There are days when I write a blog and wonder which category to file it under.
There are quite a few choices with a blog about tidying up. It could easily come under the heading of dementia diaries, not just because it makes you feel quite loopy dear, or because my mother spent her last few months moving piles of stuff from one surface to another.
Could go under household mismanagement, could go under lost Victorian novels, which may reappear if you move the right pile of junk.
In the end I’ve filed it under about artists because, as every artist of every stripe knows, all the creativity happens on the last six inches of the table. And no, it doesn’t work if you try to start on the tiniest table out of a nest of coffee tables, I have tried.
If you think the tidying up is a bit excessive after a few days inspired painting, card making, doll sculpture, or whatever, you should see the tidying up required after a year of building the new house from the old one while you are living in it.
And the stuff you can lose is nobody’s business.
Currently we wish to hang the advertising mirror, which the OH bought me when were young, off the market for not much. I have cleaned it, he has re-glued the mitres, which were rubbish and never good after it fell off the wall three houses ago, and I have re-varnished the frame. Can we find the picture hooks?
I’ll describe the box and you can see if you can see it from where you are. It’s a clear plastic box about this big. Through the lid you can see the compartments which contain: picture wire, big picture hooks, littler picture hooks, wall plugs, panel pins, hooks with a screw and, I think either a small awl or no awl at all.*
It always lived in the metal tool cabinet that I bought the OH one birthday, second drawer down, left hand side. Yes I have looked there obsessively, now it is in the garage. I have even stood in the utility room, next to the fridge, where the cabinet always used to stand and rummaged in empty air.
Yes, perhaps I should have filed this under dementia diaries.
It may have disappeared into the OH’s shed, which is turning into a bit of a black hole for anything a bit shiny or useful looking, including all the tools I bought when we lived in the flat. My good hammer has vanished, I know that, instead I have been gifted (let us call it that) my father’s hammer. He was a builder, he regarded tools as an evil and expensive necessity which employees would lose just to annoy him, so, naturally he never looked after them. This hammer looks as if it has been used for hammering rust in a contact adhesive factory. You wouldn’t think you could mangle a hammer, would you?
Anyway, this isn’t helping us find the CLEAR PLASTIC BOX OF EVERYTHING NECESSARY TO HANG A PICTURE, is it?
Can you see it? Can you point to it?
When we, or to be more precise, I, have tidied everything in the building right up, or gone out and bought another, it will appear but I want it before that.
Because now I have varnished the mirror frame I do not want to put it on the only other available surface big enough, which is the top of the pile on the settee. I don’t want to put anything on there, it causes clouds of yellow dust. I want to hang it on the cloakroom wall, not with the pathetic single picture hanger found in a paper bag, under a pile of stuff over a removed drawer.
I know how to find the SMALL CLEAR PLASTIC BOX WITH PICTURE HANGING STUFF IN IT (seen it yet? Just shout.) I either tidy up the entire house and, perish the thought, the OH’s shed – no, no, I recant, nobody’s bum looks big in anything, we are all slim, tall and highly intelligent – please don’t make me tidy his shed, I was planning on a wrecking ball and one of those tractors with a scoop on the end if he goes first.
Or I time travel to Christmas when I may have finished the tidying up and found the PICTURE HANGING STUFF (anywhere? Box this big?) in time to hang the mirror for the first visit of the family before the second lockdown so they can say ‘Oh, you hung that old mirror up again, it’s too high for the children and the foxed bit is still where your face is.’
I need to find it because after the mirror is properly and safely hung UTILISING THE CONTENTS OF THE SMALL, CLEAR PLASTIC PICTURE HANGING NECESSITIES BOX (squint, I know I’m quite a way away from you. I could lend you my binoculars, I know exactly where they are.)
After that I have to start tidying my new craft room. And that’s before I get started on the lounge (like the corporation tip, but open for business), which is after the decorating of the dining room.
I really really hate tidying up, it’s anti-creative and a pain in the (tiny) bum, isn’t it?
So
I used what was left of my inheritance to buy a year of tidying up.
Can you believe it?
Me neither.
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*I can see all of the awl in my mind’s eye, blue plastic handle, out of a cracker, ideal for starter holes for picture pins, in the left hand compartment. PLASTIC PICTURE HOOK BOX? no? Well thanks anyway. (If you see it in the week just email.)
(Thanks, sorry to to trouble you.)
THIS BIG?
Thanks anyway.
Sorry, go back to trawling the net. Let me know if you fish up picture hooks or, you know PLASTIC BOX.
That big.