Most unlikley

Well, that’s the washing out on the line (don’t know how long it will stay there in this wind) and the bread dough rising. Next task, after making (and eating) a brunch of peach pancakes with bacon and maple syrup is to turn Brunhilde around and then it should be time to shape my baguettes.

Yesterday something overtook me. I stripped the bed and washed the bedding but somehow I could not stop there. I bottomed my laundry rack. It has long been an untidy affair, nodding its head in the direction of orderliness by virtue of having all the bedding of one type gathered into a pillowcase to keep it tidy. So all the flat sheets are in one pillowcase, the fitted ones in another, the duvet covers reside in their matching pillow case, if they have one, with the rest of the set included. The remaining  random pillowcases that I have collected over the years form the largest pile and are contained in another of their kin. Is it not odd that pillowcases never seem to wear out and if they do it is years after their matching sheet or duvet cover did.

It is at best a notional system. In practice some things were tidied away a long time ago and remain where they were put but most of what has been used in the interim is randomly stored.

I pulled the whole lot out.

To be honest, there was a reason – I was in search of a fitted sheet without a rip in it.

Mission accomplished, I sniffed the long-stored bedding and acknowledged that it was in need of a freshening. So I washed a machine load of pillow cases on top of the rest of my washing for the day. I washed so much that it would not all fit on the line and the rest has had to go on this morning and yet I was still not finished. I went in search of some of my new Really Useful boxes and I now have spare pillows stacked in one, spare duvets in another, pillowcases  and sheets are stored in a third and duvet covers in a fourth. Those good clothes that I am going to get back into one day so they cannot be thrown out? They are in a fifth.

Much of this was achieved by the use of vacuum storage bags to compress the heaps to a size that would fit into the boxes.

I am not done yet but things are looking much tidier, brighter and fresher in my bed room already – getting rid of the random piles of textiles and the dusty old black bin bags has helped enormously.

I found just two moths. So it was not a horrendous experience of awful discoveries. Unless you count the one  that informed me that I now possess just one whole double fitted sheet – the rest are worn though and must have been saved for dustsheets and dumpling cloots.

This phenomenon of everything wearing out at once is something that I have been meaning to blog about for a while as I am finding many of my favourite clothing items are going into holes. They just don’t make things as well these days, so they? I mean… most of my daily wear items were only purchased in 1993 – and that was, like, only yesterday really. Wasn’t it?

Maybe it was not. We are watching Ab Fab at the moment and that began at about that time. I noticed that in a litany of “Names” that Edina reeled off last night, many, if not most, are now dead. Perhaps the early Nineties were a little while ago after all.

It is the product of many years effort to not spend any money. The parsimony is coming home to roost and my possessions are wearing out as quickly as I am. Help! I have no idea how I am going to be able to live without my cotton polo necks from The Sweater Shop.

Ah – maybe if I were to get stuck into the 5:2 again I might be small enough to use that big box of “good clothes that I am going to get back into one day”, then I can go on being parsimonious economical for a few years longer.

We are progressing Teddy’s training today and will be turning Brunhilde around so that we can go up the island and stop out for  a couple  of hours with a picnic meal – hence the baguettery. The shower tray has been fitted with a cat litter tray and Ted has already been shown his harness. I wonder if he would like a walk on the beach. Probably not.