House Project Update: The Great Room Reshuffle

Remember at the start of the summer when I made the kids their summer bedroom?  Well two months later we realized the twins are really getting too big and too mobile to be in the smallest room in the house.  So we have started shifting rooms around again.

Once I had an office/guest room / workout room:

Now, the kids have their new upstairs bedroom!

So far it's gone very well - the kids have slept much better not being next to the babies.  However, I feel deeply unsettled about my current landing space, which now looks worse than ever:

Does anyone want to buy a daybed?  Is "mirror stacked next to disassembled day bed" a good idea?

The former kids room is now a baby play room:

This room was one of the first rooms we painted when we bought the house.  It turns out we both picked terrible colours and painted it badly.  Then we added a loft, which meant the ceiling needed repainting too.  So we are using this opportunity to get the room painted, and we have decided to go with white this time.

For whatever reason, when originally picking colors, I decided to combine two greenish shades in this room, but not any shades that the paint company recommends I combine.  

So it was 3 walls of Apple White

And one wall of willow tree

The paint companies own website has some really good suggestions for color combos.  This was not one of them.

Also, Willow Tree is the NHS colour, a fact I realized while having a home birth and looking at that wall a lot.

On Thursday the painter is coming to make the whole room white.  Once dry, we can move the babies into their new room.  And then the kids and babies will be in their correct rooms, so that soon we can hopefully address the biggest problem:

Combined office horror.  FYI, I have one desk and one set of drawers and 1 set of weights.  Andy has... more hobbies.  More drawers and more things.  This is no way for an adult human to work!  I am hoping we can move to something a bit more normal before I start work for real on Tuesday, but I am also aware that house projects move slow, house projects with four kids move slower, and house projects dependant on painters availability may move slowest.

And also, is it a great idea to start medium house projects during already chaos transitions?  Probaby?

Retail Therapy - Planners & Shoes & Kitchen Appliance Update

I've done some shopping lately. 

We ordered our new family planner!  For the last 5 years (at least) we have used Personal Planner for our family planner.  We do September start weekly layout and I just ordered the 2024-2025 version.  So excited!   It's 13 months long, and includes friends birthdays, yartzeits (date of death) and anniversaries.  I think it's pretty.  The Personal Planner website even gives you a imaginary photo of what it will look like

(I do not have fancy scissors or clothes pins.  I do have washi tape)

I also took advantage of the Ashley Shelley sale ($10 for all 2024 planners!) and ordered a 2024 weekly vertical layout for myself.  I am currently using a 2023 daily, but my days don't have much in them, and sometimes a continual blank daily is just not inspiring.  Using a 2023 monthly layout in 2024 is not very helpful either.  So for $10 I figured I could play with another layout for the rest of this year and see what it's like.  

Switching gears - I recently decided it was time to retire my all time favourite running shoe - the Pearl Izumi N3. I bought these in 2016 and I remember they were sooo expensive, but now I don't know whether that was $80 or $100.  Would I have spent $100 on running shoes in 2016?  probably not.  I loved these shoes and thought they were the COOLEST.  

However... they are now 8 years old.  And although I have been rotating through 3 different shoes in the last 8 years I finally decided it was time to say goodbye to this pair.

I still have my Merrill trail shoes from around the same time, but I have done *far* less trail running than road/combo.  I had a pair of road shoes which I threw away about 2 years ago so I've been using these as road shoes since, but shoe technology has moved on!  

I know I should have gone to a running store and tried on different shoes and checked fit, but I did the inadvisable and googled "running shoes" and bought a pair of Asics Novablast 3s since they were on sale and also had good reviews.  I've made it out for one run so far but it's amazing how bouncy and light they are.  It seems like streamlined thin-ish shoes are out and massive supportive shoes are in now.  I remember Hokas looked silly to me in 2016 but I bet a Hoka of 2016 is probably the same or smaller than these new Asics.  Either way, they are a fun shoe!

(This is not my usual aesthetic but it works for me and also was on sale for £84 rather than £135)

Finally - I decided I did need a new food processor to replace the broken immersion blender attachment and I bought a Kenwood MultiPro food processor. 

