Once again, a messy bedroom

As a result of my recent colds, I have neglected keeping my room tidy. The desk is a mess and I've bags and belongings over much of the floor. It's not impossible to find anything and it's not a hazard having to walk in the room - it just needs sorting out.

Thankfully, I have energy again and once I've pressed "Publish" for this post, I'll go tidy some of the mess up.

The return of the key

I awakened early this morning to head over to my accommodation, where I finished off the last of the housework. It took me about two hours to complete the cleaning work and then after that, I visited the security office to return my house/room key.

And with that, today was the day that fully marked the end of my first year at university. I'm off campus and no longer have access to my accommodation - at least not until the latter half of next month. I have a small reprieve before return.

Another move completed

All done, another move completed. I spent the day packing my remaining items and then carrying them by hand; it took me five trips to carry nearly everything over to my mother's house and as a result, I am now exhausted and looknig forward to going to bed. I'll be up early tomorrow to finish tidying my accommodation and to then hand in the key.

For the next few weeks, I'll be living with family again.

The cleaning week

For my last week at my accommodation for this contract, I'll be helping to clean the house. Fortunately, since only two people have lived here for the past month, it's not that dirty. Besides vacuuming and kitchen work, the main cleaning that needs to be done is the bathtub as it is draining slowly; I'll be on that tomorrow, as I'll be going out in the morning to purchase some drain cleaner.

It's funny to think that as of tomorrow, I'll only have a week left here before I'll be at my mother's and brother's house, only to be back in less than a month.

Dividing the break

My plan for this break is to take the first week off, both to relax and meet up with some people, including my mother and brother. I think that will be worthwhile and I have earned it, based on the work I've been doing over the second term. I'll also use to time to re-tidy my room and see what other cleaning needs to be completed.

For the second week, I'd like to start on at least one of my two upcoming assignments and write a few hundred words or more. The more I complete of my assignments now, the less for later and more time will be reserved for working on other outstanding projects.

That's how I'll be dividing my break. I think that's a good plan.

A bigger room mess

A side consequence of my recent illness is that my room, after seeing improvement in it tidiness, is now at its messiest state ever. I ended up place a bunch of items on the floor and not picking them up; in addition, my bed itself is an utter sty from all the tossing and turning that occurred when I when unable to sleep.

No matter. Tidying this mess up again won't be too hard. No reason why much of it couldn't be completed within an hour.

Tidying this room!

I've just spend a little more time tidying my room. Unfortunately, since the inspections the other week I haven't really advanced any of the cleaning I did back then and in some respects, the room has become messy again. Not to worry - I'm going to tidy up a little more before I head off to bed; it's not filthy in here, just untidy.

It will also be wise to follow a level of cleanliness in here not just because it's a good idea to but because the next term begins in less than two weeks now and I don't want to be navigating a mess when there's work to be done.

Accommodation inspections redux

Back on the 10th of this month, I noted that my accommodation was to undergo a hygiene inspection. It actually wasn't so much for hygiene as it was to ensure that there was no damage done to the room. Evidently, the room is in the same condition it was in when I moved in and any damage that is present was there before my presence; I reported said damage on an inventory form that came with the room.

I expect the next inspection to be in a couple of months or during the next break.

Accommodation inspections

Next week, the management for my student accommodation will be visiting to conduct a hygiene inspection of each house on the campus. While my room isn't unhygienic, I have let it become untidy and sometimes I have trouble finding some of my belongings or moving around. Not to matter - I will spend some time tomorrow sorting my room out so that it's all ready for inspections next week; beyond that, I will endeavour to keep my room tidy for my own benefits.

Evening showers

For years on end, I've taken my showers in the mornings; however, in the past couple of weeks I decided to switch and take them in the evenings. Why? For the purposes of me sleeping better.

For much of this college course, I've had difficulty sleeping on the nights when I've had to awaken early the next morning, which has led to me receiving less than a handful of hours of sleep for a day's worth of classes. Since I've started taking showers before I go to bed, I've been able to fall asleep after only a few minutes in bed rather than been struggling to sleep at 2:00am.

