Saturday, January 24, 2009

This week targetting.... handkerchiefs

I confess I've been reading Flylady and in that spirit I thought I'd spend fifteen minutes on my scarf/belt drawer. I've ironed the scarves, thought about whether I really should keep belts in there AND all the little soft handbags. It is only a small drawer, after all, and the scarves get all scrunched up with all that other stuff. Some of the larger scarves get hung on special E shaped hangers in the wardrobe, but I don't find that very successful really.

The little handbags have been moved. I'm mulling over the belts. Over the last few weeks I've been keeping the inner tubes from toilet rolls and using those to store smaller rolled scarves in.

Today I'm getting a little more holistic and thought I'd attack it properly. There are fifteen handkerchiefs in there (handkerchieves?) in various states of scrunchdom. So I got them all out and ironed them. There are about four pretty lacy ladylike embroidered ones. There are four or five souvenier ones in garish colours with pictures of kangaroos and koalas and Brisbane buildings. Where did they come from? There are several that might have belonged to my daughter a zillion years ago - a blue gingham teddy bear holding balloons, a duck wheeling a bunny in a barrow. There are a couple of nondescript and quite pretty florals.

What am I going to do with them? Keep them? Put one in my handbag as a ladylike accessory? Is a used handkerchief any more or less disgusting than a used tissue gradually decomposing in one's handbag? Is washing and ironing a hanky more or less ecological than disposing of a tissue? What is the ick factor about using a cloth hanky to blow one's nose? It is years since I have done so.

On the principle of use-it-or-lose-it I am going to put one hanky in my handbag and see whether I use it. I am going to put the others in an accessible place until I see how I feel about using a cloth hanky.

Saturday, January 03, 2009

This week targetting.... tea bags

Every so often I decide I want to or should drink herbal teas. Their packets are so enticing, their names so delightful. Different varieties tend to leap into the trolley at the supermarket.

But then they languish at home after one or two are used. This week I am targetting them. There are two St. John's Wort with Berries bags left. I like St. John's Wort, it really does have a cheering effect, so it will be the first to be finished.

Then there is the Chamomile tea, which I ought to drink at night for its relaxing effect, instead of the mug of Chocolait. There are two versions of chamomile. And three bags of the organic fairtrade lemon valerian. And a box of Healtheries Sleep Tea with passionflower and chamomile. I have no trouble sleeping eight to nine hours a night, so I don't quite know why I have all this sleepy stuff.

The vanilla flavoured Rooibos is terrible. Plain rooibos is good but the vanilla flavouring adds a really unpleasant note. That can go into the bin.

Then the liquorice tea, which is deliciously and oddly sweet, but is really old now. Out.

Dilmah's Masala Chai fiery Ceylon spice is great on a cold day, and maybe even on a hot day. I will finish that next.

Buddha's Tears are gorgeous. I love the way they unfurl in the mug, but truly the flavour is not much. Green tea is supposed to be good for you, so I have the obligatory box of that too.

Finally there is the Lipton's black tea. I only have that because when the back yard was being re-done the two builders seemed to drink an awful lot of tea and I was forever making pots of my favourite looseleaf Panyong Congou from T2 or Twining's Russian Caravan. With tons of milk and sugar in a mug it didn't really seem necessary to do more than tea bags.

For myself, a pot of tea around 4 pm is wonderful. Looseleaf, in the teapot, infused for the right amound of time, in a white china cup and saucer, with a very small dash of sugar. Mmmm.

It is likely to take more than a week of targetting that lot. Maybe two or three months instead! I've discovered with my 'this week targetting... little bottles of moisturizer' that incorporating it into the daily routine (instead of just occasionally) the stuff gets used.