Today the Tidy Bears have started to de-clutter the first of the many boxes around the house.    They can safely start with the blue box in the main bedroom because it is full of John’s stuff.   It is the box MO used to use to clear all the things John used to leave lying around the bedroom for days making the place look untidy.   John didn’t even notice they were gone !

So led by Big Ted, five of the bears lifted the lid to see what treasures the box contained :-

• Patch was first in — “I found lots of books that John bought, glanced at, thought about, put down and then never got around to reading.   I think John ought to stop buying more books until he makes time to read them.    For the moment we will put them in the study, alongside the other books he hasn’t read😀”
• Pyjama Bear  reached in the blue box and said —- ” I found some CD’s, still in their cellophane wrappers.   So that is another thing John has purchased and then not used.    Maybe John should stop buying CD’s if he is not going to listen to them.”
• Little Ted discovered some real treasure —- “I saw a notebook at the bottom of the box.  It was Grandpa Graham’s notes of a training course he attended in 1940, when he was in the Royal Engineers.  He not only knew how to build them, he could also blow them up!”
• Finally, Peter Rabbit took out a folder of old newspaper cuttings —- “These are all dated 2013 and John must have intended to write a blog about them.  He must have overlooked them, but it doesn’t matter because not a lot has changed, so he can still write about them now.  There is also a 2013 report on Ageing which  nobody else has done anything about.”

So now we can empty the box and leave it to fill up again in the next four years 😈.

There will be a copy of Walt Hopkins and George Simons’ book — “Seven Ways to Lighten Your Life Before You Kick the Bucket” — for the best ideas on de-cluttering.

One way of de-cluttering is emptying boxes (for that include cardboard boxes, wooden boxes, chests, ottomans, baskets, etc).  It is not really de-cluttering, in fact it is just “out of sight, out of mind” cluttering.   You put things in boxes and then you forget them for months or even years.   To the point where you don’t remember what is inside the boxes 😀

So, after my successful census of cushions, I am going to apply that same technique to boxes :-

• In the kitchen we have 4 boxes.
• In the lounge we have 3 more.
• The hall has just 2, but  one is big enough to hold a jumbo jet.  Maybe I am exaggerating a bit.
• The downstairs toilet — 5 boxes in such a small space.
• The study is the main box repository, rather like a British Rail left luggage store.     There are 18 boxes of all shapes and sizes and nobody ever claims them back!
• The end room has another 4, plus a walk in cupboard — which no one has been able to walk in for years 😀

Next is the upstairs :-

• The main bedroom has 3 boxes plus an ottoman.
• In the dressing room — Mo has only 15 boxes in there.
• My walk in wardrobe has 10 more, carefully packed and stacked in see through plastic boxes containing my summer clothes.  Oh and there are two other boxes hidden under more clothes.
• The main bathroom has only 1 box, — must be a mistake — I will move one from somewhere else.
• The guest bedroom has 14 boxes plus any that guests bring with them.
• The office even after my heroic efforts at de-cluttering has 6 boxes, and I am not counting the 8 box files I still have left.
• The landing has another big ottoman and a set of 3 wicker baskets.
• The small bedroom has another 6 boxes.
• The second bathroom has 2 more wicker baskets and 2 white boxes.
• FINALLY, the box room has so many boxes stacked on top of each other it is impossible to be sure how many there are 😟  Let’s say 10.

Now you can see the extent of our box problem. And I haven’t counted all the boxes that have been extradited from the house to the garden sheds !

I reckon that is 80 boxes in all, containing a wealth of hidden treasure !

See next week’s thrilling exploits when I begin to open them, with the help of the Tidy Bears.   In many cases, for the first time since time began.  It could be a bit like the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb and look how well that turned out!

Way back on Step 22 of John’s de-cluttering journey he thought he had de-cluttered the clutter of  cleaning materials.    How wrong can you be?

The clutter Bears have now taken over and are going to be much more thorough than John, who misses things all the time.  The bears have moved on to emptying the many boxes around the house and have discovered a whole hidden world of even more bottles and aerosols of every Cleaning complexion.    There is obviously a lot more to Cleaning these days than bears realised.

It is a pity that the manufacturers of cleaning materials don’t co-ordinate with bathroom box makers, then perhaps the bottles and boxes would fit inside the boxes😀   This is what the bears found just by searching around properly and reading the labels :-

• Big Ted was looking for honey when he found “Fabreeze” —-it eliminates tough odours and children —- that’s what it says on the label.  Big Ted though that was very bad.
• Patch found several large bottles of “Thin Bleach” —- the label says it kills all known germs and just about everything else — there are nineteen warnings on the bottle!   One says ” Avoid release into into the environment”  so I guess you have to shuttle it into space.      That is going to put our refuse disposal charges up a bit.
• Pyjama Bear discovered 2 half-empty bottles of “Dettol”, —-multi-purpos, cleans just about everything  except children. “And even bears know children need lots of cleaning”.
• Cuddley Bear dug out some “Flash”  —- it seems to do everything dettol does —-  but it it is harmful to aquatic life and children.   So she says “Better not to buy your grandchildren a goldfish for Christmas if you use Flash”.
• Peter Rabbit burrowed in some cupboards  and found “Mr Muscle” —- seems to do the same as all the others just made by a different manufacturer —– same unreadable small print on the bottle.   He says “There are lots more with silly names”
• Cillet Bang —– ditto but with more power?
• Viakal —– ditto again.
• Sqezy Pow!  —— it is only the name that is different.
• Whitey Bear  stumbled across something called “Power Force”  —— just like the ones all the others had found, but ” kills more than 99.9% of common bacteria within 5 minutes according to DIN EN 1040″.   Whitey says “Who is Din En? He sounds like a Chinese doctor.   He is obviously not worried about fast acting germs that can kill you in less than 5 minutes or the 0.1% that get through anyway”.

All this research  and hunting down cleaning things was boring, so  the bears decided to have a Wild West shoot out, —- which was much more fun than John was having.    We think John is not having half as much fun cleaning his third toilet.

If Bears weren’t so cynical, they would probably think that there is just one type of cleaning product and the manufacturers just pour it into different bottles.

There will be a copy of Walt Hopkins and George Simons’ book — “Seven Ways to Lighten Your Life Before You Kick the Bucket” — for the best ideas on de-cluttering.