Lost

I absolutely hate losing things. But to see my messy house you would think I wouldn’t mind losing things, to the untrained eye that pile of crap on the kitchen side is just a pile of crap, yet I believe I could list exactly what it contains. Organised chaos is alright with me.

It was actually my losing something that started my war on the loft. It was two days before the school term started and I was just getting round to labelling everything (unlike super organised mum who has everything labelled and ironed and ready to go by the last week of the previous term, smug cow) and I had misplaced the funky iron on name labels I had ordered in a desperate attempt to portray an organised image when Son One started year R (I won’t be ordering them again, poor old Son Two will have to be satisfied with his name scrawled across the washing label in an old Sharpie). It was in checking the loft for the misplaced labels that I discovered the level of disorganisation up there.

The other day I lost Son One’s swimming hat. This isn’t just any swimming hat, it’s special. Son One refuses to cut his long hair but it was affecting his swimming so I said he must wear a hat to keep it out of his eyes. He agreed to the hat on the condition that it was a Star Wars hat. So I lovingly sewed a Star Wars patch on either side of a blue and white fabric swimming hat. He loved that hat; you could see his little chest puffing up with pride when anyone commented on it. No one else had a Star Wars swimming hat, it was one of a kind.

The other day Son Two and I swam in the big pool while Son One had his lesson in the teaching pool. Swimming with kids is stressful, you have to take the same amount of luggage as for a two week holiday (and Son Two is still in nappies so that means extra supplies) and try and ram it into a locker far too small before realising that said locker is broken and you will have to go through it all again with the next locker along. But it’s afterwards that’s the worst. Trying to squeeze everyone into a tiny cubicle because a couple of sixteen year olds have decided to use the only two family changing rooms, changing nappy on the bench in a cloud of talc left by the previous occupant, wrestling damp feet into shoes and socks (with children complaining of feeling “sticky”) and then (and this is the really hard bit) get kids to stop fiddling with the door lock while you change yourself (why are they determined to reveal your nakedness to the universe?). When you finally unlock the door it’s like letting the greyhounds out of the trap, and you chase after them, hair dripping wet, all hope of checking face for runny mascara in the mirror forgotten. I returned home (mirror check revealed runny mascara as suspected). But when I took out the wet swimming things I couldn’t find the hat.

I tried to remain calm. I emptied the bag again. I put everything else away. I checked inside all the swimming costumes, inside the hoods of the towels, I emptied my car, I looked under my bed, behind sofa cushions, everywhere I knew it could be before everywhere I knew it couldn’t possibly be. I searched for over half an hour until I had to accept that the swimming hat was gone. And this is the point where my OCD kicks in.

I started to imagine the swimming hat lying forlornly on the tarmac of the car park, maybe getting kicked about by some passing youth. Or I would imagine it in the hands of some other child, who would not appreciate the love and care that had gone into making that Star Wars swimming hat. Or worst of all, being transported to the dump in a bin bag from the leisure centre, nestling amongst used nappies and sodden plasters, where it will stay til the end of time. All of these visions were a disturbing end to a much loved possession. To say nothing of the look on Son One’s face when I had to break the news to him.

And this is what happens to me every time I misplace something. I don’t just mourn their loss, but waste a considerable amount of time and energy thinking about where they could be once they are sucked into the vortex of misplacement. It’s both a blessing and a curse having such an active imagination.

I awoke early the following morning after a fretful night and reordered a new hat and patches in the hope that I could replace it before Son One noticed (which would have been hard given that Son Two loves it just as much and has taken to wearing it around the house when Son One isn’t around). It cost money but I would’ve paid a lot more to avoid the inevitable upset.

But I still couldn’t stop my mind cranking out the visions of the lost hat. So in one last desperate attempt to give myself some peace I went to the leisure centre and asked them if it had been handed in. It hadn’t. I begged them to let me look in the changing room and they reluctantly agreed. And there it was. Sitting on the bench of the changing room where it had been all along, not on any of the adventures I had imagined for it. Mystery solved and hat back in the right hands, my mind was finally calmed. Phew, close one, I almost overreacted there.

