A Rainy Sunday Afternoon of De-Cluttering.

What a better time to do some de-cluttering than on a rainy Sunday afternoon!  After a lovely brunch out this morning, one had mouth watering eggs benedict, one had waffles and and one had an omelette.  I am not quite sure where Summer has gone!  Today is quite cool, windy and raining.

We have just got a rain gauge.  My mother got it for my son and he was excited to put it in the garden (it's not the most attractive device, LOL).  Anyway my son loves checking it each morning to see how much rain we have had.  We are not used to all of this rain and for my son particularly who has grown up very rarely seeing rain, it's interesting for him to see how much it's raining during the day.  Here are some pictures of our rain gauge, it was emptied at about 9am this morning, so we have had that much rain in the last 6 hours.

 

For many years we have been in drought in Australia and where ever you would look you would see brown lawns, brown gardens with the only green really being from trees.  We were talking this morning about how funny it feels to walk on grass now, we are so used to walking on grass and it being crunchy as it was so brown.  Why wouldn't we use sprinklers you ask!  Well we were not allowed to.  There have been such strict water restrictions over the years.... Washing cars with a bucket only, no hosing driveways or your house, no watering gardens with sprinklers anytime, no watering lawn at all. If you built a new home and put in a pool or had a pool put in, there was one stage where you couldn't fill it!  Sometimes we would have odd numbered houses could water their garden on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and even numbered were Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, no watering on Sundays and watering times were between 4pm and 7pm only, hand held hoses only.  Some people (not our household) would even shower with a bucket in their shower to catch the water to tip it on the garden, seriously!  Everybody was starting to plant drought resistant plants, that required little water, but we still had brown dead lawns, crunchy brown lawns.  Our dams were almost empty.

My son had never seen a sprinkler until recently, we had to get a new hose when water restrictions eased because the dog had chewed so many holes in the hose that it became like a sprinkler, LOL.  Now we have had so much rain we have flooding. But our lawns are green and our gardens are flourishing!  As far as the eye can see is green, drive down streets and all of the lawns are green and the gardens are flourishing and our dams are so full that they have to keep releasing water.  It's amazing mother nature really!

Anyway back to the task at hand, de-cluttering and tidying up my home!  So today I did the kitchen.  I have to be honest when I say that the kitchen was really not that bad.  I actually forgot to take before photos.  The kitchen is always kept very clean, after all it is where the cooking happens and we don't want food poisoning now do we, no.  But there was clutter, the pantry was pretty full, so needed a bit of a clean out as I had some groceries (just unopened can's and new cereal boxes for example) waiting for a space to open up in the pantry.  So I had a big clean out of the pantry food section, I do still need to clean out the other shelves, tupperware shelves that seem to have a million containers and lids lying in there.

So here is my kitchen, sort of clutter free.  I do have the coffee machine out, it's too big and heavy to keep putting away.  I have my kitchen-aid out, I love the look of that, it's my favourite kitchen gadget (appliance) and my cookbook stand with some of my favourite cookbooks in it.

    

So, that is my Kitchen all tidy and clutter free (almost), ready for me to get baking something yummy.  I will be sure to post my next yummy creation that I bake.  I will go and sit down and continue reading "The Clutter Diet" on my ipad.