No, I have not made that salad.  I have not even used the "forever chopper" technology.  However I have used it to make Tabouleh salad, and it's pretty cool how fast it shreds things.  I also grated a whole block of cheese for mac and cheese in less than a minute!  I know it had a lot of features I haven't used yet (dough? pastry?) but I am pretty happy to have a functioning food processor.  Also, it turns out the food processor attachment to the immersion blender is a very poor substitute for a real food processor.  OMG did this thing make quick work of parsley and mint.  

And in good news, everything still fits in the same cabinet.  Also, I make hummus with the immersion blender now.  

Have you bought anything new recently?  Are you a "buy when you need it" person or a "wait and do all your shopping at once" person?

Lets take a tour of small kitchen appliances & a food processor conundrum

Let's take a tour of my kitchen appliances!

First, we have a small kitchen.  In fact, it's 10'11 by 8'11 (or 3.3m x 2.7m).  The kitchen also has three doors into it (unlike the drawing below, which for some reason omits the door from the kitchen to the dining room):

It is awkwardly small and we try and fit a lot into this space, and but all appliances need to be somewhere.  With that in mind - here is our appliance tour:

Kettle: No British house is complete without an electric kettle.  This must be our most used appliance.  We don't have a coffee maker so it's always my first stop for my morning coffee (I use a drip filter/V60).  Then my second coffee, and endless cups of tea.  We also use it to boil water before cooking as it heats up much faster than the stove.  

Toaster.  Everyone needs a toaster right?  This is a two slice toaster.  It is... fine.  It was on sale and definitely not worth kitchen-aid prices.  We could probably use a four slice toaster someday but we don't have the space right now.

Microwave.  We didn't have a microwave for about a year in our 20s.  I'm not sure why.  It was silly.  Microwaves are the best.

Bread-maker.  We use this A LOT.   We bought this bread maker second hand right before Isaac was born (in 2018).  The person selling it had labeled the plug, which Andy and I really appreciate.  I was worried we wouldn't use it at all, but we actually use it about 2-3 times a week.  We also have a back stock of about 15kg of flour, for making bread.   The white tub below is about 30% of our flour backstock.

Slow Cooker.  We use this pretty frequently too.  Andy wanted a big one, which is good for making lots of food, but I miss my smaller slow cooker.  In my dream kitchen I would have a small slow cooker and a big slow cooker for different sizes of food prep.  I get the feeling that we will need the big one more often with our giant brood.  Last week I cooked a whole chicken and carrots in the slow cooker.

(left to right)

Waffle Iron.  Recent addition because I love waffles.  I didn't want to spend a lot on something I wasn't sure if we would use, but this one is somewhat plastic-y feeling.  I can see the benefit of removable plates now for easy washing.

Hand Mixer.  I had a very cheap "stand mixer" for ages, which I spent £40 on in 2012.  That was a lot of money for me in 2012!  It could be used as a hand mixer or it could be attached to a bowl that would rotate.  It didn't do either thing very well and it took up a lot of space.  Eventually we sold it (for £20?) and I bought a nice hand mixer that was more expensive I am very happy with the purchase.  Someday I would like a kitchen aid mixer.  First I need a bigger house.  The £300,000 for a bigger house at least makes the £400 kitchen aid seem more reasonable though?

Blender.  We LOVE smoothies in the summer and I bought this blender a few years ago.  I only use it for smoothies so we only use it half the year.  I feel like I did a lot of research on blenders before we bought this and it's not quite as great as the £44 price tag should have indicated.  I like it because it does blend - but I feel it needs lots of liquid and it is very LOUD.

Immersion Blender.  In the winter we often use the stick blender to make soups. Right now I mostly use the food processor attachment to make hummus.  I use it A LOT and it's starting to fall apart. Every time I use it I think it's probably the last time... Its starting to make a grinding noise and even Andy has noted that it's going to completely fall apart (Andy is usually a use it and repair it guy).  The stick/blender piece is great, but the mini food processor attachment probably wasn't meant to be used as often as we do.  I also try and use it for making falafel and fritters, which requires multiple transfers to a bowl since the processor is so small.

(also once I broke the hand mixer by following a Ottolenghi recipe for hummus which burned out the motor.  I thought it would be strong enough to work through the chickpeas but the chickpeas won.)

