Destashing - the pets

Today I arranged the hardest destashing job yet.  We are recycling our cat.  Our beloved Topsy is going to live in The Tron with her auntie and cousin. When we put her on the plane tomorrow I suspect the children and I will all get what Ken Oath! calls "dust in his eyes" (The sort of dust he recently encountered during A Song in the Dark.  Ok that was quite dusty.  I got some too.).

Now we just need new homes for various fish - with names recycled from the unused portions of our baby names lists, so Pearl, Iris, Walter and Percy (hmm, that one wasn't my pick) - and a fresh-water mussel called Muscleman (Any takers?  He is no trouble!).

The children are adamant we'll get new pets in Australia.  They want an enormous goanna because the little meanies know that is the one thing I am scared of.  Apparently it helps to laugh at your fears, so to cure myself I plan to name that goanna Joanna.  And make it wear clothes.

The top image is from the fabulous Frederique Morrel and the last three nutjobs were found here.

Destashing - miscellaneous useful stuff

Do you ever see a Trademe seller and, by the composite of their listings, make up your mind what sort of person they are?  Do you ever save a Trademe seller as a favourite just to see if the item you guess they'll list next, they actually do list next? Oh, is that just me....

I've just listed some miscellaneous useful stuff on Trademe.  When I went back to cyber-stalk my own listings to see if anyone had looked at them (Must stop now.), I realised that I had become that cliché! My listings tell a story and spookily that story is true. 

Yes it is true that I like to get home on my bike, flop down in the garden (actually on a bench-seat I made myself from a plan in a book but the photo didn't match) under my sun umbrella (so as to not get a tan), pop on a pair of mad vintage sunglasses, grab a funny old non-fiction book and say to TheShortFolk "play amongst yourselves!", then relax while they push each other into things on their go-kart, while indoors the cat scratches holes in a once-collectible rug and the vintage tablecloth sits forlornly on the dining table while no-one cooks the dinner. 

And looking at my own composite, perhaps my retro-is-a-bad-word friend is right and it is time to reinvent myself.  With all those $1s I'll be collecting in a week's time!

Destashing - Our dream-home

In the past week I have destashed myself of my Realworldland job, my Interwebland job, my main PTA job and my voluntary job all in an effort to concentrate on the biggest destashing job on my To Do list: selling our house.  The trouble is, the more time I spend at home getting rid of stuff, tidying and cleaning, then the more I fall in love with it.

When we moved to Christchurch ten years ago, our children were aged 18 months and six weeks old.  Ken Oath! was either travelling overseas or working every waking moment in his exciting new job. I didn't know a single person here. Our rental house was in a great neighbourhood (St Albans) but certainly wasn't dream-home. (It had one room I always went into with my hand over my eyes because the curtains were so nasty and another we referred to as Antarctica.) I had only ever been to Christchurch once before; that was a decade earlier and I'd spent that entire visit trapped in a training room.

In short, I needed to get out, get exploring and get myself a life.  I bought a double buggy and went out on hunting expeditions.  First I hunted myself a collection of Rare Birds, i.e. the best collection of friends you could ever hope for. Then I hunted myself a collection of places I loved going to, including parks, opshops, libraries, galleries and walks. Finally I hunted myself a micro-mini short short-list of properties in the neighbourhood that I was potentially interested in should they ever come on the market.

A year later I was wheeling 60 blocks of butter worth of children home from my Plunket mothers' group, when I spotted one of my short-listed houses getting a For Sale sign installed. No time for muckingaround!  I rushed home and got straight on the blower.  That night, under the auspices of doing the grocery shopping, I met the agent and inspected this architect designed, modernist but modest, sun-soaked beauty.  Within 5 seconds of walking in the front door I told the agent she could can the sales pitch because I was already deeply in love;  I was home.

So then I had to go and fess up to Ken Oath! what I'd done.  After he'd recovered from the fact that I didn't actually have any chocolate for him, he too arranged to see the house.  I waited nervously, then when he got home I excitedly demanded "What do you think?  Shall we buy it?"  He said what he says best: " 'KIN' OATH!"  Soon afterwards the easiest property purchase ever was completed and ownership was transferred from the son of the recently deceased original owner to the happiest little family in StAlbansShirleyMairehau.

