TUESDAY 24 FEB 2026 POST BEGUN 1413HRS GMT
Home stretch in sight, decluttering in a big way nearly finished. I'm using a weird combination of the Marie Kondo 'KonMari' and Swedish Death Cleaning methods, plus good old fashioned common sense (vastly underrated, common sense is) and it's working nicely. I am having to do it on the QT to keep Paul from 'helping' (aka hindering), though, and I'm running out of places to store the things awaiting disposal (to charity shops and the skip) out of his sight. Spring is coming, we'll be able to hire a car to cart the clutter away, I just hope I can keep a lid on things until Spring.
Why wait until Spring to hire the car? Because we live in NE Scotland and both of us hate driving in winter. Hitting black ice even at low speed is not fun and we live in an area well known for black ice formation. Black ice combined with most of our roads in this area not being high gritting priority. Even before giving up the car in 2020something, we'd learned to spend the Autumn preparing for winter including getting in household goods (and food) and scheduling doctor and dentist appointments before winter sets in so we didn't have to be out and about except quick walks to the nearby shops between rain and snow and ice storms.
So we hire a car for a week in Spring and mid-Autumn. The past few years the main focus has been charity shop and skip runs with a few day trips to local attractions sandwiched in. I'm hoping the Spring car hire is the final decluttering push so the Autumn car hire can be all day trips. Hope floats.
Btw, I'm still praying for a slightly bigger house. Despite looking at certain things (oh ok, kitchen gadgets) and asking myself why the hell I bought THAT, there are things I shed tears over when I force myself to put something in the 'get rid box' that I really really really do not want to give up but have to because I simply do not have room for whatever it is I'm crying about having to part with.
It's difficult to be ruthless even when it's a safety issue - yes, I sobbed my heart out sending the electric carving knife and meat slicer to the charity shop but Essential Tremor made both impossible for me to use safely. I hate to admit nipping my fingers trying to fit the electric carving knife blades back on, and very nearly slicing off a finger on the meat slicing machine had to happen twice before I caved to reality.
But. But I am becoming stronger - I only needed three Kleenex to cope with the tears (and runny nose) when I sent a huge amount of my craft supplies to the charity shop boxes. The tremor has advanced to the point beading and paper- are impossible even with work-arounds. Embroidery by hand and machine sewing are still possible so there is that.
Still, back to kitchen gadgets, the tremor is now so bad I've had to give up peeling and dicing potatoes for mash and I can see the days of homemade potato salad ending sooner rather than later. I'm ok with having to use frozen mashed potatoes - LOL, the potatoes come as finger sized pellets, you put them in a microwave safe bowl with unsalted butter pats and nuke 'em for ten or so minutes - as long as you have plenty of sour cream, frozen mash isn't all that bad. I'm not ok with buying store made potato salad (too many recalls!), though, so I may have to teach Paul how to properly (read hygienically) peel and dice potatoes if we want genuine Deep South Church Potluck quality potato salad. Paul has Asperger's and doesn't take instruction well so potato salad may be off the menu. sigh
POSTED TUESDAY 24 FEB 2026 1503HRS GMT