This brings me to the problem at hand... I "need" a new food processor.  I am not keen on buying a standalone food processor because I feel we already have too many appliances in our storage spaces.  Also what size do I need?  The current attachment is mini but sometimes I wish it was less mini.  I'm wondering whether a combined food processor and blender is a better option? Or can I use a blender to make hummus?  Can I use a blender to make salsa?  

Our house has no storage so Andy and I bought this unit in 2019.  Andy actually drew it and measured it and a company in Bath built it for us.  We recently realised we may have fit it upside down.  Also, it took 4 of us to mount it to the wall.  We had two friends come over to lift it.  I am not keen on glass cupboards but if we kept it a bit more organised then it would probably look better.  A project for another day.

Also, counters are not storage.  That is a project for tomorrow.

What is your favourite appliance?  Should I get a new food processor?  Should I get a combined food processor and blender?  Should I make do without a food processor?  Do you use a food processor and what do you use it for?

Mini Home Projects and the Most Horrifying Mermaid

We have a small landing in our loft.  When our loft was built we were told this space would become stuff storage.  "No!" I protested, "It will be a cute corner for the kids! Or a craft corner! or a well organised adventure space!

That space in January 2024:

It looked slightly better today... but not great.  It had four giant bags of charity shop donations, which I finally donated.  And then it had other things, which I have moved into my office (temporarily) or to other places in the house. 

And at the end of the project it looked like this:

Although we have a 5 bedroom house, Isaac and Lilah currently share a room (and have for over a year). They spend a LOT of time together, so I decided they needed some separate space sometimes.  This is now Isaac's "office". It is right outside Andy's office and my office (which is also my exercise space and currently excess pram piece storage space).

Isaac was very excited for his new office and noted how clean it is.  Great that my five year old takes note of clean spaces.

In other kid news, while at the charity shop Lilah decided she wanted a toy.  She wanted all the big toys.  I was hoping she would get a puzzle or a small toy.  She asked for the most giant plastic rubbish.  Finally she chose a tiny mermaid, and so I let her buy it because it was small (and cost 20p).

When we got home I got a chance to look at the mermaid.  It is one of the most disturbing toys I have ever seen:

Lilah proudly showed it to Andy.  I told him I didn't look at it before Lilah chose it.  When Lilah lost interest in mermaid Andy hid it on top of the fridge.  

Lilah has asked where mermaid is a couple of times and we both said "I don't know, where do you think it could be?" which probably makes is terrible parents.  Can I just throw it in the bin?  Do I need to let my daughter have this horrible toy?  What if she remembers forever that she once had a "beautiful mermaid" that got lost?  If you have kids, have you encountered this before and what did you do?  

Even looking at the photo of the mermaid is creeping me out here. 

Maybe I should have let her buy the 4 foot tall stuffed bear instead.

Money spent is time saved? Or Money Spent is Sanity earned? Bathrooms, Beds, Floors and the Dishwasher.

We have recently invested money into the pain points of our lives.  While it's one thing for time management experts to say "Outsource!" It's far easier for me to read about what exactly other people outsource to make more time.  Here are some recent wins for us:

The Doors

The doors to our garage broke.  We bought them when we moved in (2017) and they cost £100.  Andy carefully painted and mounted them.  It took a long time.  

The doors stopped closing after getting water damaged.  We had to use a box of rocks to keep it shut.  This wasn't good for the door, for my back, or for the insurance.

Andy called our favourite carpenter and he fit new doors. They cost more than £100 but they shouldn't break in the next 5 years.  

Andy despaired at the thought of painting them.  "Why don't you hire a painter?" I asked.  And so we had a quote from our favourite painter.

The key to life is having favourite trades people.

The Bathroom

While the painter was coming to look at the doors I thought about anything else that might need painting.  The new bathroom is painted poorly (by us, quickly after the loft conversion) but it will do.

The downstairs bathroom, which was a 2023 goal, is still just as mouldy and unpleasant as it was then.  In fact, it's worse, because it's winter.  Renovation was too expensive and we couldn't find a tiler, so we left it.

While the painter was looking at the doors I asked him how much it would cost to pain the bathroom with mould resistant paint.  It was £90.

Why have I ever painted any room when I could have paid someone £90 to do it for me???!!

He painted it in a day.  It took me zero effort.  I am happier having a less gross bathroom.  In no world did I want to spend my limited time painting right now.

