The Goose and Carrot July Edition

[Lougle]

All welcome, and everything disappears after 90 days.

I always imagine the rest of you live in very swanky but more importantly clean and organised homes. Ours is not! I desperately need to sit down and organise ds’s clothes again. We seem to have lost a large number of socks and pants which is fairly mysterious as he doesn’t get changed anywhere but at home unless I’m there.
Truthfully I just need to work harder and all of this mess/grub/chaos would melt away.

Our clothes go from IKEA bags to bodies to washing machine to IKEA bags. It's a rare thing if they hit the clothes drawers. I hate clothes and my brain just freezes when I try to keep organised in that area.

I'm thinking of getting one of those calender display boards for the wall. I know myself too well and I won't be consistent in using a white board, but I use my calender religiously so I think that could work.

My head hurts and I've double booked DD1 to be in the GP surgery for an appointment about her sleep, and the pharmacy for ear microsuction just 15 minutes apart tomorrow. Another thing to sort out.

Our house is not swanky 🤣 It's a 3 bed semi with a steep driveway with suspiciously thin broken tarmac (old tenant), a breeze block garage that was built without permission (old tenant) which takes in water in the winter, and a porch/utility/toilet which is in an uninsulated brick outhouse extension. Dog hair is a permanent feature (you have a choice of brown or black, though). The dining room is now a bedroom and although the hall is fairly large, it's unusable as a space because it adjoins the front entrance, stairs, and kitchen.

Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful every day that we have secure housing on a tiny estate that is tucked away from the main residential areas of our village, but it's no palace!

I did organise DSs clothes in a chest of drawers by type neatly but he moves things and also as he climbs trees, fences, digs around in mud he can get holes in things and leaves attached so have to check them and get new ones every so often. Also bedding gets taken to the shed then back to the house each day as he likes to be under a fleece duvet in the shed in the day even in a summer heatwave 🤔. Though he is very good at washing everything, also drying. But he can leave things he's washed on the floor. I always reorganise everything whenever I clean and he has responded to that a bit and isn't using the drawers but is using shelves more. So he's being house trained but slowly.

I am loving having DH home so can get everything clean, tidy and newly decorated. My flat pre kids was immaculate with things in height order. DH is naturally untidy but has been converted. DD is untidy but mostly at university now. Less kids and pets definitely help. DH is loving the getting to be immaculate garden and outside of house, he was saying our house is so beautiful after I did it like he was about to cry. DS also loves a beautiful garden and always wanted to be in a castle. DH does have an annoying habit of if I say we need to clear this area he just moves it to another room whereas I mean we need to see what we can throw out and move things to their homes.

I’m nodding along at the clothes organisation, the best thing I did for DD2 was remove the hanging rail in her Ikea wardrobe& added in shelves and we have clear plastic boxes with labels that literally say “black tops”, “jogging bottoms”, “pants” “socks” etc. each main clothing group has a separate clear box. She still struggles hugely to put any clean washing away but does at least put dirty bits in a basket now which only took 3-5years of constant repetition to resolve… sigh it is indeed the constant tiredness of hundreds of micro jobs that adds up to the general weariness of being a parent of a send yp v my other DD who took just weeks to “get it”.

I’m trying to get some work done at home when really I just want to join DD2 in “having a break from it all”. My mgr is on LT sick leave and many small projects are being juggled. I do drop to 3 days a week during August to help but really I just juggle away needing a rest. The humidity got to me yesterday it was really energy zapping I do not enjoy this hotter weather I’d be quite happy if it stopped at 20c.

@TheGoodCat I hope your DM is feeling better.

She said she felt bad that she had made the psychiatrist have a bad day and feel sad.

@Lougle how wrong it is that the psychiatrist made DD1 feel like that. It should be the psych apologising to DD1 and you.

Our house is organised and clean, but definitely not swanky. It has to be organised with DSs. We have a cleaner, otherwise it wouldn’t be anywhere near as clean. Socks still go missing regularly, never to be found again. No idea how or where they disappear to. On the other hand, there is a list of things that need doing outside the house. The garage needs tidying. Again. It never stays tidy for long. Cardboard takes over, things get dumped in there. The guttering needs cleaning. The garden needs attention. The drive and patio need washing.

Am I right in thinking you have about 100 recycling bins because of meds packaging, or have I made that up?

The LD nurse phoned today. She's very supportive.

@Lougle we need 100 recycling bins. We have an extra recycling bin and an extra general waste bin, but it isn’t enough. I have previously requested more, but have been turned down. Apparently, it isn’t allowed. We produce so much cardboard recycling. We store it in the garage, then do a recycling centre run when we have a car full. We need to move to @Tulipandmagnolia’s area. When I mentioned recycling previously, she said they can have more bins.

