GinnyB Home: Walking by...

The Art of "Not Noticing"...

Okay. So this happened. You go out of town for a few days...or a week...or maybe two...okay, nearly three weeks, and your pot plants just up and die. Actually, it was probably more of a slow, painful death. And it could have been something to do with leaving the watering of these pots up to Mother Nature. Apparently she wasn't on the ball for those few weeks.

To make matters worse, I've been home for over a week or two...just walking by...and I guess I sort of stopped noticing the tragedy of it all. Until a friend called in, then I suddenly noticed! Just like you don't notice the spider web in the corner of the room, until you have guests sitting underneath it. Then you notice it, and it's all you can see for the rest of the evening, and you just hope they don't look up.

As the pots of death are perched on the stairs to the main entrance of my home, it was kind of hard to believe that I ever stopped noticing. Now I love my pots of colour, so there was a slight twinge of guilt that I had allowed these plants to waste away from neglect.

Once, when I brought my first home, a real doer upper, I was contending with a nasty bathroom (see photo to the right showing you just how nasty that room actually was), that also shared duty as a laundry. It came with its own eco-system, which was pretty cool, because I'm open to creating your own, unique biosphere, if that's the way you roll. Except that the particular lifeform this bathroom was habouring could up and kill you. I guess the previous owner hadn't been introduced to the joys of bleach or maybe he just enjoyed fungus. In amongst the mould there was a bath, with shower overhead. It had a two tap system. As soon as you adjusted the cold water to offset the boiling hot water, you would get an icy blast. It was all or nothing. Third degree burns or hypothermia.

This unique space even had a hole in the wall by the tap. It allowed you a view of the backyard. Great for seeing when unannounced visitors turned up. Nice ventilation in the summer, not so nice in the winter, unless you enjoy cold blasts of air shooting across you, when you are wallowing in your tub.

Of all the issues that the bathroom had, my biggest hate was a small, cardboard box I put in the corner for laundry, as there was no room for a proper hamper. I remember whining to a work colleague about the box and she said to me "You know? There'll come a day when you don't even notice that box". She was right. The box become a piece of the furniture, and I didn't even hide it when friends and family came over. It was a sad day when I finally renovated the bathroom and got rid of said box. I wonder what every became of it?

There are things in my present home that I try hard not to notice, and I'm pretty good at the act of "not noticing" when there is an expense involved to tidy up that particular area. However, this is usually a false sense of economy and can end up incurring a bigger expense. Especially when the "not noticing" can lead to insidious damage to the home (check in another time when I will discuss the tragedy of not priming before painting the outside window frames).

Anyhow, back to the pot plants. There is something I can do which is affordable for me, and will make my home a little more lovable. So it's time to stop walking by...time to notice and do something about the scene of the crime that's taken place on my front steps.

Step one

Admit you have a problem