For the last two days I’ve been working from home as the weather has made it too dangerous to attempt the 45 mile trip to work, some of which is along “non-main” roads.  However, due to limitations on our VPN I’ve not actually been able to do much other than keep on top of emails and other work which doesn’t require access to the resources based in the office.

The reality of this is that there really isn’t much that can be done from home, so I’ve been taken the opportunity to start the spring cleaning in the house.  Following the holiday period when our house is filled with loads of people the place is still yet to get back to its normal order (which is actually not that neat anyway), so it has been a welcome opportunity to clean up a bit.

In line with our desire to move house this year we’ve also began the process of downsizing our estate – getting rid of things that we just don’t need anymore but have hung onto for reasons unknown.  It’s a difficult job for me because I’m a bit of a hoarder but now comes the time to be ruthless – we don’t have the room for the stuff anyway, so it just needs to go.  My problem is that I feel guilty about just slinging stuff out and it ending up in landfill, I want it to go to someone who will use it, or if its broken then recycle it properly.  This does however take a bit of effort.

Freegle is a website which helps you recycle stuff that may be of use to someone else.  It’s built around Yahoo! Groups and if essentially a mailing list – people post stuff to the list and people that want it offer to take it.  You can also post “wanted” notices too.  I’ve used it in the past in its former incarnation of Freecycle (which I still think is a better name) and it has been useful for helping to get rid of things, and also to help others who might actually want the stuff you no longer do.

Having realised through re-reading this that I am turning into Adem, I will now get on with checking work emails and a bit more cleaning up.  Good day.