SCRAP Step 2 — Pens, Pens, Pens

Posted on December 18, 2016 by john graham

My de-cluttering saga continues.  (You can see my other blogs on this theme by clicking on “Clutter” in the TAG CLOUD).

I don’t know why I have so many pens.   I seem to have hundreds of them, scattered all over the place.    But the amazing thing is I can never find one when I want one.

So now I am into de-cluttering in a big way, I am going to set about today and sort out my pens (and pencils and marker pens and felt tip pens and every other writing implement) and when I say pens I really mean biros.

So my first step should be to gather them all together, but I will need a clear space before I start and that in itself is a challenge !

Desk top cleared, here we go :-

I start with my pen drawer where all the pens ought to be —- there are at least 60 black biros in the drawer which I use for most things.  I am sure there are still more to find all around the house.   Then I also find 1 lonely black felt tip, plus a load of photos which are obviously in the wrong place but I won’t look at them or I’ll be here for hours.

My desk tidy or more properly called my “desk untidy”— I have 3 desk untidies, plus  a tray of odds and sods, plus a small flower vase all full of assorted pens and pencils, 3 staplers with no staples, plus pins, paper clips, big and small crocodile clips and scissors.   The last thing it does is make my desk look tidy !    It just looks a mess and I haven’t even mentioned the large hole punch, the 3 foot folding ruler, the sellotape and the post it notes which don’t fit in the desk tidies, so they get moved around the desk top all the time.

Now for the office desk drawer —– this has all of the above items and more.  Parcel tape stuck firmly to the bottom of the drawer, invisible tape – what was that for?, a pencil sharpener that I must have last used in school, almost fossilised blue tack and white tack, floppy disks which were obsolescent before I learnt how to use them😟

I spread everything out on the desk top.    I could run a school with all of this, or at least open a pop up branch of Staples.   I fill one desk tidy with a sample of each thing I might need and  put the pins and paper clips into containers in the drawer.   I throw away all the duplicate rulers, the round the world collection of hotel pens, three now empty desk tidies, two pencil sharpeners, and two fountain pens with a bottle of Quink ink, which have secretly been waiting to be discovered on Antiques Roadshow.

scrap-pens

Now all I am left with is about 200 pens.    The ones I set out to sort hours ago.  First I ditch the round the world collection of hotel pens, then most of the pencils go in the bin.   I keep all the black biros, they should last me till about 2036.    I also hang onto all the Stabilo felt tip pens just to remind me of my glittering architectural career.

Finally, I am left with about ten pens with my father’s insurance brokers brand name.   I remember Dad was very proud of those pens. He had lots and lots of them that he used to give away to all his clients.

At last it dawns on me.   Pig Pens Disease must be hereditary, that’s where I got all this pen hoarding from 😄.  It’s all my Dad’s fault.

So has anybody got any good ideas for disposing of  lots of pens ?????

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

mansmilew-bigboard-cropped-184

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SCRAP Step 1 — Envelopes

Posted on December 14, 2016 by john graham

Following on from my previous blogs, I am starting on the initial steps of my de-cluttering campaign.     Yes that’s right, it’s going to be a war !  (You can see my other blogs on this theme by clicking on “Clutter” in the TAG CLOUD).

I thought I should try to achieve some easy wins, so I began with my office.   It is untidy to say the least —- stacked high with papers, shelves of rarely referred to reference books, drawers full of age-old files and other drawers with every conceivable office accessory.     It’s a daunting place to start and I have had several goes at it before, usually as a result of a vainglorious New Years resolutions.

Whatever happened to the administrative revolution that was supposed to follow the advent of the computer age?   The paperless office seems to have passed me by.

My office has beaten me before so let’s try an even smaller step:-

ENVELOPES

step 1 – scope the problem :-

To start with I have 57 brown A4 envelopes which I must have been saving for a mass mail out I was planning to do when I retired six years ago, although I now cannot remember what on earth for.    Just in case I hadn’t got that much to say, I have a further  50 small brown envelopes.   For posher friends I use white envelopes, so that my mail doesn’t look like a tax demand, for them I have 540 self seal 110 x 220 mm envelopes.    Looking at the total number of envelopes I must have more  friends than I thought, but at least I will save on all that licking.   The cost of the postage alone would have been enough to bankrupt me!

I haven’t yet mentioned the 100 vellum laid cream envelopes with  peel and seal, which we use to match our cream headed note paper.   Nor should I forget the 30 or so assorted sizes of bubble-wrap lined envelopes, which we use for the occasional, very occasional, special package.

That is 777 envelopes all together

(* I didn’t really count all these envelopes, the numbers are my best guesstimates, but my managerial training taught me to measure everything.)

scrap-envelope

Perhaps I should say at this point, that I  haven’t sent a letter to anyone for years, except for a few Christmas cards, which come with their own individual envelopes.