Car Booty

Don’t hate me for saying this but there are only 13 weeks till Christmas. My palms are sweating as I type at the thought of not having enough money to pay for it. Not only that, I also have house maintenance to do ready for the winter. Even when I was still with The Dad we never planned or saved properly for Christmas, ending up spending money we shouldn’t and never really recovering from Christmas until the following June. But as part of a twosome that was nowhere near as scary or serious a prospect.

Now I’m on my own the weight of responsibility bears far more heavily. I’ve started getting organised; making lists of what needs to be done, not just for Christmas but to the house to see it through winter. And along with all the practical preparations, I also need to prepare financially.

I don’t have any spare cash to save so I need to find the money through other means. After totally freaking out at the sight of my loft a couple of weeks ago (a footprint the size of my entire house, waist deep in broken toys, scratched cd’s, reams and reams of paper, baby equipment, computer parts and precious memory boxes) I had to sit down and calm myself with a cup of tea and a fag. I am most definitely not a neat freak but I would like to avoid finding myself on an episode of Hoarders (on one episode they unearthed three dead cats, can you imagine?). It was like I could feel the weight of all that crap bearing down on me, to say nothing of how I will be able to dig out the Christmas decorations by myself (that’s if they have even survived being buried under all the crap). But one mans trash is another mans er… probably crap to put in his loft, so I did an impromptu car boot sale yesterday.

My usual car boot routine goes like this: Plan car boot sale at least two weeks in advance, gathering all manner of crap and assembling pasting tables (and pretty table cloths), clothes rails and the like, while putting wildly inflated price stickers on everything and ironing piles and piles of clothes. Go to Tesco on the way to car boot to spend three pounds on snacks and drinks and to break a twenty to provide a float. Arrive at the car boot sale fully intending to make at least £200 (including a tenner for that pair of brand new jeans still with tags that you never quite fitted into but which are musty smelling from two years in the loft). Spend the next two hours refusing to sell stuff for below your starting price. Panic that you are not going to earn back the cost of your pitch. Start selling things for 10p. Buy a bacon sandwich to put something hot in your stomach and spend two pounds on a pair of neon yellow socks from the stall next door to put over your freezing hands. Panic that you are not going to get rid of anything. Start giving things away (harder than you might think). Realise that everyone else has left and you can’t feel your fingers or toes. Pack up 98% of the stuff you arrived with, dropping it off (including the unsold brand new jeans) at a charity shop on the way home. Go home, count money and discover that you made £2.46 loss for all that prep and five hours shivering in a field. But at least you have a new pair of socks.

So this time I took a completely different approach. No planning whatsoever and zero expectations (except to get rid of as much stuff as possible). Sunday morning I calmly loaded the car with bin bags of baby clothes separated into age groups and bits and pieces which were bought at a car boot in the first place and never used, easily grabbed from the precipice of loft mountain. I dismantled my kitchen table and bunged it in, made myself a flask of coffee, grabbed a couple of cereal bars, rummaged around the house under sofa cushions and in the rubber seal of the washing machine unearthing coins to use as a float and set off.

I laid my bin bags out on the grass and stuck an age label on each one. Random crap went on my kitchen table and I sat down with my book, cereal bars and flask of coffee. People were queuing up to have a rummage in my bin bags, and apart from one snotty lady who muttered “tut tut, bad presentation, the lady up there had the right idea” nodding towards a beautifully laid out baby clothes stall with not a punter in sight, everyone else said that my bin bags were genius. And that coupled with my pricing strategy (a pound each or whatever you want to offer) obviously worked. Some of the bulging bin bags were empty by the time I packed up. Lesson learned; people go to car boot sales looking for a proper bargain, not to spend £4 on a pair of second hand trousers they could get for the same price in Asda. After four hours I packed up maybe 40% of the stuff I went with, went home for a sandwich and worked out I had made £46 profit, a good start to my Christmas savings.

It barely looks like I’ve made a dent in the loft but with a little hard work (OK a lot of hard work, eBay is my next mission), I’ll have saved up for Christmas in no time and might even have a little left over to treat myself. And I’ll be able to put up my Christmas decorations without the fear of discovering a festering dead thing. One nil to me in the me vs Hoarders challenge.