Tag: kitchen

Mystery 15-minute Declutter, Flylady Zone 3! My Hygge Home

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No more overwhelm, we are tackling our clutter 15 minutes at a time! Get ready to join me for a fun mystery declutter! We are back in Flylady Zone 3 this week (the bathroom plus one other room). I’ve chosen the basement and am working on craft items…most of which I will probably never use again! I will be your timer today and chat along the way. Let’s go!

I have free printables and Flylady Zone ideas for cleaning, working in the garden and self-care here on my blog

Flylady Zone 3 – ideas for cleaning and decluttering the bathroom

Remember to add in some daily pamper time! The self-care by zone list and my “bingo card” are here. I also like to add hygge to the Zones…a fresh bloom or candle.

Bathroom hygge!
The bathroom at our Swedish cabin

And if you want more time for me to “clean with you”, I have a whole playlist of short videos where you can see me decluttering and cleaning in each of the Flylady Zones…

If you are new to the Flylady system, or want to dive a little deeper and tweak your Routines, I have lots of tips and advice on my Flylady Refresher Course. Remember, we are doing this together!

Have a fantastic day! Rah, rah, rah!

Hugs

Diane

Kitchen Reset Week! Hygge Weekly Cleaning Schedule, Flylady Zone 2

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Tired of always cleaning? Or are you overwhelmed with your home and don’t know where to start? Look no further, help is at hand! Happy Whitsun Monday from Denmark, an official holiday! Do you have the day off? 🧹 It’s Kitchen Reset week and I’m here with your motivation to clean and declutter! We’re working together for 15 minutes, I will hold your hand and chat with you! I found quite a few items to declutter from one of our kitchen drawers… Are you ready to join me?

Weekly Cleaning Schedule – Flylady Zone 2

I have free printables and Flylady Zone ideas for cleaning, working in the garden and self-care here on my blog

Flylady Zone 2 – kitchen – ideas for cleaning and decluttering

When I’m working in the Zones, I like to add a little hygge to the room. If you follow me on Facebook, you’ll know that I love to have a candle and seasonal flower by my sink. Makes cooking dinner and washing up a lot more enjoyable!

My shiny sink
Kitchen hygge
Add some hygge (cosy details) to your kitchen!

Remember to add in some daily pamper time! The self-care by zone list and my “bingo card” are here.

And if you want me to “clean with you”, I have a whole playlist of short videos where you can see me decluttering and cleaning in each of the Flylady Zones…

If you are new to the Flylady system, or want to dive a little deeper and tweak your Routines, I have lots of tips and advice on my Flylady Refresher Course. We are doing this together!

Have a fantastic day! Rah, rah, rah!

Hugs

Diane

Heart of the home: the kitchen! Declutter, clean, add hygge

dianedenmark

Tired of always cleaning? Or are you overwhelmed with your home and don’t know where to start? Look no further, help is at hand! I love the Flylady system. A short weekly upkeep clean in the most-used areas of the house keeps our home clean and tidy…

Weekly Upkeep Clean – max 70 minutes

And then we add in a bit of detailed cleaning, just a few minutes here and there. This week our focus is the kitchen, “the heart of the home”. No need to do a marathon session, just set your timer for 15 minutes and do something! Here’s a short video from my archives to get you started – right here, right now! You can copy what I’m doing in the video, or work along with me and do something from the lists below…

I have free printables and Flylady Zone ideas for cleaning, working in the garden and self-care here on my blog

Flylady Zone 2 – kitchen – ideas for cleaning and decluttering

This week I’ll be taking a quick look through our cabinets to see if there is anything to declutter. Just aim to declutter and organize one drawer or shelf this week. Next month pick a different one. Once you have a space organized, it’s so easy to put things away and keep the clutter at bay. A place for everything and everything in its place! I check what food we have in storage (check your fridge and freezer too!), and use items which are close to their expiry date (see my weekly menu plans if you need inspiration). I dry out my sink every day after dinner (I use whatever hand or tea towel I’ve been using that day). But during kitchen week I like to give my sink a deep scrub down and make it really shine!

Check your pantry items
Our kitchen sink

When I’m working in the Zones, I like to add a little hygge to the room. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know that I love to have a candle and seasonal flower by my sink. Makes cooking dinner and washing up a lot more enjoyable!

Yellow and blue
Kitchen hygge
Add some hygge (cosy details) to your kitchen!