I reckon if I keep an assortment of 20 envelopes that should last me for at least a year.

So has anybody got any good ideas for disposing of 757 envelopes ??????

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

mansmilew-bigboard-cropped-184

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ExtraCare Traditions – Jon Cleaver – R.I.P.

Posted on December 12, 2016 by john graham

This is a re-post of a blog I first posted in January last year, sadly I have to report that Jon passed away in hospital in Coventry at the weekend.   He made a unique contribution as a volunteer at ExtraCare and enriched the lives of all the residents he photographed and wrote about.   Jon’ s warm smile and likeable style, together with his considerable journalistic skills helped champion the value in older people that they were often too modest to talk about themselves. He will be much missed by everyone who knew him. God bless you  Jon.

Foot note :- When I spoke to Jon’s son Mark today he told me that before Jon came to ExtraCare he was in partnership in his photography business and the company was called after both of their first names —-  Jon Graham Photography.   Jon never told me that 😄

—————————————————————————————————-

THIS IS AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE CONTRIBUTION MADE BY JON CLEAVER TO THIS SERIES OF BLOGS DESCRIBING SOME OF THE HISTORY AND CULTURE OF THE EXTRACARE CHARITABLE TRUST. 

For blogs in this series, click on “ExtraCare Traditions” in the TAG CLOUD

Jon Cleaver The photographs that accompanied all the ExtraCare Tradition blogs were taken by a truly, extraordinary volunteer – Jon Cleaver in the picture above. Jon started as a volunteer working with our Activities Manager — Mike Hallam.  That was over 25 years ago and he has been involved almost every week since then !   We initially used his skills as a professional photographer to champion our activities work and publicise it in our “Roundabout” magazine.

Over the years he will have taken thousands of photographs of our residents and he quickly became a fixture in the activities team. His contribution has been immense and he went on to hone his journalistic abilities by writing the “Meet Cleaver” pages in the Extralife magazine.  Each one of these is a thoughtfully researched story of the life of an ExtraCare resident. There cannot be a better example of what a volunteer can contribute to an organisation and I pay tribute to him for every hour he has given to ExtraCare, and for the joy he has brought to hundreds of residents lives.

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“Strategic Clutter Removal Action Plan”

Posted on December 11, 2016 by john graham

Following my relatively unsuccessful attempts at de-cluttering, (commented on in my last blog – Clutter Doctor), I decided I needed to take a step back and use all my former management skills to attack the problem.    After all I had twenty years as a Managing Director and I must have learned something in that time.  All that strategic planning; the endless hours of goal setting; annual budgeting and resource planning; the days of communicating the mission to hundreds of staff; constant consultation and surveys with customers and monthly meetings to review performance —- I should be able to do a bit of de-cluttering, shouldn’t I?    What I need is a Grand Strategic Plan with a catchy name !

Strategic Clutter Removal Action Plan

The first step is to “scope the problem”.   So I will draw up a list of just how much potential clutter I have got:

CLOTHES – Shoes; ties; socks; shirts; sweaters; pyjamas; pants; vests; gardening wear; trousers; suits

BOOKS – Gardening; maps; novels; unread; memorable; manuals; dictionaries; jigsaws

PAPERS – newspapers; bills; addresses; diaries; boxfiles; envelopes; scrap paper; blogs

TOOLS – screwdrivers; hammers; saws; planes; screws; nails; toolboxes

GARDEN – brushes; forks, shovels; secateurs; rakes; spades; clippers; pots; boxes; ladders

There is more, much,much more, but I will get around to that in a year or two, when I have finished the first lot, or moved away and left it all behind 😄

The second step might be to look at some strategic options for approaching the task:-

  1. research books on de-cluttering
  2. pay someone to do it
  3. buy more sheds
  4. throw it all away
  5. live with the clutter
  6. love clutter and collect more
  7. move house and leave it all behind
  8. sell it all on eBay
  9. give it all away
  10. seek innovative ideas on de-cluttering from friends

The answer could lie in any, or all of the above, but fortunately before I spent too much time on my grand strategic plan, SCRAP, my doctor friend managed to find me a consultant in de-cluttering called Walt Hopkins.  I first came across Walt when his book on de-cluttering was mentioned in Ronnie Bennett’s blog “Time Goes By”.   Ronnie had come up with an idea of a competition with Walt’s book as a prize and recently Walt made the same offer to me.  So here we go:-

Over the next couple of months I intend to write blogs on how I am managing to get rid of my clutter and I have three of Walt’s books —- “Seven Ways to Lighten Your Life Before You Kick The Bucket” —  to give away as prizes for the best comments and ideas I receive on de-cluttering.  

