Things I Let Slide Tuesday: Garden Edition

Occasionally, when I can be bothered (see title) I post about things I let slide round these parts (if you can muster up any interest, see here and here).  The series is more about honesty in blogging than about beating myself with sticks of any kind (actual or metaphorical).  We all have stuff we haven't done, we just don't blog about it til it looks awesome.  So, spirit of fun, and all that.  Feel free to join me if you feel so inclined. 

So, among the kids stuff and renovations, I've let stuff slide.  Let's stick to the yard for this edition...

This is at our front door.  A cheery and welcoming set of unswept leaves, with a yellow kids Ikea bowl in them.  This is...wait for it...our cat's food bowl.  Stylish, no?  It just screams love and care. Occasionally I lean out the front door, and pour a bunch of dry bits in the general direction of this bowl.  Poor cat.  She needs more lurv.  And a broom.

Cat bowl of sadness

Just outside our front door is our second stop on this three hour tour.  When we moved here, there were three palms growing in these odd concrete garden circles on this great spot of flat yard at the back of our place (that back is, ironically, where our front door is.  Don't ask.)  Anyhoo, you can't really grow this kind of palm in a drought, which was what we were having for several years here.  (In other news, the drought was nicely relieved by the floods.  Australia is a land with a sense of irony.  And vengeance.  Weather-y vengeance.)

So, the palms died (thanks, Australia).  And we had three dead palms in concrete circles.  Then DinnerDad chopped the palms down, and we were left with...you guess correctly: three concrete circles.  Which we still have today.  I feel I should point out we have tried to move them, but they are...well... made of concrete.  DinnerDad periodically gets jack of them and attacks them with mallets and picks and crowbars and such.  To no effect. Well, my amusement.  Ahem.

So we dug the dirt out of one this winter and made it a firepit.  Which we still haven't painted, or made a cover for.  Coz that's how we roll.  That last three feet elude us, again.

And the other two concrete circles are still languishing in the yard, full of dead weeds.

Unnattractive firepit.  Also note fallen-down light (which fell down in the floods.  In January.  Thanks again, Australia.)

Finally, pause now, dear readers, to admire the vege garden.  Yes, folks, with a season or more of neglect, you too can have withered pumpkin vine, abandoned watering cans, and unused compost bins!!  Send no money now!

That giant clump of enormous grass behind the compost bin is lemongrass.  It's like a triffid.

Lolly wants to plant seeds this year, tomato and cucumbers.  We clearly haven't got to this yet.

So, these are the Things I Let Slide.  An irregular celebration of the shit we all have that we just haven't got to yet.   

Things I let slide Tuesday: now with more Sunday!

I haven't done one of these posts in aagggeeessss (all those letters represent time, don't ya know).  But in the spirit of stuff in my house and my life that gets in the way of spending my time with the kids (or the internet) here it is: The Things I Let Slide...starting with

This ceiling.  This is our downstairs bathroom. The cistern on our upstairs loo overflowed without our noticing, until it dripped through the roof of the downstairs bathroom.  We fixed the leak, but 2 days later, this mould erupted.  That was 3 weeks ago, and despite calling straight away to confirm it was covered on insurance, I still haven't lined up a builder to give us a quote to repair it!  We're going to have to get a new ceiling, and possibly floor on the upstairs bathroom, too.

Things I Let Slide #2 - finding tiles:

I need to source tiles for our kitchen renovation, we can't afford to replace these 1990 vintage gems (come on, you love 'em!  sooooo stylish!], so have to find more somewhere to cover the small changes in the footprint of the new kitchen.  I've known about having to find these bloody tiles for months, but still haven't done it!  I've only got a few weeks til our contractors show up!  [pause for a happy *squeeee* about the new kitchen!]

Things I Let Slide #3: Mount Foldmore

You might remember my washing adventures from such posts as this one.  You know, a couple of weeks ago (before the birthday week and the 2 weeks of American plague) I actually reached the bottom of every. single. washing. basket. in. the. house.  That makes it an official two times ever.  It lasted 2.5 hours.  But, I still don't put our clothes away.  Kids clothes, yup, linen, yup, our stuff - here, in which we root around like sad negletarinos every morning, trying to find undies.

**UPDATE** DinnerDad and I went through our wardrobe today, got rid of 5 bags of clothes to give away, and 3 bags of rubbish, and put ALL the washing away!! Huzzah for us!  

Things I Let Slide #4 is my camera! It has been out of action since the flood, and I still haven't taken it for repairs.  I have to trek at least an hour from where I live to get to a repair place, and it's just been too hectic, I've been too sick, or I just CBF.  I seriously need to do this. This is the last picture I took with my camera - it's from the day after the Brisbane floods, which was the 12th of January!

Instead of all these worthy chores, I've been lying on my couch reading, while suffering from a plague DinnerDad bought back from the US.  Lolly has watched ALL the TV, and I read several books with a pounding head and pathetic expression on my face.  But hey, we're on the mend, and there's plenty of cute to be going on with!

Lolly and her future hubby (lol) a few weeks ago.

Things I let slide Tuesday!

