that are currently having to stay in the living room.

The whole thing really is doing wonders for my hoarding habit though.  I can’t wait to start sorting through things properly and getting rid of stuff.

One step at a time.  It’s just frustrating when there are so many steps.

2018 Ciders #12: M&S Devon Farmhouse Cider with Elderflower Infusion

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I drank some ciders!  I should probably get back to logging those now…

M&S Devon Farmhouse Cider with Elderflower Infusion
M&S Devon Farmhouse Cider with Elderflower Infusion.

This was another one of my birthday ciders that I drank the night we moved into the new house.  Again, my memories of it are a bit blurry, though I do remember that it’s not as good as Thistly Cross Elderflower.  Mind you, very few ciders are as good as Thistly Cross Elderflower, so I think this one probably holds up as a nice elderflower taste.  Maybe I’ll try it again some day when I’m a bit more with it!