I'll keep this up for the time being to see how it goes; when it's time to be in bed, I should be asleep rather than fighting for sleep.

The fabric softener

I spent the afternoon helping my grandfather with cleaning the garage. While in there, I accidentally broke open a bottle of fabric softener when moving a cabinet. As a result, half the bottle's contents spilled out over the floor.

While there was a large puddle of fabric softener about, an overpoweringly sweet smell encompassed the garage. Even after the mess was cleaned up, the aroma remained and I had to take a break from working in the garage because there was a risk that the smell could have given me a headache. I am still a little light-headed now.

Yes, half a bottle of fabric softener has been wasted but part of the garage floor is super clean!

The shower and photo backlog redux

At last, we have a new shower installed. After spending two weeks cleaning ourselves in the bathtub with a dodgy shower head while crouching, it will be a pleasant change to have a proper shower tomorrow morning. With the new shower and the area around it re-sealed, hopefully the leaks are all fixed...it's not going to be fun if they are still present after all that work and our time in the bathtub!

As for my backlog of pictures to rename, I cleared it yesterday. I still have Dad's pictures to rename and I took some more photographs today, but at least I no longer have to worry about more than 1,000 existing pictures on top of any I take while I'm Nottingham. Still, I should keep on top of it in the future to prevent it from becoming that backlogged again!

Wild search

My mother and brother spent most of the day sorting through some boxes in the garage in search of a couple of small yet important badges. They brought a few boxes inside the house, repacked them while looking for the badges, and then returned them to the garage when they were done; they also cleaned up the mess in the garage...a task that should have been done months ago.

Despite the search and the sorting, the badges were nowhere to be found. By the late afternoon they were both tired from their work, and although they had not found the badges they were both pleased at the garage now being at its tidiest in several months.

When they came back indoors, a thought suddenly crossed my brother's mind: he looked in a drawer in the living room and...voila! There were the missing badges! They had been in an obvious place for ages, yet no one had thought to look in that drawer until that moment. Both my mother and my brother were relieved that the badges had now been found, and neither of them had any regrets spending a significant portion of the day in the garage (it was, after all, much tidier now).

So, to summarise: we have a tidy garage, a few re-sorted boxes, and the badges have been found. An overall net positive result.

Hosepipe ban

Tomorrow, we will be under what is called a "hosepipe ban". Essentially, this means we will officially be under restrictions on how we use water: we will have to keep an eye on how much water we use when doing something that requires the use of water, such as dishes or having a shower (and we can save water by making efficient use of left over water from dishes and timing our showers).

Among the things we will not be able to use a hosepipe for include: watering our lawns/gardens, filling up a personal pond/water feature, washing home walls and windows; and cleaning cars or boats. There are exceptions to these: giving animals water (livestock, fish in a personal pond), and washing away health hazards and graffiti are exempt; and as far as I know we will still be able to clean windows and outside furniture by using a bucket and sponge rather than hosing them down. Anybody who has a pipe connected to a personal water source or rainwater instead of through the mains is also exempt from the ban.

I expect the ban to remain in place from now to throughout the summer, unless we somehow get massive amounts of rain all over the country during the next two months. I am not familiar with how long these normally last, but I do not anticipate it being lifted until fall or winter.

The part of this I find hilarious is that for the last couple of days, including today, we have had rain! Unfortunately, as said just above it will not end the hosepipe ban before it even starts, but I do appreciate the irony in it raining when the ban is about to take effect.

Water restrictions

Following-up on my post to do with people washing their cars too much, here is an article about the potential water shortage in the United Kingdom, and steps being taken to preserve water, such as limiting showers and not filling up personal swimming pools.

A simple step not covered in the Telegraph article would be to tell people who wash their cars every single week to cut back on how many times they clean their vehicle; as I wrote in my previous post, the cars are often mostly clean anyway: they do not need a weekly wash, and there is less reason for weekly washes in the face of restrictions on water usage.

