20190119 – Saturday – Cleaning house
This is my second post for the day.
I have been doing a lot of thinking.
I went on my travels in the first week of January, and I am now back home in the second to last week of January.
During that time I have listened to the Bible on my car player, over and over and over.
So I have been absorbing the wisdom of the Bible for all of that time.
Also I met so many lovely friends on my way and have had their words in my “memory box” playing over and over and I have done a LOT of thinking.
And I have watched and observed, taking life’s lessons from all those around me.
I have watched my daughter, my darling Helen, as she worked in her kitchen while I sat at her kitchen table.
I have always been a rather impatient person, trying to fit too many things into my daily round, and so never doing anything PROPERLY.
I am or, was, in my younger days, good at throwing meals together, cutting corners as I go.
Well, here I was sitting at Helen’s kitchen table and observing HOW VERY DIFFERENT WE ARE.
Helen is a detailed organised sort of person.
She certainly didn’t get it from me, that’s for sure.
I watched in amazement as she prepared her grocery shopping list for her (probably) weekly shop.
Her pantry is so organised, it is simply, to me, unbelievable.
Everything is organised into plastic containers.
Anything that was out of date, out it went.
On that day she was planning to replace some of her frying pans and saucepans.
She said she found that when the boys cooked, over time, the saucepans became scraped and were no longer “no stick” pans.
She waited and watched for specials and she had found a place where everything was going out half price.
So she went in and bought “new” everything.
And she was going to throw the old pans out.
Well, I use my old battered and blackened saucepans over and over and it never bothers me that they look pretty well “crap.”
Simply EVERYTHING in Helen’s house is organised and planned.
Her garden she plants with half-dead plants she gets from the “specials” aisle in the nursery’s and then she tends them lovingly and they grow into beautiful flowers.
Everything is “loved” and well-cared for.
Her children are a happy bunch. Why should they not be?
She teaches them how to do things “right” and so they have become their lessons for life.
Jack, the boy who is living with them, now that he is one of her “boys,” gains the same lessons.
She takes him shopping and teaches him how to shop and live within a budget.
And he listens to her. He knows when he is being given “good” advice.
Well, I decided I could learn from Helen.
When she cooks she cooks for her, a plate with not many carbs on it, for Alex and Jack, she stalks on the potato and carbs because they need LOTS of energy.
She knows what each one needs/wants and provides for it.
The kids clean up after each meal.
How did she achieve THAT???
Even the bunny and dog in the back yard do what she wants.
My daughter amazes me.
Well, now I am back home and I am putting into practice the lessons I have learned from my daughter.
When I went for my drive this morning and stopped at the Broadway cafe, I just bought a mug of flat white.
Then I sat by the sea, on this beautiful day, and ate my 2 boiled eggs, my avocado and tomato, and mushrooms and cucumber.
I had the nice feeling that everything I was eating was good for me, not full of carbs which give me short-term “highs,” and leave me wanting “more carbs” causing me to spend more than I intended on extra food.
Ever since I have been on this new “way of living,” I have energy to burn.
I have not felt so good in years.
So I started my “cleaning up of my unit,” the thing I hate most in all this world.
I thought of my dear daughter and decided to do everything“ her way.
I started at my small desk with organising all my blood testing instruments.
I had been to Foodland to buy the “green bags” that will be necessary for putting all the excess “stuff” into, to chuck out.
So I got rid of my old blood testing units which I would normally have kept “just in case I needed them.”
Into the bin, or more correctly, the green bag, they went.
That job DONE. I looked at my clean desk in wonder.
Then on to the next job I have been putting off for years.
My jewellery box.
I started at the top box.
These are a group of shelves in a plastic container, marked with the colour of the jewellery in side of it.
I took out each piece and put each necklaces into a separate plastic bag. That is, all that have working catches into containers and then simply chucking out those that didn’t.
Into the green bag with them.
(It was too much to expect me to get these fixed) so being realistic, they went into the green bag, and I refused to think about the originals cost of that item).
It was GOING to go out of my life forever.
Then of course, the inevitable happened. I ran out of small plastic bags..
In days of yore (before Helen) that would have been the end of my patience and the end of my jewellery sorting.
But NO, this time I got into my car and went down to Foodland again and purchased a whole bunch of new plastic bags.
I was going to FINISH this job.
By hook or by crook, I am going to clean this unit out.
I a going to get rid of the clutter in my life, once and for all, (God willing).
Every unnecessary thing in my life is going to go.
And all because I sat watching how my daughter tackled such jobs.
In the past I have never had the patience to do the job properly.
I would go and do the EASY stuff, which for me is reading, writing and studying.
These of course for some people are the HARD THINGS, but every body is different, and for all of us different things are EASY.
Of course, what has made this possible for me, is better health, more energy, and that is because of being on a better diet, because once upon a time, my lack of energy is what would have prevented me cleaning up my jewellery.
By now I would have been in bed having a “nanna nap” and would not have gone up the shop to get the necessary plastic containers to finish the job.
