Ironing board score

Not for the first time, I peeked into the skip bins and saw an item I had been planning to buy anyway.

A mini tabletop ironing board - nothing wrong with it except that now that someone had thrown it into the bin, the cover was dirty. I brought it home and washed the cover, added a layer of blanket to thicken up the padding, and it's now hanging in my rental unit, with the old and awkward full-size wooden one stashed away in the attic.

PEOPLE! What is wrong with people just throwing things away? Why on earth can't people leave stuff out where it will be clean, and taken by someone who needs it?

Cooking in bulk

Since my daughter left home, I've gained a sort of apathy for the kitchen. I think what's happening is that I'm drifting back to my previous existence of grazing rather than wanting big meals. In the seven years I've been here I've put on a lot of weight :( It's mostly to do with cooking too much. I grew up in a family where your plate was handed to you already served. I came here and saw that life was "serve yourself"; so I started doing that, and since my husband always took seconds I made sure there were always seconds to be taken.

Ending with me taking seconds.

But now with only three of us and me preferring to eat small things instead of two plates for dinner, I get lazy and don't always feel like cooking at all. End result is too many takeaways and tv-dinners.

I'm trying to address that by making my cooking time more efficient, so this week I made six meals of chicken in sweet and sour sauce. I served three bowls and put three bowls into the fridge. No seconds allowed, the second three are for later this week. Truth be told none of us need seconds, and if people get hungry there are plenty of snack items available. I also did the same with a huge batch of spaghetti bolognese.

So today I'm feeling pretty chuffed with myself and my fridge full of "ready dinners". We'll see whether it's a habit I can keep up. I think this might be tough.

Boo!

They had a skip bin at our investment flat today - something a lot of apartment blocks do every couple of years. Ours was full of the old furniture from the café downstairs and someone's entire flat furniture. Loft bed and mattress, shelves etc. I'm so disappointed in lazy people. The recycle centre would have collected all those items for sale. What a waste to throw perfectly useful furniture into landfill. Disgusting. I wish I had had a use for the tables and bed.

Among it all was a large near-new Ikea floor rug, soaking wet from the rain but now merrily drying out in my attic space. Silver lining!