We have absolutely loved calling this house home.  Over the years I've ogled many other cool homes on Christchurch Modern but the reasons to stay put always outweighed the reasons to move.  While our address probably won't impress those peculiarly Christchurch people who go to posh parties and ask grey-haired grown-ups like me what school they went to, this home certainly has numerous other impressive features.

We stuffed it with our eclectic collection of mid-century furniture, retro fabrics, kitsch collectibles, thousands of books and some New Zealand art - otherwise known as miscellaneous-stuff-we-love. Even though I greatly admire sophisticated, contemporary interiors in magazines and on blogs, my own decorating style could only be described as like a magpie on speed.  Our interiors make Todd Oldham's look minimalist and will probably make some potential new owners' teeth hurt.  Just as both our children's names are in the "What not to name your baby" books, so I suspect that when our interior shots are loaded onto real-estate sites, they'll quickly make their way to various "How not to furnish your home" blogs to be sniggered at by people far cooler and more restrained than us.

Ah well.  I'm not scared of being sniggered at.  What I am scared of is living in a house so bland that I'd have to leave a trail of crumbs every time I went out so I could find my way home again.  I'm scared that someone who really wants to live in Italy will buy this house and do a nasty Italiente makeover on it.  I'm scared that the new owner will rip out our huge, tui-ready, native garden and replant it with roses and pansies.

OK,  too much idle chitchat and not enough action.  I should really be scared of still being sat here in my PJs in four weeks time, still hemming these jolly curtains (that I should have hemmed five years ago) when people arrive for my first open home.  Back to work for me.

Destashing - 17 Vintage Metal Sewing Machines

No, it's not me destashing this time.  This stunning collection of vintage sewing machines is currently for sale on Trademe.  These are being sold by Jenafer from the Local Vanguard blog who does a sterling job promoting local events, businesses and miscellaneous interesting things.  The least we can do is help spread the word for her.

Imagine these in a crusty old museum (my favourite sort - the modern, shiny, all-singing, all-dancing museums make me feel like I'm an eight year old boy who hasn't taken his Ritalin.  Give me a wooden cabinet with treasure-filled shallow drawers any day). Imagine these being cared for and used by a retro craft group. Oh, imagine these displayed in a glass-fronted plywood cubby-hole cabinet on the back wall of a cool shop complete with their description tags.   

Time to stop imagining and start spreading the word; these beauties deserve a loving new owner.

Destashing - The seriously big scary fabric shears

Some things are easy to destash.  Some, for various reasons, are a wee bit trickier.

My fabric and sewing supplies sorting was trucking along nicely the other day when I opened a box I hadn't opened for years but hadn't quite managed to part with.  Some items went into the Stash reHash pile, some went into the opshop pile, some went into the rubbish pile and some went into the rather too large Too Hard pile.  Something I put into the Too Hard pile were the two pairs of scissors above. 

One pair I had bought as part of the equipment requirements for the fashion and textiles course I did over 20 (!!!) years ago.  Being a little-goody-two-shoes I dutifully had my name engraved on them as instructed. Then found I was too much of a weakling to use these 13 inch long monsters on a regular basis and reverted to my small, zippy Solingens.  I won the second pair.  The award details plus my name is engraved on them.  I never used those shears either because they were incredibly sharp and, well, I'm a bit of a dreamer and I was convinced that if I daydreamed while using those they'd have my fingers off.  Basically I'm a weak, scaredy, sook. So both sets of shears were left to go stiff and rusty in the bottom of a cardboard box with only some "bargain" elastic (loses its ping if you say boo to it - now in the rubbish pile) for company.

Silly I know, but the reason I found destashing these shears too hard is because my name is on them.  I didn't want to be to someone else like Edith Brand is to me.  I felt I needed to hand these on personally.

Too much thinking + not enough action = cup of coffee required.  Naturally while having my coffee I wandered over to Blogland for a spot of muckingaround.  First I hopped over to visit Thoroughly Modern Miss Millie but got distracted by her list of Christchurch's crafty bloggers:  some are my friends, some I have met, but some were new to me.  I am quite nosy so I went and had a snoop.

And what do I find but a woman in Christchurch who loves and cares for her scissor collection and dreams of owning some enormous shears!  The tidyness of the situation was just too much for me.  By dinnertime that night my old shears had left their one careless lady owner and were safely in the hands of their lovely new careful lady owner!  I hope you enjoy them Gretchen.  Sometimes muckingaround in Blogland really is the best course of action.