Do these things happen to you?

When the sun shines along our upstairs corridor, I can see fluff along the sidewalls like snow drifts.

:skier:

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You all need my problem, not seeing things that actually are there.
Yesterday evening, as part of my veggie drive I got all the veg out of the drawer and placed them on the breadboard, this is directly behind the chopping board.

Then, one by one, I take each item (about a dozen) and chop it small before throwing it into the pan (Fran can eat small pieces, means I don’t have to mash). When I got to the last item, like the rest, into the pan it went and then I had a thought. Where was the potato? I couldn’t remember if I had chopped it and began to search all the little bits in the pan. It wasn’t on the chopping board, the breadboard, the counter top, the floor, or in the drawer in the fridge (I even counted the remaining ones in there, I buy or make up to, 7 each week so on a Friday there should be 2 left, and there were).

Absolutely mystified, I started it all again, and there it was, a single potato sitting plain as you like on the breadboard, waiting for the chop. How could I possibly have missed it? :astonished:

If you have a Mouseman board you can blame the mouse!
:mouse2:

Never happened in my house before, over 30 years, but now it has. I am sharing my upstairs studio with several field mice, one grown female rat with I think three of her teenage offspring.

I have bought humane traps but had no success yet. So, I put food down for them in one place and watch them with interest scurrying back and forth in the evening while I sit at my computer. The object being to confine them upstairs so they don’t migrate downstairs to the kitchen.

They don’t worry me and as soon as the weather is more amenable, they’ll be caught and released into the wild.

I’m sure that they may smell, but having had animals around the house for so long I think I’ve become nose-blind.

What’s next I wonder!!!

Happens to me frequently – cannot find something which is right under my nose. In my mind’s eye, I am looking for the TV remote, which is silver coloured and covered with buttons. But later, there is it, right under my nose, upside down and plain black in colour. Something to do with expectations?

Burners? What burners.

Just a slab of Gorilla glass set in worktop, with worktop as splash-back. Having been for gas forever, now I have induction I would never go back.

Mind you, when I did have gas it was pretty smartly arranged to avoid having ‘the back of a cooker’ at all

I tested those tiles for filth-retaining factor. I left one overnight with a splodge of tomato ketchup, a splodge of oily, tomato’y bolog sauce and a pool of red wne.


Being porcelain, running the tile under the hot tap was all that was needed - not even soapy water - to get it perfectly clean. So a wipe down every now and then all that needs doing.

I see I left the tape holding the utensil rails up while the Sikaflex went off. I learned my lesson with porcelain tiles and drilling holes. You either buy a drill bit that will drill porcelain - £20 - or use 1 HSS bit per hole - £1 ea and 10 mins per hole - or stick them up with Sikaflex.

The bread knife, top left, with the ‘Perloid’ handle must be 75+ years old. So there’s no chance that the bread board or thar knife will go anywhere near a sale room while I’m still extant.

I wondered if you’d like to come and stay with us for a couple of weeks and clean my kitchen for me. :grin: :grin:

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:rofl: :rofl:

Sue, I am no more enthusiastic for cleaning than you or anyone else. I give myself every chance of avoiding it by the design and fit-out first off.

My bete noir is dusting and hoovering. I leave it until I see’little grey mice’ [fluff balls] wisping about . Or if I pick up something that’s been on a surface and see the real surface, surrounded by grey, where the objct has been, I might get out the dusting kit.

My mother, who was an Army nurse, had all her bedrooms’ furniture on castors because when her cleaning lady came, all the furniture was moved aside and the hoover run where it had been.

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Having never heard of such a thing in my life before (till I googled it just now) I took your comment at face value and was wondering if you thought a mouse had carried off my little spud and then, realising it wasn’t to its taste, politely put it back again. :joy:

Or maybe not polite, maybe the little sod was messing with my head. :japanese_ogre:

Try using Nutella or peanut butter as bait. They’ll come flocking…

Yes they do like it but it isn’t infallible, I have had them ignore Nutella completely.

I wish! We are sharing our space with a young rat at the moment and I wish we weren’t. I think Bertie (our mutt) has decided it’s a household pet and the rat is totally ignoring our nutella and peanut butter. :roll_eyes:

Sorry! Earlier in this thread Mouseman popped up

When we moved into our current home there were several little mousey visitors. I carefully lined the backs and bottoms of lower drawers and cupboards, which they don’t like because it’s noisy. That was the last we saw of them.

Since then we redid the house rear façade, in the process blocked all mice exit and entryways. But not before they had munched into our L’Or coffee beans!

Ditto.

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It’s a glitch in the Matrix!

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It’s certainly a glitch, somewhere. :roll_eyes:

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Exhibit A, M’lud.

I’m sorry to say that in inner city we don’t do ‘catch and release’. It’s ‘them or us’. The first afternoon I used p/n butter I got 13 in 2 hrs.

Mice are stupid. You can put down a row of Little Victors. A mouse will get thechop. The next mouse moseys up to the next door trap, “Looks like Charlie’s copped it. Now, here we have some tasty peanut b…”

If you really did do this, chapeau because mice can squeeze thru the most amazingly narrow gaps. I saw a mouse running alongside the skirting board ***** and turn left, squeezing thru the gap which was less than half its normal body ‘thickness’. Astonishing. It just folded itself flat.

  • Mice like to feel a surface next to them as they run, so traps are best put next to walls and skirtings etc.
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A couple of weeks? How big and how filthy is this kitchen? :grinning:

I do have an advantage, if such it be. There’s nobody else here to mess things up. I may forget where I put something but wherever it is, I put it there. Nobody’s moved it.

Thing is, I think of a kitchen as a studio/workshop for food prep, so I rig my kitchens to reflect that. Hiding stuff away runs directly counter to that idea so, whie you may have been taking it easy this Saturday afternoon - a little siesta, perhaps? :yawning_face: :zzz: :zzz: - the photo of the induction hob - a quick check - is now like this.

Hot tip, picked up from the old mum … the tin of tomatoes is actually a ‘micro bin’. The High Maintenance Blonde [an artist] used to say “Not very aesthetic, is it?”

But what do you do with garlic skin peelings, carrot/courgette peelings? Not big enough to bother putting straight in the main bin. A ‘micro bin’ handy for all that little stuff - olives stones whist cooking, that sort of thing.

That casserole is my smallest of 4. :roll_eyes: I said I had too much stuff …

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Oh wow! I realise that not only do I need you to stay 2 weeks - yes it is that large and that messy - but I also need you to stay another two weeks so that you can redesign my kitchen for me. :grin:

I know what you mean about “nobody else”. Our gite kitchen is ALWAYS pristine when our guests arrive (well, the whole place is). Why? Because once I’ve cleaned it there’s nobody around to mess it up again - until the guests leave and I start again. :roll_eyes:

Have a thought for the woman who does the same at a house in the country owned by some friends of mine. Gorgeous place, edge of Exmoor.

Exterior hs 02

It can sleep 20 ! And 16-18 guests not unusual. Very difficult to find self-catering with that sort of capacity, so they do well.

But poor Carol. Come Monday morning she may have 10 bottom sheets, 10 duvet covers, 20 pillow cases, 18 bath towels, 18 hand towels, to launder and dry by Thursday morning - and the house to clean.

I forgot - and iron!

Meanwhie o/h Neil is sitting on the mower, trundling up and down the lawns, burbling a happy Zummerzet ditty

“Oive gat a bran noo combine 'arvester an oil lend you the key!”

Remember that one by Adge Cutler and The Worzzels?

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