Remember to add in some daily pamper time! The self-care by zone list and my “bingo card” are here.

And if you want me to “clean with you”, I have a whole playlist of short videos where you can see me decluttering and cleaning in the kitchen, Flylady Zone 2…

If you are new to the Flylady system, or want to dive a little deeper and tweak your Routines, I have lots of tips and advice on my Flylady Refresher Course. We are doing this together!

Have a fantastic day! Rah, rah, rah!

Hugs

Diane

VIDEO Clutter Free January! Out with the clutter, in with the hygge! Kitchen

dianedenmark

A clutter free January, starting with the kitchen! Out with the clutter and in with some Danish hygge! Make it cosy! I’m joining Dawn from the Minimal Mom in her Clutter Free January project – make sure to check out the playlist (more videos will be added as they are published). And stay tuned for my very first giveaway…

💡 ZONE 2 INSPIRATION…ERRANDS, SELF-CARE, GARDEN!

DIANE IN DENMARK

FLYLADY ZONE 2, THE KITCHEN

Thank you for all your wonderful suggestions on YouTube and Instagram for things we can focus on in Flylady zone 2 (the kitchen) for shopping, self-care and working in the garden! 😄 I shall keep adding to the list as more ideas come in…

Here’s my “self-preservation” bingo card for this week. You can click the photo, save and print. Or if you’d like to customise, here’s a link

https://www.canva.com/design/DAD8DjpSh0U/8vcD9PcTJpbAad46yREGmw/view?utm_content=DAD8DjpSh0U&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=sharebutton&mode=preview



ERRANDS – SHOPPING LIST

  • Washing up liquid
  • Rubber gloves
  • Dishwasher detergent/tabs
  • Rinse aid
  • Dishwasher salt
  • Coffee/tea
  • Baking parchment/wrap
  • Kitchen roll
  • Cleaning liquid

SELF-CARE, PAMPER

  • Homemade face mask, lip or hand scrub, bath salts/bombs, homemade foot cream. Use herbs or flowers from your garden or pantry items (honey, sugar exfoliating scrub, olive oil egg yolk hair treatment, vanilla bath salts).
  • Keep a tube of hand cream by the sink.
  • Additional hand-care with some lotion or a mini-manicure.Make one day this week a “detox” day, with juicing and relaxation.
  • Search online for a new recipe to try, or reread a favourite cookbook.
  • Write down your favourite family recipe and make a copy for your children.
  • Have a go at that recipe you saved and never got round to.
  • Try making a new healthy snack, biscuit or cake.
  • Prepare a ‘new’ or ‘special’ snack to enjoy later on with a cup of tea!
  • Tidy and/or discard old recipes.
  • Tweak your diet, research healthier eating ideas and add one to your menu plan this week.
  • Add some fresh mint or a slice of lemon to your water.
  • Make homemade chocolates, truffles or fudge (for Zone 4 stash 😊).
  • Sit outside with your morning tea or coffee and listen to the birds.
  • Candlelight dinner with your best china, alone or with your significant other, on the balcony or in your garden.
  • Put together a pamper snack basket for the week, something special each day to enjoy.
  • Add your favourite meal to this week’s menu plan.
  • Sit at the dinner table, add candles, background music, serviettes, eat outside weather-permitting.
  • Enjoy the light in the kitchen for reading or doing a crossword.
  • Try a new type of tea or coffee or savour a cup of your favourite brew. Use the one you have been saving “for a special occasion”.
  • Indulge yourself and enjoy your favourite dessert, or a new ice-cream flavour.
  • Use one of your china teacups/saucers that you only keep for guests, or drink water/juice from a crystal wine glass.
  • Put together different salads, trying new combinations of veggies and fruits you’ve never tried, use a variety of lettuces and greens.
  • Add something which makes you smile while you’re cooking/doing the dishes: a bloom from the garden, a pot plant, a candle, a photo frame.
  • Make paper flowers to put on your windowsill or table.
  • Take a couple of pieces of the “good china” you save for special occasions out and have lunch or a snack, a cup of tea. Take a photo and invite a friend to do the same for a “separate but together” teatime, or eat “together” via FaceTime or Skype.
  • Hang a beautiful crystal in the window to make sparkles and rainbows.
  • Attach a perspex bird feeder to the kitchen window. You can see our one here…

