Spring... (boing, boing, boing!)

Yesterday was the first day of Spring & a Saturday so we took the opportunity to get the cliched cleaning done.

I started the day by gathering up all of the glass jars and bottles I've been collecting (because I'll use them when I make jam or sauce) and there were a lot of them (because I haven't actually made any jam or sauce). This had to be my job because Nic simply wants to throw them out (oh, ye of little jam-and-sauce faith!) and I thought I was fairly clever about it. I made sure all jars had lids before stacking each jar into a tub and the lids into an old ice cream container. I might point out that this counts as 'clever' in my book because it's much more discerning than I've been in the past! (Who knows when you might need an old mayonnaise jar that has no lid, or the lid without an accompanying jar... they could come in handy, stranger things have happened!)

The 'organised' jars - yep, 'organised' is a relative term.

My jar & bottle organising was hampered by the fact that there seems to be no efficient way of stacking or packing multi-sized and shaped glass objects into a fixed container. (I'm happy to take suggestions on this one.) Then there was the un-clever part. I knew I should take the time to de-label the jars before they were put away but I just couldn't be bothered (and I had a bah-zillion other 'Spring Cleaning' jobs to get done as well). I know that when I do end up making sauce or jam, I'm highly unlikely to take the time away from the actual cooking to take the labels off then either which leaves me with yummy homemade things stored in jars that I'm almost too embarrassed to give to anyone (I said, almost). Well, maybe I'll feel differently about the preparation and label removal this year (ha!).

We went ahead with other jobs after that and we got a fair amount of cleaning up done over at the shack (we still have a myriad boxes and various other bits and bobs stashed over there). Unfortunately in our absence, the rats and mice have made themselves welcome so we ended up feeling filthy, although very pleased with our accomplishments. We were (generally) ruthless in our 'throw it out' mentality and it feels good not to be bringing that clutter into the new house.

The jar-organising venture of the morning got me thinking about what I might fill them with. So now I'm in the planning stages of vegie patch reconstruction & resurrection. We're waiting on a load of manure which we should be able to collect next week then there'll be more 'Vegie Patch Adventures' rather than just a blog post about the fact that I've actually done some cleaning...