recycling – Sibo

Lucky knickers

Sometimes being the mom in this boomerang house of ours is not all that bad…

The other day Emma – aka Igz – asked if I had any scarves that I do not use.

Ummm… nope. I replied very quickly.

Since the big kids came to live with us – nothing, I repeat, NOTHING is safe anymore. Things get borne off to various parts of the house never to be seen again.

Aaahhhh come on mom – you used to have all those little ones that you NEVER use.

Begrudgingly got up to go and look. Had a plastic bag in my cupboard that I vaguely remember stuffing things into when we moved – things that I no longer wore or did not fit.

We emptied The Bag onto the bed… knickers of all varieties and a couple of saggy old bras. One or two new ones as well – of the boobtube variety that had sliced my body unattractively in half. I’d buried them in disgust rather than return them. Those were the days when my thyroid was busy attacking me and I had no idea – was just packing on weight and could not understand it.

We sifted through the stuff… not a single scarf.

She eyed the bras, What are you going to do with those?

I’d gone from too fat to too thin – so they were not likely to fit me now anyway…

What are you going to do with them? I enquired.

She’d use bits of them for other things… the underwire, the fastners and stuff. I tossed them onto the Em pile.

We ruffled through the heap and found some undies – never worns that I passed on to my skinny daughter, and some others that I had thought would never fit me again found their way back into my top drawer.

I spotted and pounced on my lucky knickers… green lacy ones that I had loved so much they had holes in the crotch in a very unsexy way. They became unlucky when I was wearing them and my suitcase went missing on a visit to the USA, only to be found 5 days into my 10 day trip.

Hot trip tip people – never pack HIS and HERS suitcases – mix your stuff up!

Hadn’t worn those knickers for years – not since I got divorced back in 2003 but could never bear to ditch them completely, so they had languished in a corner of my top drawer and then been relegated to The Bag.

Give those to me, said Em, snatching them out of my hand and stuffing them into her pocket.

Noooo… I started to howl – then realized I was being pathetic – she’d use the lace for some arty project. We shoveled the rest of the stuff into The Bag and stashed it back in the cupboard.

Early next morning, Chris and I were on our way to fetch my older daughter and her family from the Lanseria. They were coming from Cape Town and would be spending Easter with us, then going onto Sun City for a friend’s wedding. I encountered Em in the passage.

I blinked… What are you doing up and out of your flat so early?

Here. She said – grabbing my hand and filling it with something slinky. It’s your lucky bracelet.

She’d made me the most gorgeous charm bracelet – turning bits of lucky knicker lace into beads. This is the sort of thing my creative, quirky, tempremental, pain-in-the-ass Em does for a living. So if anybody wants something creatively recycled – give her a shout.

Washing the curtains

So they say that moving house is right up there with death and divorce.

Well… we are moving house. After having lived in our current home for the last 8 years we are finally moving. To a house not too far away… one that we have bought. That can accommodate the WHOLE fandamily.

The problem with being a creative sort is that there are many different bits to move.

Like my whole artsy fartsy cupboard that has a million bits and pieces of all sorts of precious stuff.

Like the bead curtain that I made for the window on the stairs. The one that faces out into the whole one side of the complex… where I used to run up and down the stairs scantily clad… before the kids came home last year, that is.

The recycled bits of ironed plastic are dust magnets. So after a while, they always look really dirty and nasty, instead of like a lacy shiny tingly fabulous curtain.

I need to wash the passage curtain… I announced.

My lovely husband rescued the ladder out of the garage and positioned it nicely against the wall.

I looked at it… said Great, thanks, no need to hover. I can take it from here!

No, he replied…. I shall stay here until you safely unhook those beady curtains from the rail, in case you fall.

Yah right thought I… you are just poep scared that I plunge down a few stairs and break something and then you have to pack the leftover stuff in the house yourself.

But I smiled and said thank you very much.

Then unhooked the strands of beady curtain and passed each one down. It really was no big deal. Grabbed them from my lovely husband and laid them down on the grass (bit of a pain in the ass untangling them) then washed each and every single strand.

No need to worry about not doing my hula hoop squats for that day – was doing more than my fair share squatting over the water bucket.

I pottered about, squat hang, squat hang…. chat chat…

My not-so-lovely-man was incommunicado because he was busy trying to organise some graph or other for his tart.

Seriously irritating… me… Chatty chatty chat…

Husband… Hmmm. …yes…. chaaaa….ttt. Maybe…

I mean… I’m a chatty person. I chat. I chat in real life and I chat in sms’s, whatsapps and emails. I am unable to help myself from chatting. Chatty chat chat.

Hmmm…. yar. umm…. Okay then.

Feh!

I finished hanging all my clean shiny strands of curtains on the washing line and then ran upstairs to get my cell phone to take a pic.

Only to find that I had been robbed. Yah. Seriously. Some asshole had racked up R4800 at Pick n Pay n Port Shepstone.

Called the emergency number and reported the crime.

This whole thing also kind of robbed the spring out of my step.

But I let those strands of beads dry and packed them all up into single plastic bags so that they can be hung up again easily at our new house.

The Move – lighting up

So this used to be our curtain-type thing in our old house. Chris installed a lamp in the bar area because we were all complaining that it was too damn dark to see our food when we ate.

We decided that the beaded curtains might work well as a lamp.

Today (Sunday of the second weekend) was the first chance that I had to check it out. It required some moderation – like each strand needed to be cut in half. I felt a bit like the kids I had in my beady recycling workshops for National Science Week (last week – yes – that on top of moving) when I picked it up to hang it and half the beads fell off – had not ended off a couple of strands.

It looks quite effective though.