GARDEN/YARD

  • Sow vegetable or herb seeds, plant up tender vegetables in a greenhouse, sow cress or micro seeds for quick fresh greens.
  • Watch the birds at the feeder.
  • Read outside in the garden, make a reading spot for yourself.
  • Use a special cuticle and hand cream after you’ve been working outside.
  • Sit outside and “just be”.
  • Rub your hands in the thyme, lavender, basil or mint bush.
  • Prepare the area for the vegetable garden.
  • Clean and check outside furniture.
  • Clean/prepare the barbecue and implements. Gas/charcoal.
  • Wipe down the parasol.
  • Take care of fruit trees or bushes. Swap excess garden produce with friends or neighbours.
  • Light a small bonfire.
  • Toast marshmallows.
  • Have a go at growing herbs in containers or recycled tin cans or plastic pot.
  • Water plants, set up a rainwater collector.

MY EASY RECIPES AND CRAFTS PLAYLIST!

Let there be light

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I’ve had a bit of an ‘off’ day.  Felt restless.  Spilt my morning cup of chai.  Spilt candle wax all over my hands.  Lost one of my favourite new earrings on my way home from my piano lesson…  So I did the only thing I knew…I shined my sink!  (Fellow Flylady afficionados will understand me.)  And right now – 6.39pm – I’m in the kitchen, feeling gooooood!  Listening to Unga Bunga (a Danish ‘get ready to go clubbing’ radio show) and looking at one of the most beautiful sights I know – the light on the end of my kitchen tap.  Behold.  And weep!  ;D 

Hope you have a fabulous Friday and a wonderful weekend! 🙂

Copenhagen Kitchen – week 12

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We. Are. Finished. No. More. Kitchen. Remodel.

12 weeks. 12 weeks that actually flew by (thank you again, Flylady).

What now? Well, I’ relearning to cook in the new kitchen. Still finding out how all these new (and wonderful) kitchen appliances work. Just the other day I discovered that the hob (induction) has 5 rings that have seperate timers on them… So I can cook pasta for, say, 12 minutes, boil broccoli for 4 minutes, gently heat sauce for 3 minutes – and they switch themselves off automatically. How cool is that? 😉 And I haven’t even got to the chapter about the automatic temperature sensor…the hob came with special barcode stickers that you stick on the sides of your saucepans and it automatically cooks your steak to perfection. Apparently.

But what now, now? I need to find a new topic for my Monday posts. The blog at the moment looks like this:

  • Tuesday – crafts, usually 15 minute ones 😉
  • Wednesday – my life, often Denmark related
  • Thursday – menu planning
  • Friday – things I like
  • Saturday – normally a recipe
  • Sunday – Christmas planning

I’m thinking it’s been a while (too long) since I sat in my little BlogTalkRadio studio… My idea at the moment is to write a post Monday morning and follow it up in the afternoon (Danish time) with a radio show. “Café Copenhagen”. A chance for Flybabies to get together for a chinwag or a good old pamper session – for those magic 15 minutes! As Emma says, we shall see… 🙂

Copenhagen Kitchen – week 11

DIANE IN DENMARK

So here we are again, another Monday, another day of the kitchen remodel. But it’s all good – just need the electricians to come and finish off a couple of jobs tomorrow and Wednesday and then we’re done! 🙂

All in all, I can’t believe how stress-free the whole remodel thing has been. Unless you start counting the number of gin bottles I have put in the recycling bag… (Not kidding.) But truth to tell, we have not only survived this remodel, we have flown through it. Yep, it’s all thanks to the Flylady. The (ongoing) decluttering process. Morning routine. Before bed routine. Menu planning. Pampering. WHB. And, especially for me, my timer and those magic 15 minutes.

Seriously, if you haven’t already checked out the Flylady, please go and do it now. It’s free. And it all starts with…a shiny sink 🙂

Copenhagen Kitchen – week 10

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The kitchen is R.E.A.D.Y and we are open for business! Yay! Double yay! 🙂

After 9 weeks of washing dishes without a sink I’ve been allowed to come out of my camp kitchen in the basement and back up to the ground floor and into the light… Or semi-light, I should say, because we don’t have any spotlights working at the moment. Fault in the electricity cables… No wall lights or floor heating either 🙁  But not to worry, the electricians are here (Monday morning) and think they have located the cable in question. [slaps thigh and shouts ‘hooray’ in good old pantomime style]

I was allowed to run around naked in access to the kitchen last Wednesday night. DH was working late and DD7 was at a classmate’s house for play/dinner club. DS9 and I were supposed to be going out for sushi but we got a takeaway instead and christened our new dining area 🙂 The whole idea with the new kitchen was to give us space to sit and eat – something that lacked in the old kitchen.