Some thoughts on car washing

Dad and I took the car to the wash a few days ago, hence this post about pictures taken during the washing. At that time it had been a couple of months or so since its previous clean, and it did need a wash. On average our vehicle is taken to the car wash every couple of months and I think that frequency is reasonable.

For whatever reason, there are a few people in my neighbourhood who wash their vehicles at least once a week: they use a large amount of soap and water each time they perform a wash, and a couple of them spend up to an hour or more washing their car. Often the vehicles are not even dirty at all.

Now normally I do not comment on how other people spend their money, and in all fairness they are paying for the water they use. However, there have been a lot of complaints recently here in the United Kingdom that we have not had enough rain this winter, and there have been talks about restrictions on water use (according to my parents, if any restrictions were implemented, it would not at all be the first-time it would have happened). If people are really concerned about a lack of water, a simple measure to help counter the problem would be for certain people to stop washing their cars every week. The more water wasted on washing a clean car every week means that everyone will have to pay more for water later.

From what I have observed, on average vehicles do not really get too dirty over here. There is no need to have a weekly wash of a car unless you go mud bogging, but as the vast majority of the British driving population does not engage in such an activity or ones related to it, I think people who clean their cars a lot could easily cut down on the frequency of their washes.

Mud

I had to laugh earlier when going for a walk with my Dad and my brother. When we three last went for a walk together, I ended up taking us through a heavily muddy field and made a mess of our shoes. During our walk today, I selected a route that I thought would not be too muddy for the occasion.

Surprise, surprise! It took us through quite a bit of mud, and whenever I said "we should be past the worst of the mud now", we ended up walking onto even muddier parts of the path. Fortunately, the mud only lasted for the first part of the walk, and once we were back on concrete again we were able to remove the mud from our shoes.

I will be glad when we are out of the wet season: there are several paths that I would like to explore around here, but since the footpaths are mainly dirt paths, all or most of them will be muddy for the time being.

Car wash

Dad and I went to have the car washed this afternoon. Using my phone, I took a couple of pictures of the washing as the car was pulled through!

Okay, I will admit that it does seem strange to want to take a picture of our car being taken through a car wash with us inside the vehicle, but I did want to test the camera on my phone out some more, and this seemed like as good an opportunity to do so as any: I am pleased with how well the images have turned out. The first picture is definitely my favourite...it looks as though we are in some sort of wave.

More snow

It snowed again last night! Not as much fell as the amount from a few days ago, but it was still enough for us to go out today to clear the driveway and the paths around the house. While the snowfall was a little lighter, it was harder to clear this time: because of the slightly lower level of snow, it was extremely difficult to scoop it up without compressing it into the ground and turning it into harder ice. As such, we had to make greater use of brooms on this occasion.

On the bright side, today was sunnier than when it was the other day. Much of the snow has melted since last night, but there is still plenty of white ground around.

Leaky fish juice

We had fish for dinner a week or so ago, and some of the leftover juice from the fish was put in a container and placed in the fridge. Sometime during yesterday or the day before, the container was knocked over and a significant amount of the juice leaked out from it. As a result, the refrigerator stank of fish.

When either Dad or Mum first noticed the smell last night, they thought that something may have got into the fridge's drip tray, or that there was possibly even a problem with the fridge itself. Upon further investigation, we realised that some of the other food was covered in fish juice, and that the container (which had been forgotten about until this point) had been knocked onto its side.

It took two hours and various cleaning agents to remove the stink from the refrigerator. Some of the contents needed to be cleaned too: I had to wash at least 40 eggs of the juice and put them all in a bowl, for they were covered and their carton was ruined from being located on the shelf below the container (and right in the path of the majority of the juice as well). The floor also had to be wiped of drops of the juice from me carrying the shelves to the sink.

The smell of fish is a major pain to remove, especially when it is "off". As I have been typing this post the odour has still been in my nose. I hope we decide not to keep more containers of fish juice from now on, but if we do, we remember to use it quickly!