Spring is here!

Who can resist a freckle cone from an ice-cream van?

The spring weather has finally hit the Gold Coast. A few weeks ago I packed up our summer quilt, washed it and replaced it with a light weave cotton blanket, but last weekend it was too warm for even that! I eventually had to give in and set up one of the small pedestal fans in our bedroom.

The spring cleaning bug has hit our household. Tony and I have been working on de-cluttering our apartment. For two people (and two cats!) we sure have a lot of stuff. I think what the problem is, in the past we've always moved about every 18 months and in the past have used moving time as a chance to de-clutter. We've lived in our apartment for three years now and still have moving boxes that haven't been unpacked!

Our little storage shed down in the basement (it's at the back of our car space and is about a third of the size of a small garden shed) is full of a lot of our extra stuff. There's old computer monitors, boxes of spare computer parts, boxes of cd's and computer cords and cables, as well as the usual stuff like eskies, air mattresses, fold up chairs and our Christmas tree and lights. But there's also two cardboard boxes from two moves ago as well as the boxes of books. So many books.

While my husband has a hard time letting go of computer parts and has a large collection of floppy discs, (some from the early 90s!) Most of my boxes are of books.

Years ago when we first moved in together we close to a couple of really great second hand book stores. Twenty dollars would buy me anywhere between four and five books, I was a uni student so would spend my summer and winter breaks reading. We also lived in a much larger place. Our rental was a three bedroom duplex that had separate living and dining rooms. It was easily twice the size of our current apartment, so we had the bookshelves and the room to store a lot of books.

Then we moved in with family to save for our wedding and most of our belongs and all of our books went into boxes and storage. Three moves later and all these boxes of books have never been unpacked because we've never had the room.

Last week Tony brought up some of these boxes from the basement. Three large 60L storage tubs and four smaller 32L ones. We spent some time sorting through them, making toss, donate, keep and give away piles. I kept all the books I know I'll reread as well as the books I know that mum would like. But a lot of them I'll never read again, or I own digital or audio copies of them. A few water damaged books got thrown out (I think they were ones I'd dropped while reading in the bath, or had gotten splashed at the beach) but most of them went in the donate pile.

And after carting around a few hundred floppy discs for the last 10-20 years, Tony went through all of them and the majority of those were thrown out too. It took a few hours but it's great to have that little bit of extra space in the storage shed again! Sadly, there's another six large 60L tubs of books to go. That's for another weekend!

To celebrate starting our de-clutter and spring clean we went out to Swell Sculpture Festival that's held yearly on the beach just south from where we live. We've been talking about going to it each year for the last six years! But this year we finally made it. I have to say, I think we timed our trip well. We went on the last day in the late afternoon. It was easy to get a park and wasn't overly crowded. Plus, the sun was setting so it wasn't overly hot and there was no glare from the water.