To be perfectly honest, DS9 was actually rather relieved that we weren’t going to sit in the sushi restaurant where the drive-by shooting took place… Anyway, here we are, pleased as Punch…and the sushi was magnificent as always!

There were no builders/electricians/plasterers/painters here last Thursday or Friday. Which suited me down to the ground because I wanted to move my stuff back in there and just enjoy my new shiny sink. Complete with pull-out hose and light on the end of the tap:

Have to admit, aside from being very fancy, the tap light seems to have hidden telekinetic powers and makes young children want to help…

I’ve posted a new video of the kitchen on youtube so you can compare the new to the old. Or maybe you want to see how it looked, halfway through the remodel? Hope you enjoy. And there are plenty of new pictures over at picasa.

And what now? Well, we’ve already done a lot of baking in the new oven. DKs are enjoying the new fridge/freezer immensely judging by the amounts of cold water and ice they are consuming. I still need to figure out the new hob (which can apparently fry a perfect steak all by itself with no adult supervision) but the dishwasher works just fine and even shines a little red light on the floor, so I know that it’s running. Technology. Gotta love it!

Tune in next Monday. When we’re – hopefully – in the home straight. Who knows, the two of us might even have a chance to be alone..? 😉

Copenhagen Kitchen – week 9

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OK, OK, so I shouldn’t have been so cocky last week and told you that things were going swimmingly with the new kitchen… Because on Tuesday the poor kitchen-fitter came down with a bad bout of the flu and was off ill for the rest of the week! 🙁

But – praise the Kitchen Gods – he is now fully recovered and arrived (along with the architect) at 8am this dreary, Monday morning – yay! They are working as fast as they can, and (fingers crossed, knock on wood, 7-9-13 as they say here in Denmark) we should be more or less back on schedule.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, the plumber is coming to connect the sink and fancy pancy American fridge. Yep, iced water, icecubes and crushed ice – did someone say frozen margaritas??

Wednesday it’s the electrician’s turn.

Thursday I think it’s the plasterer or the painter. Or maybe both 😉

So all in all it’s going to be an(other) exciting week. I promise to take lots of photos of the work in progress and add them to my album over at Picasa.

See you next Monday with a progress report and – who knows – maybe even a shiny sink? 🙂

POSTSCRIPT:

The best thing about a new kitchen when you’re a child?

Why, the gigantic cardboard boxes, of course! 🙂

Copenhagen Kitchen – week 6

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Today’s post is a bit of a cheat because there is no news as such on the kitchen remodel – aside from the fact that things are going swimmingly and the painter is now hard at work – because we have ‘escaped’ to Edinburgh for a few days! 🙂 It’s the school’s autumn week and we have taken the chance to go and visit my Mum and Dad in Scotland – hurray! Got here this morning and it has been a delight to wash up dishes in a normal sink… [insert a very long sigh]

DH couldn’t take time off but is making sure things go as planned back at the ranch. And, if all goes well, when we return to Copenhagen on Friday, we may even have doors and windows – yeehaw!

Promise there’ll be a proper update (and more photos…) on the kitchen next Monday. Until then, I’m putting my feet up and enjoying Mum’s cooking! 😉

Copenhagen Kitchen – week 5

DIANE IN DENMARK

Builders were here this morning at 7am – as they are every day – and the kitchen remodel charges on at a lightning pace. There are a bunch of them here today:

  • 2 brickies – who are laying floor tiles on top of the cement floor they made earlier, which covers the electric floor heating ‘net’ put down by the electrician, which was laid on top of another layer of cement made by the brickies, which covered metal runners, which were placed on the old wooden joints from 1933…
  • 1 joiner – removing the doors and surrounds so the brickies can lay the tiles right up to the doors
  • 1 gaffer (big boss) who comes to check in on things every day
  • 1 electrician who is finishing off some wall sockets, then the brickies can finish preparing the walls

Work on the leaky bathroom on the 1st floor has finished, so we’re now back in business with that. So no more mess on the 1st floor. Thank goodness.