You can find out more about Walt and how to buy his book by clicking on the following link:

http://www.walthopkins.com

 

 

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“Clutter Doctor – a cry for help”

Posted on December 4, 2016 by john graham

Good morning Doctor

I am sorry to bother you again, but I seem to have a recurring problem with my clutter disorder.   You may recall that when I came to see you four years ago, you  prescribed a shed for my  condition.   (You can see my previous symptoms by clicking on the Archive for January 2012).   Sadly my shed is now full of even more clutter and in spite of repeated efforts on my part the clutter will not go away.  

shed

Goodness knows I have tried.   In 2013 I  got rid of  a lot of socks and ties, but now my sock drawers are overflowing again and I do miss those ties 😂.     See my blog ”  Clutter-head” by clicking on October 2013 in the Archive.

clutter1

I made another brave effort only two years later in 2015, when I thinned out all the kitchen drawers and cupboards.   Remember all those useless, unused gadgets I had accumulated  — I still don’t know what many of them were for?    Then there were the half full bottles and long past their sell-by date cans  —-  I have not missed any of them.     That was a colossal effort, which seemed to help for a while, but gradually the  drawers are full to bursting again and the cupboard shelves are double stacked so that things regularly fall out when you open a door.

clutter-copy

Dear Doctor, I think this cluttering must be a bug of some sort or maybe a virus, because it seems to keep coming back.    You will see from my blog in October this year, that I think I might have Pig Pen’s Disease, have you heard of it?    Do you know if there is a cure for PPD?     If you don’t have an answer could you please refer me to a specialist, because my problem has been going on for years and I do not seem to be getting any better.

It may be best if you could refer me to a de-cluttering specialist.  I don’t know if you can get them on the NHS?  I really don’t think another shed would solve the issue, although I must thank you for trying.

Yours sincerely, from the bottom of a heap of clutter

John

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“Pets on Prescription”

Posted on November 27, 2016 by john graham

Pets often steal your heart.  This lovely little lady called Tilly, has certainly stolen mine. She takes me for a walk most days and that guarantees lifting your mood for the rest of the day.  A study says they do a lot more than that!

tilly

A report in the American Heart Association Journal “Circulation”, concludes “pet ownership not only helps reduce stress and lower blood pressure, it has been shown to reduce depression and loneliness”.

A study of more than 5,200 adults shows dog owners are engaged in more walking and physical activity than non-owners.  (It took a genius and lots of research dollars to work that out) 🙂

pets-on-prescription

I am supposed to be taking Tilly for a walk most days but in reality she leads the way most of the time and I’m the one trying to catch up.

Perhaps the nations GP’s should link up with the RSPCA and start  prescribing pets instead of pills !!!

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“Happy, Clappy NHS”

Posted on November 20, 2016 by john graham

Three years ago NHS Services for Older People were in the depths of despair in the aftermath of the 1200 deaths that were identified at Mid Stafford General Hospital.    This subsequently became the subject of the Francis Report, which made 290 recommendations of how elderly health care in the NHS should improve.  (You can see my comments on this by clicking on “THE FRANCIS REPORT” in the TAG CLOUD).

I forecast at the time that the report had too detailed a focus and lacked an overall vision.    At the same time, the huge number of recommendations were so diverse as to be almost impossible to implement and there would be no way to hold people to account.    Sure enough there seems to have been little obvious change in the following years as evidenced by the Care Quality Commission’s frequent assessments of hospital care as inadequate or in need of improvement.

The latest Twitter gimmick that the NHS has come up with to improve things is the recruitment of Henrietta Hughes, who is a GP, who has been appointed to the role of NHS National Guardian.     This is not a new newspaper editor, nor is it the establishment of some health and safety security service for hospital wards.    Believe it or not, her role in her own words “is to promote happiness throughout the NHS”.   What’s more she will have an army of local guardians in every hospital to spread love and happiness everywhere.

I hope they are not armed with bullet-proof vests, dark glasses and AK47’s otherwise their mission might be misunderstood.   They might be more successful if they wore tie-died shirts, had flowers in their hair and gave out whacky backy.

happyclappynhs

 

This is a direct response to the recommendations in the Francis Report and it will,  no doubt, be just as effective.

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“Legal Eagles or Vultures 2”

Posted on November 13, 2016 by john graham

The Mail on Sunday has reused one of my blog post ideas, although it took them four years to do it.

Back in 2012 I wrote a series of blogs about the legal profession pursuing more and more claims against the NHS (you can see the posts by clicking on February and July 2012 in the Archive – “Legal Eagles or Vultures”, “Untold Pressure”, “Cold Comfort”).

At that time the NHS paid out £1 billion in compensation for mistakes on a total of 8,500 claims and the Public Accounts Committee were recommending tighter controls on legal fees.     Needless to say nothing happened.      Except it drew attention to the pot of gold to be found in legal fees.

