Health issues prompted a wake up call, which means that I am decluttering the house yet again, and have decided to simplify the garden even more.
I love my garden being a bit wild with plants falling over the paths but now we have just one overgrown bit. We’ve put up little walls and a lot on bark chippings to suppress the weeds, so now I can just pop some perennials into bare patches.
The wake up call followed a winter virus which ended up with longer term symptoms, including feeling so dizzy that I could not stay out for long. I don’t usually talk ‘illness’ because it tends to be a characteristic of ‘old age’. But hospital tests have revealed a non-life threatening condition and with the necessary drugs, I will be as right as rain and can continue to be my usual impossible self.
Some of the stuff in the house had not been unpacked since we moved here six years ago. There were several archive boxes and years of writing, sadly with sparse renumeration, so I feel even more guilty about all those trees!
These are the before, in the middle of it and after pics! Have to admit
some of it just got put somewhere else, but at least it was looked at, sorted and filed
Now in case your are wondering this was only one room! The rest is pristine!
Well sort of?
I guess I am lucky now that I live with Alan (although some of the muddle is always his!) because he carted a lot of the accumulated rubbish to the dump and the best of the books to the charity shop. I still have some Pelham Puppets to sell on ebay, play books, my art work and some odds and ends to take to my cabinet at The Trading Post in Kemptown. 
So it’s all good news and naturally leaves a bit of space to accumulate a whole lot more!
—
This verse was posted last time I decluttered but decided to give it another airing.
Clutterbugs
(for Catherine)
They stuff each room with bits and bobs
the house is never neat.
They set out knick-knacks on the shelves
when I am fast asleep.
They stuff the loft with old machines
completely out of date
they’ll never come in handy
so lie around and wait.
They hide things in the garage
half empty bags of sand,
partly used congealing paint
it’s hard to understand.
So now it’s just enough, enough
de-cluttering’s begun.
I’ll hunt them down
I’ll give them hell
get rid of everyone!
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