How to Get to the Bottom of the Ironing Basket

Image by ninahale via Flickr

The ironing board is on the landing.  This may seem an odd place to keep it, but it’s solving a long-standing problem: the apparently bottomless ironing basket.

It’s not that I dislike ironing: in the right frame of mind, it’s very soothing.  Research shows that repetitive tasks provide similar benefits to meditation.  Knitting and jogging also qualify.  But lately the view from my utility room of a dreary, browning, post-snow garden has deterred me from taking up my post at the ironing board.  And the distinctive aroma of over-wintering guinea pig, which decamped to the adjacent worktop during the cold snap, is a further disincentive.

As I hovered in the utility room the day before spring term began, trying to summon up the energy to tackle a week’s worth of school uniforms, an inspiration flashed into my head.  For this I must thank the author Susan Hill. At Tetbury’s Yellow-Lighted Bookshop’s wonderful Book Festival last summer, she talked about her latest book Howard’s End is on the Landing which describes the year she spent rereading books stashed around her house.

Like her, I have many books on my landing, which my husband recently redecorated.  I took the opportunity to reorganise the bookshelves, showing the contents off to best advantage.  Now at the top are decades of diaries, the earliest dating from when I was 8.  Below are displayed precious and obscure books from my childhood (anyone else remember Torchy the Battery Boy?), through to the bittersweet teenage comforters such as Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle.  Next come the dog-eared favourites from my university days.  Well, some are less dog-eared than others: one day I really will read all four volumes of Richardson’s Clarissa, bought at vast expense in a wild moment of undergraduate optimism.  Then there’s the vast collection of hobby-related guides acquired in my leisure-rich child-free days.  These haven’t seen much action since I acquired a child, whose own bedroom is now bursting at the seams with books.

I never tire of looking at my bookshelves.  The display on the landing will be a lovely backdrop to my ironing.    The location offers other conveniences: a thick, warm Indian rug under foot; the adjoining bathroom where I can easily top up the iron’s water chamber; nearby wardrobes for immediately hanging up the ironed clothes (far better than turning the kitchen into a holding bay).  I’m convinced that on the landing, I’ll make great headway through the ironing basket – at least as long as I can ignore the comfy rocking chair in the corner, an ideal place to curl up with a book.

But for now I’m determined that this refreshing change of scene will restore momentum to the task in hand.  What’s more, I’m thinking of applying the same principle to other stalled proceedings.  So once I’ve finished typing this, I’m off to do my tax return in the bath.  Must press on….

(This post originally appeared in The Tetbury Advertiser, February 2011)

A Tidy Solution

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After a weekend away, we return late Sunday afternoon to find the dust in our house under the spotlight of dazzling autumn sunshine.  Not all the dust is due to slovenliness.  Lighting our woodburning stoves the last few chilly evenings has distributed a flurry of fine, powdery ash throughout the cottage, as if we’ve just acquired as a lodger a small but slightly active volcano.

Still relaxed from our mini-break at the (very clean and tidy) house of friends, I decide to take the house by storm – and my family too.  I raid the broom cupboard and distribute cleaning materials and tools to my startled husband and daughter.

Not much later, the house looks fit for visitors.  Gosh, I wouldn’t mind living here, I think to myself, surveying the shiny kitchen surfaces and toy-free carpet with satisfaction.  Not that I expect the effect to last long.

His vacuuming duty completed, my husband resumes the raid he had started a few days before on our various sheds and outhouses.  He is turning them out with the energy and enthusiasm of one about to move house.  Not that he, or we, are about to move house, but for a moment I think we should consider it.

If we were to put the house on the market, I’d soon get round to doing the rest of the chores I’ve been putting off for so long – rationalising the pile of knitting patterns that’s threatening to fall on the head of anyone who climbs the stairs; editing the growing heap of odds and ends  dumped on Laura’s dressing table (now, where can she have acquired that habit, I wonder?)

Planning to move to a much smaller house would be especially helpful, as it would force me to be more ruthless.  Maybe I should make it a flat.

A few dozen skips and trips to the “Sort-It” recycling centre later, I’d hire a furniture van, fill it with our minimised possessions, drive round the block, come back and move in.  The new uncluttered look would feature all that we love best, and we’d have no end of space.  It would be a very satisfactory arrangement.  Nice neighbours, an excellent local primary school, lively village community, established garden, village pubs, shop, post office and hairdressers, all in a lovely Cotswold setting.  I couldn’t hope to find a better home.

Now, where did I put that estate agent’s card?