Pantry done!

One big thing that I can cross off my list. I did it in fifteen minutes bursts over the weekend and I am always amazed at how much can be done in just fifteen minutes.

I filled the bin a couple of times some out of date things, couple of things I don't remember buying so I am thinking/blaming/assuming the house sitters left it here.

Now that is it clean, tidy and packed in properly, I cant believe how much space there is, I do kept other things in the pantry that are not food and even with that, there is room left over. We don't use a lot of tinned or packaged foods so I suppose that is why it looks half empty

Many of my recipe books are packed ready to go the op shop, I have kept all my Jamie Oliver ones and Symply too good to be true ones and a Four ingredient one that has been signed. Recipe books have been living in there but rarely touched or used so time to go, some-one may make use of them. Of course my two thermomix ones have pride of place but they are now residing in the pantry instead of on the bench.

Monday and normal house hold chores today then I want to get some sewing done. I plan to make a tote bag for myself but I want it smaller than the last one so I will have to adjust the pattern.

Our days are numbered!

It has finally hit that we are leaving soon, very soon. I asked Warren to make a chart with the days left to go.

He went to office works and bought a big calendar. I think it is in 37 days!

We have a list of things down the side that we need/want to do before we leave.

I intend to clean out the pantry.

As I was up early this morning, too early to go to the shopping centre, I had some parcels to send, I made a start doing one half a shelf.

I "found" a bottle of cherry sauce, this is good stuff and can only buy it at the source (no pun intended) and the last time we travelled south we bought six bottles. This is the last and I think I have been saving it. Use by date is Dec 2014!

I also pitched some wraps that had gone dry and some coconut flour which doesn't seem to work for me. 

I envy women who have their pantries just so neat, mine is never neat. A shopping trip sees things put where ever they can fit although there is some rules. I have a special place for our milk and the paper products like gladwrap, foil and baking paper.

"My" car needs a road worthy done and that is on the list and an appointment been made for it so that is can be listed for sale. A sad day but we don't need two cars anymore and its not suitable to pull Maggie, the caravan.

Unfortunately as we cross one thing off the list another two seems to be added, need to get working on it, back to the pantry for another shelf.

Shake,rattle and roll

On our caravan trip, we used some secondary roads, all bitumen but there were a couple that were narrow and a few holes on the edges. Warren always makes a point of pulling off the road where possible when a couple or more vehicles are behind us. Our first stop on the first day for lunch was about an hour, ten minutes up the road. We have topped there several times before and it is a free camp with a power box and a toilet block.

Everything was fine in the van and we enjoyed sitting inside eating lunch. Next stop was our stop for the next two nights. Parked the van and opened the door to be greeted with the TV upside down on the floor and a few tins rolling around the floor as well. Apparently one of us had not secured the bottom latch of the pantry. Not damage there though.

TV was a different story. We take it off the arm and place it upside on the bed to travel, never a problem before. However we realized that each time we have done it before the bed had been made up with a doona. This time the bed had only been made up to a sheet and the doona had travelled inside the car due to having been washed and put inside the house instead of the van. The sheet had acted as a slide and I guess with some movement and braking etc, The TV had slid down the bed and straight on to the floor.

My thought was "How much is a new TV and DVD player?"We gingerly picked it and turned it over, the screen was intact so we slotted it into the arm on the wall and turned it on. It fired up but no picture so we attached the aerial, but still no picture. Warren tested lots of things and found it wasn't the TV it was the connection for the aerial!

This is after its slide to the ground, a couple of rub marks and that's all.

We had some reinforcements done on the outside of the van and it seems the guys when fixing some chequerplate, drilled through the wires for the aerial.

This is how we solved that problem in the short term. Warren has since threaded the wires through the pantry and back outside to the pole that is our aerial pole.

One other stop we had and a light shade had fallen from the ceiling, again no damage was done, didn't even break! Our mattress moves forward on the base each time so a small shelf it going to put at the end to stop it going forward. We come home after each shake down trip with either some repairs or improvements to be made.

We are considering replacing the seats as they are okay in the short term but after a couple of hours of sitting they become quite flat (I guess as the caravan is over thirty years old, they have had a lot of bums sitting on them). A trip to Clark Rubber is in order to see if we can get thicker/denser foam rubber.

Envy.

My GF showed me her pantry a couple of weeks ago, she had spent some time tidying it and there were all these neat rows of tins and containers. Yep, I love my pantry to look like that.

I did ask Warren to tidy ours and while he does most things in the house, he told me that it was my domain and he didnt want to go near it (except to find more milk when he needs it)

At my daughters last week and I helped get the school lunches, opening the pantry to find some snack food and Oh My Goodness, her pantry no longer looks like mine. It was nice and neat.

I did feel envious but its a big job! Lying in bed this morning, I thought that I should/could/would do something about it. Fifteen minutes after breakfast, I had head down and bum up and now I can say that I do have one half a shelf tidy.

Its looking that good that I just might spent another fifteen minutes as I don't have to cook dinner tonight. Maybe just maybe I might have it looking okay to have the pantry open if anyone comes to visit, now it is firmly kept shut.

Spring

First day of spring today and it is a beautiful day, 25 degrees on the patio. I feel as though I have an extra afternoon off today as we were going to go to the Tennis centre and help out with a mail out, but they rang this morning to say that things were not ready yet so we have the afternoon to ourselves.

I shopped this morning and used my Coles voucher so got $107 worrth of food for $53, I stocked up n some items for the pantry. MY DD say that its not savings unless the money that you didn't spend goes into savings so I took it and added it to the car loan. I reached my own goal for the end of the month so feeling a bit chipper about that. I like to challenge myself to see if I can do it. My next goal is to be under a certain amount by the end of October, doable I think but will need to be on top of things to achieve it.

Anyway, with our free afternoon we are continuing to prepare the caravan for its first trip with us. Warren is cleaning the roof and I am going to clean inside the cupboards ready t put crockery and cutlery in. We also need to check if the lights etc work as it has sat in the back yard for eight months.

I also want to change over my clothes, put away the jumpers and get out the lighter things out.