Yes bins are excellent here, its the one thing the council is great at. I even ordered a bin once at 2am and it was outside our house at about 6am same day. We can have 4 green bins and I think 4 recycling bins, one black bin but with more kids you can have two I think. Green bins for the extra ones you have to pay a charge each year for it to be collected, about £40 a year. We have two green bins and 2 blue bins and one black bin and luckily have a lane we can put them in so don't see in garden. We do pretty much always fill both green bins, the blue bins sometimes.

At primary DS used to always take his socks off and put them under the sofa so whenever you moved the sofa to hoover / clean floor you would find loads of socks. Nowadays he's stopped that but does get holes in the toes easily but just get more. He'll also only likes to wear black ones. Once I got him days of the week and he loved those so much and used to laugh a lot about wearing them on wrong days.

No, we don’t live in a swanky house. We tended to spend on DCs’ education, then holidays, days out and eating out, to cheer ourselves up. We had paid the mortgage off by the time twin DDs were eight, and we never felt inclined to take out another one to trade up! We did have a big extension, so DD1 can live downstairs, which is much better!

I have mine and DD1’s stuff organised, while DH is perennially untidy and disorganised with his stuff! All I can do is ask him to tidy up from time to time! Otherwise, he gets screwdrivers out to do DIY, and they’d live on the kitchen table for ever more!

At the care home, they label all her drawers with the symbols for what’s in them, but I doubt she gets her own clothes out there either. It’s in her care plan to make sure, she is dressed appropriately for the weather! She wants a normal life in theory, but in reality likes being waited on!

All DD1’s clothes are in the wardrobe and chests of drawers. I tend to get three items of a type of clothing out and ask her to choose one; because otherwise she chooses her favourite clothes, which are likely to be completely unsuitable for the weather - given she shouldn’t get hot or cold, as either will cause seizures! She’d wear summer dresses all the year round, if it were left to her; but then in the summer, she wants a fluffy fleece on top, because I guess she likes the fluffiness! She’s incredulous, when we tell her twenty seven degrees is too hot for a fleece!

She might be like DD2, who wears her coat outside all through the summer, and doesn’t appear to notice it’s hot; but that’s her choice. With DD1, we have to deal with the consequences and probably the criticism of letting her get too hot!

We're allowed an extra recycling bin if we pay £40. Only families with 6+ in the household or medical needs can have an extra waste bin.

I've just received an invoice for DD1's care. The council have been billed 45 hours for the latest care agency. She's only had, I think, 7 hours of care. Possibly 10 were booked. I've only just resolved the last invoice for the previous agency. Last time the woman was baffled that I wasn't disputing DD1's contribution (the charge amounted to less than the value of care received) but I was telling them that they had been billed too much. It's pretty important stuff, surely, when they are in a £102 million deficit!

DD has agreed on a new armchair for her room, this has made me so happy as it’s an upsetting chair for me. Yes to labels and/or glass doors on cupboards and hoodies year round.

Our extra bins are free for collection apart from garden ones where you need an annual permit per extra bin though its relatively cheap at about £40 a year. Though I do suspect with the pressure on finances that bin charges will increase in future / and /or collections decrease. Think there's a lot of people with big gardens here hence the ability to get 4 green bins though why 4 recycling ones are allowed for everyone I don't know though it probably reduces people putting things in black bin. Maybe a rural thing.

DS used to wear hoodies all the time but now wears t-shirts in summer with shorts (and socks!). I have found some days of the week socks so ordered some for DS and some coloured plain ones, see if can cheer his sock colour up. He wears colourful but plain t-shirts and hoodies. DH is off to do his classic car. Then getting orders from Dunelm and Waitrose. I've ordered lots in as DH is away and DD is back. Industrial quantities of fruit and ice cream for DS.

Heard from the roof guy today with a sweet e-mail saying would your DS mind if we changed the order of the roof panels. I said he would be fine with that as only squirrels and birds can see through the roof. Hopefully they will do guttering as well. Need to get water butt though looks like you can click and collect those quickly.

@Lougle Some agencies are unscrupulous.

I wouldn’t mind paying for extra bins if that was an option here. It would be more convenient than saving it all and having to take it to the recycling centre. Everything involves cardboard - mediation boxes, packaging from feeds, ancillary items and drinks, incontinence products, gloves and aprons, dressings… all involve cardboard.

Today is the day that keeps giving. The pharmacist couldn't issue DD1's new dose of ADHD meds because the prescription isn't written correctly. I've sent another email to the head of service asking how we get the medication for her.