The plumber and electrician are also finished putting cables/pipes through our hall cupboard. So yesterday we were able to replace all the coats, schoolbags, basket 1 (bike helmets + bike keys/lights), basket 2 (umbrellas) and basket 3 (old grocery bags), together with the emergency torches and fire extinguisher 🙂

I’m still updating the Picasa web album on a daily basis. Click here if you’re interested in photos. And here for videos.

And as it’s Monday – which is WHB day if you live in a Flylady world – my final job was to change my hoover bag and give it some TLC. So I’m ready for whatever (dust) this kitchen remodel can throw at me 😉

See you next week.

Copenhagen Kitchen – week 4

DIANE IN DENMARK

Feels quite funny to be typing ‘week 4’ because it seems like just yesterday we started work on the kitchen remodel. And yet I’ve almost forgotten what it was like in the old kitchen…thank goodness I put that video on youtube! 😉

I’m flying along in my camp kitchen in the basement. OK so it’s not the brightest or biggest of places (need to get an extra lamp from Ikea – I.crave.light) but it’s working fine. Biggest help has been menu planning. Which is kind of funny because that, along with paper clutter, has always been my achiles heel. Hoping it will last beyond the remodel and be my latest, new Flylady habit. I do my online grocery shop and post the menu here on the blog every Thursday. Keeps me accountable. And (do I really need to say this?) the cost of my food bill is going down and I’m trying out more and more new dishes. We even had Eve’s Pudding for dessert last night – something I haven’t had since I made it with my Mum back in Scotland over 25 years ago 🙂

On the kitchen front? We now have a cement floor to walk on! 🙂 And the builders continue to work like trojans. A couple of small hiccups, but we’re on schedule. They did, however, find a leak from the bathroom on the first floor… Work starts there tomorrow morning – so no more baths or showers there until probably the weekend. But, hey, we’ve still got the loo, and a loo on the ground floor, and a makeshift shower in the basement (where I have my camp kitchen), so it could be worse, right?!

The major addition to the kitchen this week will be the new, flat ceiling. (At the moment there are two different ceiling heights, and one of them is sloping.) In Denmark there is a tradition of having a rejsegilde (small party or reception) for the builders and all those involved when the roof of a new house goes on. They put a little flag at the highest point on the roof together with some wreaths. Then serve unlimited amounts of Danish frankfurter sausages, cola and beer! 😉 I’m planning to do the same when our kitchen ceiling is finished… So that’s all for today – I’m off to add sausages and Carlsberg to my shopping list. See you next Monday! 🙂

Copenhagen Kitchen – week 3

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Three weeks into our kitchen remodel and things are chugging along nicely. A few minor setbacks, lots of loose ends, but lots of progress.

Got a bit disheartened with the constant layer of dust which seeps out of the kitchen and up to the bedrooms on the first floor, all the rooms on the main floor and down to the office/laundry/workshop in the basement… But a quick feather dust followed by 10 minutes with the hoover and another 10 with a mop gets us back to ‘normal’.

The Flylady mantra of ‘you can do anything for 15 minutes’ has been my saving grace. Because for me, the hardest part is getting started and fighting the inner princess that says ‘poor old me, waaaaa, I don’t want to do this and I don’t have the time’! 🙂

The builders arrive at 7am and I try to do the clean up as soon as they leave for the day – which can be anytime between 3pm and 6pm. If I’m honest, the ‘dust’ situation is getting better. They’re finished all the demolishing work and are building things up again. The skip which contained the old kitchen has been towed away, so there isn’t much to see in the front garden.

Though now part of the lawn in the back garden is covered with boards/cement mixers/sand etc. In my pre-Flylady days I would have given up on the garden completely (‘why should I bother when part of it is such a mess?’) but this time I’m out there weeding/pruning for 15 minutes a day and mowing where I can. Don’t think our garden has ever looked this good in the 9 years that we’ve been here 🙂

One strange thing about this whole business is that from time to time I ‘miss’ the old kitchen. For example, if I’m prepping dinner in our camp kitchen in the basement, I have an urge to look in an old kitchen cupboard. Which I can’t – for obvious reasons! I suppose I spend so much time in the kitchen, it’s like losing a limb! LOL Thankfully I had the forethought to take lots of pictures for the quintessential ‘before & after’ album.

I update the album every couple of days

http://picasaweb.google.com/DianeDenmark

And I add videos when there are big changes

http://youtube.com/user/FlybabyDianeDenmark

That’s all for week 3. Join me in week 4, when we hopefully have a kitchen floor to walk on! 😉