The Beds and the Floors

With four kids, we have a lot of beds.  We have a lot of mess.  We have a heavily used house with heavily used floors.

We have a cleaner every two weeks for two hours.  She is amazing.  We origionally hired her to clean the bathrooms because Andy and I both hate cleaning bathrooms. Now she does the whole house.

Recently, she has started coming ever week and alternating between 2 hours and 1 hour.  On the 1 hour days she changes all the bedsheets and does a quick hoover. On the 2 hour days she does bathrooms and bedrooms but not sheets.

I love knowing the sheets will be changed.  I love knowing one day a week the whole house will be hoovered. I still sweep and hoover often... but no matter how bad it gets there will be a day it is clean.  I don't know why I spent so long without hiring a cleaner.  This is one of my favourite £15 ever.

The Dishes

I've often wondered how much different my life would be if I had a dishwasher for the first 5 years we lived in this house.  How much fitter would I have been if I used that 30 minutes a day for exercise? Or I could be so well read? How many hours of my life did I spend washing dishes to avoid the £1,000 outlay for the minor kitchen refurb?  Why did I wait so long?

I like my job.  I like earning money.  I also like using that money to make my life better.  Right now, we don't go on holidays.  We spend a lot of time at home.  Using money to make our home better aligns with our values.  If we valued other things, it might make less sense. 

This house is heavily used

Yesterday Andy made the comment that our house is currently very heavily used.  This is true.  There are a lot of people here, and a lot less time to maintain things.

I have severly lowered my standards on cleanliness.  It turns out, slippers can mask how many crumbs exist in our dining room! Why sweep now when Sarah (our cleaner) can do it on Tuesday?  I could be sweeping now, but I would rather write a blog post.  

We also have the pram currently stored in the dining room, because double prams are really big.  British houses are not.

This is a really sub optimal set up.

I have the urge to get rid of many things.  The big kids are prolific artists.  Why is the bread on top of the bread bin?  Can I throw away that pile of child drawings or will someone be sad?

We did have a grocery delivery today, which explains all the bread... but still.  Chaos! 

Also, I will tell you the story of that breadmaker.  We make a lot of bread. We eat a lot of bread! About two months ago, our bread started coming out flat.  I thought it was the breadmaker - it's almost 8 years old and used almost daily for the last 5 years.  Andy wanted to try other things.  I almost bought a breadmaker in December but decided to wait and let him work on it.  Then breadmakers were out of stock untill February.  Finally they were in stock and I bought a new one.  I made a loaf of bread with a bag of whole wheat flour and it turned out great.

Andy then made a loaf in the old bread maker with that same bag of flour and it turned out great.  Apparently, it was our old flour causing our bread not to rise.

I'm not sure why we didn't try new flour in the last two months.  But now we own two bread-makers.  One brand new and expensive.  I don't want to sell it on and instantly lose money... which I know is a total sunk cost fallacy.  I'm annoyed neither of us tried buying new flour, although we both think we tried that and that it didn't work.  Anyways, our house does not have room for a second breadmaker.

Another thing I want to declutter is my iron and vitamin C supplement.  I took this for a very short time while pregnant and it made me feel awful.  Do I throw it away? I would love to give it to someone who wants an Iron and Vitamin C supplement, however I don't want to spend the time to join a freecycle group and message people and arrange collection etc.  Perhaps I need to take a page from KC Davies and just throw it away? But it feels so... wasteful.

what can I do with half a bottle of expensive Conditioner for curly hair when I now wear straight hair?  Or the unopened white pepper that came with a meal kit which I'll probably never use?

And as more things come in... I've emptied this box of baby 6-9 clothes:

I made a bag for the baby charity shop (because I just know I wont put the twins in some of these things - most were third hand for Isaac) and a bag to give away to friend with a baby boy.  I put the rest in a drawer, which is slighty satisfying, but the drawer is already overfull:

I don't think babies need more than one drawer of clothes.  The top is full of 3-6 months, which is what they are in now.  Unfortunately Audrey is about to grow out of these and so I'm waiting untill I can put both of them in 6-9, poor Nora will just look like a tiny baby in massive clothes.  

