Cleaning Out the Fridge

When I was growing up we had a magic fridge. It was always spotless. There were never any spills or strange smelly things up the back.

Imagine my shock on leaving home to discover that my fridge did not stay clean all by itself. Someone (me) had to clean it for it to remain as pristine as my mother's always was.

Theoretically, we should all clean out our fridges once a week, just before grocery shopping. Well, even better would be to maintain our fridges daily so that they don't need weekly cleaning, but I'm not organised enough for that, and I suspect most other people aren't either.

Last week the state of my fridge was so dire that I took all the food and shelves and cleaned everything. I washed all the shelves, discarded anything that looked inedible or old, and wiped out the interior with homemade spray cleaner.

The image below is, of course, an 'after' shot. No one needs to be inflicted with the sight of my fridge before it was cleaned, least of all my lovely Mum, who reads this blog and knows what a grot I can be.

If only my fridge still looked like this!

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Sewing basket

A minha caixinha de costura Cath Kidston, com um tecido antigo da Laura Ashley ao fundo...

Tenham um óptimo dia de sol!

My Cath Kidston sweing bastket with a vintage Laura Ashley fabric in the background... Have a nice sunny day!

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Mantelpiece Decorating

Having seen the fabulously creative ways that other bloggers decorate their mantelpieces, I am almost ashamed to show mine. I don't so much decorate as display a few of my treasured possessions in a way that is meaningful for my family and me.

In the picture below you can see the fireplace in our formal living room. There are photos from my brother's wedding and mine. The three little girls on the right are my nieces and the baby in the oval frame is my Mum. My husband bought the vase on the left in China and many years ago his father bought the vase on the right in China too. So as you can see, my mantel brings my family together. One day we will buy a mirror or painting for the wall over this fireplace, but it's not a priority at the moment.

The fireplace below shares the same chimney as the one above and is in our dining room. The photo on the left is my husband as a little boy and the one on the right is my brother and me when we were about 3 or 4. I did the daffodils cross stitch and the glass vase in front was a gift from my husband when we were visiting my parents in Toowoon Bay, NSW several years ago. I bought the two little pink candle holders in a Melbourne op shop.

The fireplace below is in our main bedroom and is really very minimally decorated at this stage. However, the fireplace itself is so pretty that not much decorating is needed. I sewed the cross stitch sampler and the other items were either thrifted, bought inexpensively, or, in the case of the green candles, found out the front of a neighbour's house during a hard waste collection.

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Yellow Roses on Red Gingham

I know they're a touch garish in a French-bistro-circa-1975 kind of way, yet I rather like the combination of of yellow roses on red gingham. They smell divine and make me smile every time I walk past.

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Decluttering Books

Of all the things I find hard to declutter, books are the very hardest. I am deeply attached to my books.

However, we have limited space for bookcases and limited funds to pay for them, so I am going to have to donate some of my (hundreds of) books.

Our red house in Melbourne had fabulous storage. There was a wall of bookcases with cupboards underneath in the Family room and each of the kids' rooms had long built-in desks with bookshelves above. We gave most of our freestanding bookcases to friends and charities because we no longer needed them.

The house we rented for our first 18 months in Adelaide had almost no storage so most of our books lived in boxes for 18 months. We have now bought two tall bookcases for our new house but at least half the books are still in boxes.

While rationally I know that I will never read all these books again there is the chance that I might. I love knowing that my library is at hand should I think about something in a book or remember a quote and need to be able to find it. I know I could use the internet but books are just better. And they feel good. And I love my collection of old second-hand books that are filled with other people's memories as well as my own.

I now have a box of books that I am planning to give to the Salvos - if only I can bring myself to part from them.

What possessions do you find hardest to declutter or give away?

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Ironing board covers

Procuro a criatividade em todas as peças da casa. Hoje em dia, as coisas bonitas estão cada vez mais acessíveis. Vejam as capas para tábuas de engomar que encontrei à venda...

Adivinhem qual é a minha!

 

Cath Kidston

The Laundry

CityChicCountryMouse

I search for creativity in all the things I have at home. Nowadays, beautiful things are more and more acessible. Look at the iron board covers that I found...

Guess which one is mine!

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Meeting Violet

strawberry seedling


Violet is an elderly Italian lady who lives in the house that backs onto our (new) red house. Having admired the fruit trees that I can see in her garden, I poked my head over the fence this afternoon and introduced myself.

When I told Violet that we moved here from Melbourne she said that she likes Melbourne: she visited there in 1953 just after she got married.

Violet told me that she has lived in her house for over 50 years. She used to be great friends with the lady who lived in my house and they had a gate between their homes so they could pop in and out and visit each other. However, the next owners of my house didn't like the gate and put up the high metal fence that is there now.

Many years ago my own garden was full of fruit trees, Violet says. There were figs and olives, oranges and plums, but they were mostly cut down when the house was renovated and the garden professionally landscaped. When I told her that I was hoping to plant some more fruit trees she smiled.

Violet's garden is the kind that we expect from the older generation of Italian migrants, with many fruit trees and a large vegetable patch. She said she has plums for jam and green apples for apple cake.

Sadly, one of her plum trees died over the summer. Violet explained that she and her husband are pensioners and can no longer afford the water needed to keep her trees alive. They have a water tank but it was empty long before our hot summer ended.

According to Violet they once had a much larger vegetable garden but her husband can no longer do the work required. Even so, their vegetable patch is much bigger than most that I have seen.

It is a great tragedy that folk like Violet and her husband cannot afford to water trees that they have nurtured for over 50 years. At a time when we are being encouraged to cut our food miles and live sustainably gardens such as theirs should be encouraged.

So much seems to have been lost in Violet's lifetime: the kind of neighbourliness that meant you could drop in on a friend any time without an invitation; the kind of thriftiness that quietly grew as much as possible at home and that tended the earth with love so that it would provide year after year.

I hope that we can all make small steps to ensure that that world is not lost forever.

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