Blogtober 2024 : Day 4

Hello, and happy Friday to you!  It’s a late post today as I have been out for most of the day helping big daughter and her boyfriend move into their new house.

They’ve been renting for the past two years but wanted to buy their own place, and found somewhere that they liked way back in March.  It’s taken until now for all the legal work to take place and I really think they were starting to think that it would never happen, but they finally got the keys a few weeks ago and have been frantically decorating and moving stuff over before their lease runs out next week.  It’s the best way to be, I think, if it works out for you like that as you’re not trying to decorate around all your stuff, but it’s been hard work for them.

We planned a few weeks ago that I would go over and help today – they weren’t sure where they would be up to but hoped it would be the last few boxes and then cleaning.  My contribution (after strict instructions from the chiropractor not to lift anything heavy) was some Pure Magic toilet cleaner as per Nancy Birtwhistle’s book, Clean & Green (Amazon link), which big daughter bought for me at Christmas (it’s actually called Toilet Magic in this book).  It is amazing stuff, particularly if you’re in a hard water area as we are, and clears limescale in the toilet like nothing I have ever used before.  Big daughter and her boyfriend want to make sure they leave the rental house spotless so I said I’d make up some of this for them – even though they’ve been cleaning for themselves, this stuff leaves everywhere extra sparkly!

If you’ve never heard of her, Nancy Birtwhistle was the winner of the hit TV show “Great British Bake Off” a few years ago, and has since gained a huge following on Instagram for her eco-friendly cleaning tips and recipes.  Someone recommended to me that I go and find her account for something (I can’t remember if it was on the blog or Instagram) and I’ve been a fan ever since!  She’s written a few books now and I have some but not all of them, and they are full of really useful budget-friendly cleaning tips, recipes and advice.  It feels like old-fashioned knowledge brought up to date, but it also feels like important work to me as Nancy’s mission is to clean without chemicals and there are so many chemicals in everything that we use, it’s no wonder sometimes that people get poorly.  You can find Nancy’s Instagram account here, and I think the Pure Magic recipe is on there too – her new one, Basic Magic, is a pinned post but that’s something different.

My job when I got to big daughter’s old house was to help with runs to the tip (not the cleaning, which I was quite pleased about!).  My car has a big boot, which used to be where the dog sat until he decided that as an elderly gentleman he preferred the back seat, so we were able to fill it up and make several runs to the local tip (dump) to drop off cardboard, general rubbish, a couple of old Christmas trees (you’ll notice they waited to put those in my car and not their own 🤣) and lots of soft plastic packaging which isn’t recycled by the council.  It’s a very satisfying feeling to offload so much rubbish!

I was very careful not to lift anything too heavy or do any unusual twisting or Ninja moves, and I am happy to tell you that I have got home in one piece! 🙂

It was dark by the time I got back – it’s getting dark so much earlier these days, isn’t it?  The dog said that he’d been indoors for far too long and wanted a walk, so we headed out into the night.  It’s not really dark around here, there are plenty of street lights and we mostly walked along the roads so we were fine.

I took this photo as we walked up the main road – there was a car coming up behind us which is why it’s so bright, and I think it looks like an album cover!

You see all those leaves in that photo?  The dog wanted to Sniff Them All.  Every single one.  Oh my life, I thought we were never going to get home!

We did, though – otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this!

Night night, see you tomorrow! xx