But back to baby clothes - I want to give these to the baby bank, which is baby specific donations.  But, I have to get to the baby bank, which is tricky.  So it's more things in my house for now.  It feels like I'm not emptying the house... I'm just moving things around in the house. 

Also, I don't like tidying the big kids room.  I decided to get the kids baskets for everything.  Anything that doesn't live in a basket either goes to charity or has to have a different home. Here is their basket system:

FYI, the baby play gym on the right does not belong in this room, but Lilah insists on putting it there for her babies.  Apparently the actual babies don't get a go.

Well now that I've managed this me time of writing a blog post (babies slept! Yay!) I think I might work on clearing off that counter.  Maybe I'll wipe up the crumbs.  Maybe.

I guess my general thought is that if I feel like I'm always tidying things up then I probably need fewer things, and yet I'm having trouble getting rid of things.  

Also, someday I'll spend some time proofreading my posts again.  I'm sure I could declutter half the words.

Today is not that day!

What should I do with my vitamin C?  What else can I get rid of today?

Maternity Leave home organization and other to-dos.

I think in The States the idea of starting maternity leave before baby comes/before due dates might be an odd one.  When I first moved here and people were starting leave at 34 weeks pregnant I was very confused.  With Isaac I started at 38 weeks and with Lilah it was about the same (I think? I can't remember).  With twins I opted for 35+3, which seems early except they have an eviction date of 38 (or 37... I'll find out tomorrow).  

So either way, I am off work and happy to be done.  It's weird to try and "make the most" of a very undefined time period.  

We have full childcare on Tuesdays-Thursdays so those are my at-home days where I strike a balance between resting and getting things done.  Today was a "getting things done" day... I finally made it to our local Homesense to purchase new baskets for organizing toys in the side board.  I could no longer deal with this as our lounge:

Chaos!  With the addition of side board baskets (5 for £12) and a bit of a toy shuffle it now looks like this:

The side board was also in chaos, which is part of the reason so many toys were out. The kids instantly put things in the drawers even though the drawers are supposed to be for grown up things.  .  Here's a before:

Although it does look like there is empty space this is partly because of all the chaos in the rest of the room and because those drawers are shoved full of toys too. The games/puzzles were fine but organized in such a way that kids couldn't put them back... which of course meant it wasn't organized at all.  

Here is after:

I don't have anything in the drawers and the puzzles can now come out and go back in without causing chaos.  The baskets are separated thematically... Peppa Pig, cars, and dinosaurs to name a few.  this means kids can put things away, or if everything is out I can put all the baskets on the floor and sort quickly rather than stacking.

The other project I tackled was shoe project.  We've always been a shoe-minimalist household but recently the kids have had so many new shoes - Isaac got school shoes and PE shoes, Lilah got a bag of cute hand-me-down shoes from friends.  Also, the baskets we bought when the kids were 1 and 3 are not containing shoes for 3 and 5 year olds:

please look beyond the jumper/jacket chaos - that's a project for another day

I picked up two new baskets at Homesense (£12.99 each but I love the color too much), put away the summer shoes, and now kids shoes look like this:

Basket project is now officially complete!

The other project I have on my "to do" list is to finish the family photo albums for September.  I finished and ordered Isaac's age 4-5 album, so I just need to start Lilah's 3-4 album and fill in the family album for September.  

Do you love baskets? Does organizing soothe your soul or are you clutter-blind?

Birthday Party Adventures and Decluttering Progress.

On Saturday we hosted our first ever kids birthday party - we rented a local hall.  20 kids and 20 adults came and had a blast playing with balloons and bouncy balls, as well as coloring in gliders.  We had food for parents and adults, including sandwiches from one of my favourite local cafes.  Isaac enjoyed and we enjoyed and we got to talk with our parent friends and generally had a great time.  

We started planning the party a few months ago and started with the basics - what do we want from a kids party?  This is the list we came up with:

• People to show up
• Isaac to have fun
  
• Relaxed adults
• Good food
• Not schlepping crap
• Eating cake at Party

Fun Fact - in the UK they don't eat cake at parties.  And often adults don't get cake at all.  I feel like in the states if I'm invited to a party, even if it's a kid party, I would like a piece of cake.  I may be totally out of touch here though... Americans with kids can you let me know what the cake etiquette is for kids parties where you stay?  Of course they do have cake at parties - the kids sing happy birthday, blow out candles, and then the cake is cut up into lots of pieces and each kid gets a piece of cake wrapped in a napkin in their party favour bag.  I just don't get it, so we did cake at the party.