Four years on there are more claims than ever and the total bill for compensation reached just under £1.5 billion in 2015/16.  The grasping, ambulance chasing, no-win no-fee lawyers pocketed £418 million of that.

Surely the NHS could settle many of the claims much more quickly and cheaply without the intervention of lawyers, but to get to the truth quickly they would have to adopt a “no blame” approach to the staff involved.     I can’t see why an independent complaints tribunal couldn’t resolve most complaints quickly without resort to the courts.     There is currently an Ombudsman that could do this, but they don’t seem very effective.     Firstly because of the NHS’s reluctance to ever admit to making mistakes and secondly, because it is in the interest of fee-chasing lawyers to drag out the process.

The Government could also help by outlawing “no-win, no-fee” legal agreements, which would make people think twice before pursuing a claim.

An apology and corrective action is all most reasonable people want, before they talk to lawyers.     The lawyers would be poorer, but patients would not be dragged through years of anguish.

leagaleagle2

P.S.   The Times newspaper picked this same storey up with even more alarming figures, taken from the NHS Litigation Authority annual report.      The estimated future cost of negligence claims could be a staggering £50 billion.    That is nearly half of the NHS annual budget !

These  lawyers better hope they never get ill.

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“Inaction Turns To Care Home Crisis”

Posted on November 6, 2016 by john graham

Many of the themes in my blog seem to repeat themselves year after year.  None more so that the subject of residential care, which I started writing about in 2010 shortly after I had retired from the ExtraCare Charitable Trust.

In October 2010 I wrote a blog entitled “Residential Care Dilemma” and thereafter I followed on with several other blogs on the same subject before focusing specifically on the collapse of the biggest organisation of residential care – Southern Cross.  (You can see all these blogs by clicking on “Residential Care” in the TOPICS list.)  Here are some prescient quotes from some of those posts which relate directly to the recent crisis in residential care which has been prominently in the media in the last few weeks:-

  1. “Now, many of the big residential care companies are on the verge of insolvency due to the combination of high gearing and artificially low fee income”;
  2. “If Care Quality Commission (CQC) wish to have a substantial, strategic and long-term impact on quality outcomes, it can’t be through increased regulation and more home closures”;
  3. “The CQC should champion good practice and facilitate learning and skills improvement throughout the residential and domiciliary care sector”;
  4. “If we do nothing, the tougher regulation road can only lead to crisis”.

There is no question that paragraphs 1, 2 and 4 have all come about as I predicted.    Here are some facts to prove it. :-

  • 1500 Care homes have closed in the last 5 years;
  • many other homes are on the brink of bankruptcy and will struggle to pay the new living wage to their staff;
  • care home providers are moving away from Social Service funded residents wherever they can. Resulting in more blocked beds in the NHS.
  • meanwhile the number of older people needing care is rising as the population ages.

Unfortunately little has been done from about developing a more positive role of CQC referred to in paragraph 3.    In its latest Annual Report CQC shows that in the last year it has rated one-third of the 17,000 residential and nursing homes as either “inadequate” or “in need of improvement”.

CQC needs to be given an expanded role which focuses on training for quality improvement throughout the residential care sector.   It need not cost  lots more money.      At a time when most staff will already be receiving increases in pay, it is an ideal time to expect them to improve their caring skills.     Without action it is the residents who pay with a reduced quality of service.

Regulation alone, used as a stick is never the  answer, it needs to be accompanied by the helping hand of hope !

 

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“Lapsed Tai Chi”

Posted on October 30, 2016 by john graham

I used to do Tai Chi early in the morning in the garden most days of the week……..a while ago………..a good while ago !       Recently I have noticed my joints are much stiffer and my breathing is much wheezier.  I wonder if these things are related?

A study of Tai Chi exercises for older people was reported in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society and would seem to suggest so.    The good news is that those who did the Tai Chi were 50% less likely to sustain an injury- causing fall compared to the other group.

These results were reinforced by another analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.      Reviewing studies of the benefits of Tai Chi it found improved outcomes when used as treatment for arthritis, breathing, concentration, muscle strength and balance.    As well as increasing peoples’ sense of well-being.

 

tai-chi

I had better get back to Tai Chi in the garden again.  Maybe just a little later in the morning!

PS   My memory seems to have lapsed as well, because when I looked back over my blog I found some earlier posts on the subject of Tai Chi.    In July 2011  I commented on research in  America extolling the virtues of Tai Chi for older people.   Tai Chi is certainly proving to be a useful subject for researchers, even if it needs repeating every few years!

PPS    The cartoon I used then, which I include below, is of me as the super-hero helping the older ladies in Kilsby Village Hall keep fit with some Tai Chi moves.     In truth, they are doing it and I am not!

tiachi2-2

PPPS.     When l look back even further, to September 2010, I find my first post about Tai Chi.     Perhaps I am better at writing about it than doing it 😄

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