One way my husband and I are compatible is that we love to organise shit. I mean, if we had a job sorting out people's mess and got paid for it, we'd be in heaven. We've been known, in the past, to drunkenly rearrange people's spice cupboards at dinner parties.

Whilst living at his Mum's, we get to do this on a daily basis. The poor woman has had to put up with all our ideas for sorting the place out. It's a pertinent time to do so as she considers moving in with her new partner to save on bills, and 'mothball' the house. It won't be completely unused as Jamie's sister lives in a shack in the garden, but it'll be fairly unoccupied. Whilst in some way she'd like to sell the house, that's not an ideal scenario because her new partner also has kids and if he dies, things get messy and complicated.

Jamie has taken on the job of handyman and has been making suggestions to improve the place without spending a lot of money. Whilst the bigger jobs will wait til after I leave next week, we've been enjoying doing some major tidying up, such as the garden shed. We'll be leaving some things here too for the next trip. Basically the whole shed was a big pile of crap with no way of telling what was in there - half filled boxes, boxes with no labels, and so on. The photo below is when we've already emptied half of it out!

The first step, after emptying the shed, was to consolidate all the stuff. Anything that was unnecessary (such as broken flamingo fairy lights) were thrown out or put on Freecyle.

Now, the day before we'd removed a bit of railing from the garden that we thought looked bloody awful. This became a shelf that ran across the back wall, and a small one against the shorter wall. That way we had two levels to put things. All the garden chairs and tables went on the right hand side so they could be grabbed easily.

I even made some labels out of butter containers and twine.

Whilst it's far from my kind of perfect, it was a darn sight better than it was, and my mother and sister in law were thrilled. There's even more room for our junk when we leave - or important things like fleeces and jeans I don't need to drag back to Australia with me, car parts, doona covers for the Land Rover and so on.

The next bit of garden DIY was the blue water containers. This view is from the garden shed. Can you see the bright blue water containers in the left hand side of the garden? We all agreed they looked messy. They weren't even being used since she removed her vegetable garden! Whilst I don't suppose you can notice them much in this photo, when you are sitting in front of the greenhouse looking at the skyline and enjoying nature, the blue barrels were an eyesore. We've emptied them of water and they'll be put behind the shed out of sight.

Is't this sky beautiful! Cn you see the tree in the middle of the frame, and the meadow underneath it? It's important to grow a meadow for bees and other pollinators, and they can be a beautiful feature of the garden in their own right as they showcase white daisies, clover, and other things that self seed like poppies. Except that's where the terrible railing was - the stuff we used for shelves - so it looks more lovely and open now.

The other thing we did today was to brighten up the area behind the house and the laundry. It's rather dark and my mother in law always thought it looked a bit like Dartmoor prison in there, so she put a net curtain on the laundry door so you couldn't see out there at all. Yet we argued that it created an illusion of space, especially when you could see the sky beyond, so we thought we'd cheer it up a bit by painting it yellow.

We think it looks so much nicer. We're going to get some pots and ferns to liven it up a little more. Jamie thought it'd be cool to glass the roof and make this kinda of cool bathroom in there with a sink and some tiles on the floor. Wouldn't that be cool?

Jamie's also decided to paint the house, rewire some outdoor electrics, tidy up the garage, and whatever else his OCD aspect of his ADHD will urge him to do. Meanwhile, I'm encouraging him to keep administering CBD oil so he gets at least some chill out time.

With Love,

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