We did a lot of cake research and it turns out buying a cake is expensive.  Unfortunately we don't have a Costco membership.  Andy decided to bake a cake and I made cupcakes.  Andy was pretty daring in his cake baking but it turned out awesome, and super delicious.  My cupcakes were from a box, as was the icing, but I'm still pleased with the look:

Today I was mostly very tired after a very active (for someone 35 weeks pregnant with twins) day. .  I'm sleeping terribly at the moment, often less than 5 hours a night, which is making lots of things trickier than they should be.  Even though I do laundry almost every day somehow it had piled up and I had the last load of newborn clothes to wash and put away.  I did four loads of laundry today, which has to be a record for me.  However, I feel good now that all laundry in the house is clean and away.  I also boxed up kids clothes that were too small and got out some next size shoes for Isaac.  

I completed a small decluttering project - the top cabinet of the kids built in wardrobe:

This was mostly baby stuff and so much of it seemed crap or easy to replace - why am I holding on to battered baby books which the babies won't even be interested in for another year?  Also, I found a puzzle (on the right) - why do we have puzzles everywhere?

I got rid of much of it and then cleared off this shelf in the kids room so I can move the big kids books out of the baby room (once I find decent book ends) 

Now she shelf is basically empty, and the cabinet looks like this:

And I have two more bags of things for the charity shop.  Horray!

What was your weekend success?

September improvements big and small

Maybe this is nesting, or maybe this just the transition to fall and the desire for a cozy at-home life, but recently we managed to check off a number of improvement projects.  

First up is our lounge corner, which Andy and I never really liked but which fulfilled our standard "functionality" goal (Lilah never saw a camera she didn't want to pose for)

We've always dreamed of built ins for either side of the fireplace but that is all the £££.  So instead we purchased a sideboard which matches the one in our dining room and fits impressively well:

Kids toys out of sight - yay!  We need to get some different shaped toy storage for the cabinets but so far things *Almost* fit.  I also told the kids they cannot use those drawers and we now have three empty drawers to use!  I am never in a rush to fill things like that so I plan to leave the drawers empty until they have a really good use.

I decided that we had too many puzzles spread around the house now as well, so I brought all puzzles downstairs and decided to have a clear out.  It turns out we did have far too many puzzles but I never realized as they were stored in many places:

During my lunch break I took the stack on the right to the charity shop, along with 3 other bags of kids toys and clothes, and a set of bedsheets I never liked very much.  Now all the puzzles fit in the new sideboard:

I have been meaning to drop off the charity pile for a while now so happy to tick that off my list!  We now have two empty shelves in the kids closet where puzzles once lived... I'm in no rush to fill these up either.

We've also started a new food planning system.  We normally plan our meals as part of our Family Logistics and Operational Meeting on Fridays. However it seemed to be a pain point in the meeting... I did not have the mental energy on a Friday night to think of meals.  I could thinks of scheduled, play dates, to dos... but the meal bit was just dragging. 

Last week I wrote down a list of meals which we then just allocated to specific days during the FLOM.  This week we decided to use a sticky note on the shopping list to write down meal ideas for next week - we have more than enough to cover the week already:

Hopefully this will make our Friday FLOM much easier.  We don't have a great system for when we do our actual shopping yet, sometimes Andy does it on Fridays or we can order delivery on Friday for Sunday.  However at least we aren't trying to solve the "what should we eat" problem during FLOM.

I've also got some loose rules to try and make meal planning easier:

1 pasta dish a week

1 potato dish a week

1 slow cooker meal a week

Yesterday I made tortilla soup in the slow cooker - slow cookers come into their own in the fall!  I only wish my kids ate slow cooker food. Their dream meals include individual food groups not touching at all.  Slow cookers are all the food groups touching all the time.

Also, I bought this ridiculous lunch box for the kids.    It was far more expensive than is reasonable and I think it's pregnancy hormones that made me do it, but I am very excited.  

I am somewhat aware that I have about 15 years of packing lunches ahead of me so I may as well spend money on something to make it more fun for me (and hopefully more fun for kids too)