I had a good Flylady day yesterday and the kitchen is back to looking as almost lovely as it could be (it’s a grotty small, badly designed kitchen where the ripped lino badly needs replacing). Today I’m meant to be adding laundry to the routine, i.e. doing it every day, now I don’t know anyone who has kids who doesn’t do laundry everyday! I do at least one load, sometimes a lot more each day, it is very dependent on the weather and the time of year as although I have plenty enough capacity to wash things, drying things is a problem when it’s not a nice warm sunny day as I have a washer-drier (no room for a tumble drier) and the drier just does not work properly, so if I can hang clothes out to dry on the line, great, I can do 3 or 4 loads (and need to when it’s the beginning of the summer and the washing has backed up over the winter) but when it’s cold and miserable and the only place to dry clothes is the limited hanging space in the bathroom, well I’m limited about how many damp clothes I can hang up. My laundry weakness probably is that I don’t always put the clean dry clothes away, straight away, however I have already been working on that and instead of a clean laundry mountain mounting up over literally weeks, the clothes will be hanging round in the clean clothes hill for a few days at most.
Now on to other ramblings, Girl Lacer started her new ballet class today, she’d been going to ballet (what she refers to as ‘blue ballet’ as she had to wear a blue uniform) last term but it was a good 40 minute walk away up a very steep hill and we’d have never of made it on time after nursery, so I looked around for a new ballet class for this term and found what Girl Lacer refers to as ‘pink ballet’ as she’ll be wearing (once I part with the money) a pink uniform. I wish I’d found ‘pink ballet’ straight away as it’s almost literally round the corner instead of a pretty horrible 40 minute walk, the teachers look lovely and most importantly (for me) the other mums waiting outside the class whilst the ballet lesson is on are actually this time nice. Not that the ‘blue ballet’ mums were actually horrible but they were incredibly cliquey and it seemed to be part of the blue ballet mum clique you needed at least a 6 bed ‘cottage’ in leafy Surrey and go on holiday to exotic places at least three times a year. The mums at ‘pink ballet’ are a lot nicer and I already know one of them from nursery, goes to show that probably, specially living in London where there can sometimes be such distinct pockets of people that literally a 40 minute walk away from where you live and you’ve suddenly got nothing in common with the people there (like with blue ballet), that it’s nicer being local sometimes.
After me and Girl Lacer came back from ballet, Girl Lacer then assumed the position of a morning playing computer games with Mr.Lacer (they’re very into Rollercoaster Tycoon at the moment) and Boy Lacer had the dubious honour of accompanying me jeans shopping. It’s always nice shopping with just one of the kids though, go shopping with both of them and all you want to do it go from A to B as quickly as possible. However it does mean I’m more likely to spend money! I needed to go jeans shopping as I am at least a two pairs of jeans girl, but very sadly one of my trusted Abercrombie and Fitch pairs of jeans developed holes in embaressing places recently. I always buy Abercrombie jeans if I can as they fit me so well and they’re ‘proper’ jeans, not just trousers made of denim which some cheaper jeans can look like. Unfortunately not in the position to splash out £70 – £80 for a new pair of Abercrombie jeans at the moment, even though they’ve got a new store in London (and I’ve been, boy is it an experience, just for the shop assistants alone heh heh), so had to buy some high street jeans. My last pair of high street jeans I brought was a pair of Gap jeans last year and they never lasted the distance which is a shame as Gap jeans used to be good, maybe I was just unlucky that time, to me a pair of jeans should last a good number of years, my recently deceased Abercrombie jeans lasted nearly 4 years, so a pair of jeans lasting a year if that is just not good enough. So I tried Next this time and they’ve got a nice selection at the moment, I tried on several pairs and ended up going away with a pair of their Slouch fit jeans, the denim is nice and thick, the colour is dark but not too dark with some nice faded bit, they’re baggy (you wouldn’t of guessed with their name would you lol) I don’t look good in skinny jeans and they weren’t too expensive (£35). On the negative side they’ve got coloured embroidery on the pockets but you can’t seem to get away from that sort of thing on women’s high street jeans, why? It’s a big pet peeve of mine. You can’t beat a pair of nice worn, plain jeans, like how they were invented! Whenever I buy jeans for Girl Lacer I always try and buy embroidery free jeans, I think they look far nicer and not sissy (ugh can’t stand ‘sissy’). Anyway I’m glad I’ve got that pair of jeans now, I couldn’t stick being a one pair of jeans girl specially as my other pair of jeans (also Abercrombie) have been in the wash all week, I’ve had to resort to being ‘skirt woman’ and whilst it’s refreshing getting some air round my legs whilst the nice autumn weather lasts, I was missing my ‘uniform’.
Whilst clothes shopping couldn’t resist looking at the other stuff as well (much to Boy Lacer’s disgrutlement), I love looking at new season stuff and I love how the trend for pattern is continuing into autumn – winter wear. There were several nice printed tops in Next but I couldn’t justify them but I did pop into Zara and ended up buying a lovely retro looking patchwork applique top with an octopus on it, I’ve said it before I so love Zara’s T-shirts. They had some gorgeous crochet cat T-shirts to but they were a bit expensive. I sound a bit contradictory don’t I, can’t stand emboridery on my jeans but go crazy for embroidery etc. on my tops. I guess I like my jeans to be a nice solid plain backbone to whatever I’m wearing on my top half, I don’t want my jeans trying to compete to.
I also popped into Zara Home which is my new favourite interiors shop, up there with Cath Kidston and luckily alot cheaper than Cath Kidston. Funnily enough Boy Lacer also likes Zara Home as well, think the things in there are a lot more interesting to look at than boring old clothes, it’s a bit like an aladdin’s treasure trove. I ended up buying (I knew I’d buy something), a large squashy wicker basket plus a couple more melanime bowls for the kids (their melanime range is fantastic). The squashy wicker basket is to replace my cardboard box I use when tidying up, particularly the living room. I use Flylady’s method of sticking everything that shouldn’t be where you just found it, into a box and once the box is full you go round and empty the box, putting everything in their right place. Sometimes I don’t get round to emptying the box (I do it eventually) but other than that it is a fantastic method as you see results far more quickly and you’re not walking back and forth taking things from one place to another. But the cardboard box was itself looking untidy (it lives on the folded down dining room table) so the wicker basket will look nicer.
So from Flylady back to Flylady, I better go do some actual housework now, unfortunately being in the house is still making my allergic rhinitis worse (although I’m getting better now the sofa covers are back on), when I go out of the house I feel alot better, I suspect the only thing that’s going to make me better is a good spring clean.