I get a good look under my couch all too often, this might be TMI but it's visible in silhouette from the toilet - lol.  I have been meaning to move the couch, clean out underneath, and vacuum there, but have failed to do this for many many months.  Here is an arty upside-down photo of some mess under there :D.  They look like UFOs, and there is SO much dog hair!  :-o

Setting up a drawer in the kitchen for Lolly - I haven't done this yet either, though it's one of those things I think of nearly every time I'm in there!  I'd like the bottom drawer to have her bowls, cutlery and some tupperware boxes of snacks she can select and open.  I want a spot in the fridge shelves like this too.  We can't really leave food out as we have a dog, so this is the closest thing to it.

Oh, and I still haven't done anything from the last list either :D  We've been having way too much toddler fun to do too many chores!!

Things I let slide Tuesday!

The first thing was this blog!  We've been sick for weeks and weeks, and not doing much of interest, and it means I don't write much.

Other fun on the Things I let slide list!  This stuff out the side of my house has been on my to do list for AGES - but I never do it!  Here's a picture :D

It's made up of an exciting mix of kiddie pool, bale of straw mulch, old nappy pail, and...well, I'm not too sure!  You can also see my neglected outside hanging space, complete with broken peg basket.  With all the sickness here, I haven't hung washing in months!  You can also admire the Things Smash has let slide - the mowing!!

My other selection for this week is the shelves above the Lolly stuff in our lounge room.  They need a massive tidy and sort, and annoy me daily.   Here's  a picture to admire.  This is all the filing stuff that used to be upstairs in the study, but with Lolly, I do it all downstairs in the lounge, my plans for organisation start off well, but end up, well, messy. 

After Lolly wanted to be in this photo, you can probably add Lolly's hair to the things I've let slide list.  It's matted and unbrushed.  Yay!

So, what have YOU let slide this fine Tuesday!?  In the spirit of fun, not self-blaming, because we all have choices, and some things are just more fun or more necessary than cleaning the bathroom :D

Things I let slide Tuesday!

My lovely friend, Stacey, had a fabulous idea last week on her blog, Live Dreaming, Forego Reality.  It was a post about things she had let slide :D.  As promised in her comments, I'm proposing to make this a regular feature around these parts, sort of as a follow up to my previous post taking on the Homemaker blogs, and generally debunking the "all is perfect in blog-land" theme. 

So here is my first effort, with pictures!  Just think of all the shit I'm not doing to make time to take pictures, and upload and embed them!!  I'm also not cooking dinner, and I'm pretty sure one of my lovely charges has pooped since I started this post!

The laundry, Part 1.

With three kids, two of whom are not toileted, everything in our house has been peed on (or worse) at some stage or other.  It makes for a LOT of washing.  One load a day does not cut it, and barely keeps the various piles from gaining grimy consciousness and taking over the joint, bent on plans of stinky pee-soaked world domination.   I mean, we own 6 single mattress protectors, three brolly sheets (one for a queen bed), four chair pads (and here), and several bedspreads and rugs whose sole remaining purpose is the prevent the soaking of wee into our couches and other important seating areas.  Snail gets about, when not in her chair, by bumsliding, and need I point out that this is NOT conducive to saving ones nappies from leaking out the sides, with tragic if predictable effect, often up to four times a day!  Keeping people round here in clean pants is like my main job these days.  TMI?  Not nearly enough "I" in my opinion!  If I have to clean it up, you can at the very least read about it :p

So yeah, a lot of washing.

Here is the laundry after we did, I shit you not, 4 full loads (teenager) on Sunday, and 3 loads (yours truly) yesterday.  And it still looks like this! 

And I couldn't even get the laundry sink with the pee soaked pants soaking in Milton in the shot, but they're there.  Behind the blue basket on top of the washing machine.

And yes, I do use the dryer most of the time.  Come live here before judging me!

I swear that I can only count the number of times I've been able to see the bottom of every basket in there on one hand.  Possibly only one finger.  It's like some kind of fundamental law of physics that not all our laundry can be clean at one time.  Our house may collapse into some alternative, and clean, space-time continuum.  Or something.

The laundry, Part 2.

I don't mind washing and drying.  I am quite violently opposed to putting away.  Hence our clean laundry sits in sorted baskets in the spare room, waiting for the Mt Foldmore fairy to call. 

Sorting people's clothes into individual baskets counts, right?

He clearly has lost our address.  This makes it hard to maintain my dignity when nagging Smash to put his washing away.  At least I don't store our clean stuff on the floor, generously mixed with the dirty stuff.  Come on, that means I win, right???

The Spare Room.

The Spare Room (with Capitals).

This is THAT room in our house.  Most people have 'em.  Even our cupboard under the stairs (a la Harry Potter) is tidy and organised.  But the Spare Room is that spot where all our unused stuff goes to wait for death or recycling to other families.  The piano only I can play (but never do), held in limbo while we wait to see if Lolly has an interest.  The walking machine (that's all I'm going to say about that).  The sewing area crammed in as an afterthought, coz Goddess forbid I could set up my stuff in a NICE spot where it was pleasant and easy to get to, and had all my thing in it!  The aforementioned laundry and innumerable baskets.  The toys and kid stuff that no one is the right age for yet/anymore but that we can't get rid of for some spurious reason.  The spare bookcase that I Have Plans For.  Storage baskets.  DinnerDads bike gear.  The fan, when it's not hot.  The heater, when it is.  You know, that stuff.  You know you've got some too, in your version of our Spare Room.   The Things You've Let Slide.

:D