Can you believe the contents of a woman’s handbag? It was brought home once again to me by Christine having her handbag stolen in Barcelona. Not only are the handbags full of everything but the kitchen sink, nothing can be found. How long have you stood at the front door waiting while she rifles through her bag trying to find the house keys even though she has just spent twenty minutes sitting in the passenger seat of the car on the way home. How infuriating is it when the woman in front at the check out till only starts to rummage for her purse when told how much she owes. Men of course are different, we are more organised; we have the house keys ready; we have the money in our hand before the check out persons starts on our groceries; we are better at keeping things in order, except that is for ......... sheds.


We have been ticking off the jobs in Christine’s pink Black Book which I am pleased to say now seems a permanent part of her life. Fix the fence, done. Paint the outside brickwork, done. Curtain rails for the Garden Room, Curtains for the hall and Breakfast Room, lop trees, move plants all done. So next on her list is a separate project of ‘Reclaim the Bottom Garden’, which is in a few stages as this is a major job. Nice to see that she has it broken down in the Black Book into it’s various parts and I thought I was wasting my time explaining the only way to eat an elephant was a bite at a time, maybe she could make a project manager yet. So the first part of the project is to ‘sort out’ my two sheds before moving one of them to a new location down the garden.


Can you believe the stuff we save, it makes the contents of Christine’s handbag look insignificant. The first problem is when I move enough things to get through the door of the sheds I am then confronted by boxes, bags, tables, cupboards all overflowing with everything I have just thrown in there over the past year. Why would I want to keep the off cuts of wood that fill the rafters or the rusty hinges or bent brackets, what do I think I am going to with them? Until I have just uncovered them I didn’t even know I had them. There are bin liners full of clothes, are we really going to wear these again after having been at least a year in the shed, mind you seeing as Christine is bound to having nothing suitable to wear for our next trip to Barcelona maybe I should take a close look at these.


There are toys from when the grandkids were toddlers that we are never going to use again plus boxes of pottery, ornaments, glasses etc that we will never use but are deemed too good to throw away. So that’s were the next problem comes in. When these boxes were put in the shed the theory was that we would have a ‘car boot’ sale but that of course has never happened although now we are retired Christine is saying we have time and should do one.


So to get an idea of how these things work and what type of stuff is sold we go off to one in Beverley on Sunday and what do you know we came home with a mirror. We are trying to get rid of our surplus stuff and we buy more! But to be fair the mirror frame will be painted by Christine and the glass antiqued and it will look good as room dressings in Joe’s room. The decision is taken to have a ‘car boot’ so I start to get together everything saleable out of the sheds.


The next problem is that as fast as I am getting candle sticks, wind chimes, jugs and other ornaments out of the sheds I can hear Christine saying things like “I forgot we had that”, “that will look nice in the new kitchen”, “just right for the garden room” so what isn’t going back in house is being dotted around the garden and the pile of stuff for the ‘car boot’ is getting smaller.


But never mind I am sure Christine will never have a car boot anyway and if all the stuff she likes goes back in the house a trip to the skip and charity shop will get rid of the rest and my sheds will be clear. The first part of the project to reclaim the bottom garden will be complete and I will just need to ensure that Christine doesn’t get my sheds in that sort of state again.