June. The month that starts summer. The month when we should be dusting down our sunglasses and joyeously celebrating the fine weather with picnics on the beach. And yet here I am, in a thick winter jumper and woolly socks, flanking myself with cats to keep me warm. Our house is north-facing so windchill aside, it’s generally warmer outside than in but this is getting silly now. JUNE.

In the evenings, even with jumpers and post-dinner warmth, we get rather chilly and start contemplating the options. Usually it suffices for me to just tuck my feet under a blanket and pile on another cat, but sometimes John starts pawing about turning on the fire or the central heating.

We usually stay together in the living room in the evening so it doesn’t seem to make sense to heat the whole (small) house with the gas-powered central heating radiators but the central heating is pretty efficient and it heats the room in a fraction of the time we would need the (also gas-powered) fire to achieve the same warmth. We’re not looking for a sauna, just something to take the chill off the evenings.

Any thoughts as to which is more energy efficient?

One of my projects for the summer is to redecorate the attic room – partly because we’ll need an office up there soon but mostly because I’ve been intending to decorate it for the best part of six years now and it’s getting beyond a joke.

Given the “yeah, I’ll do it this year” attitude to decorating it for the past two-thirds of a decade, we’ve not been that careful on the carpet up there – it’s covered in soot (from trips under the eaves), paint (from when I knocked over some tester pots when I was thinking of painting it a couple of years ago) and blobs of plaster (from the proposed decorating moment before that). And it’s a impractically pale colour that was put in at least a few years before I moved into the house.

So… a bit of future recycling planning because we haven’t the room to store it – what can I do with an old, slightly manky carpet?
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Some weeks, we get through a loaf of bread in about a minute and a half and other times, we have a couple of slices of toast the day we get the loaf and the rest just sits there forlornly as we fill up with other carbohydrates instead. This week is somewhere inbetween and we’ve got about half a loaf left.

But what, oh what, can I do with it?

I suspect throwing it all out to the birds would a) be overkill since they can’t eat that much and b) literally overkill, because of the cats (or at least overpounce-and-miss because our cats are tubby and generally inept when it comes to that sort of thing) but it seems such a waste to just throw it in the bin.

Any suggestions?
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We flipped to roll-on ones from aerosol anti-perspirants for environment reasons – both big, out-there environment (the aerosol bit) and little, in-here environment (the spray quickly made the bathroom unpleasant as it deodorised your lungs) – but now we’re left with lots of roll-on bottles instead.

I suspect the bottle and the ball are different types of plastic so am wary to throw them in the recycling bin – anyone know if they can be recycled? Does it help if you pop the ball out first?

But better than that, are there any reuses for them? Either complete or in parts.

And what about stick deodorant containers (the narrower, ball-less ones)?
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Friday is usually dilemma-day but anyway…

A suggestion from my dad:

Daughter,

So then?

Garden uses would probably be best but I’m sure he’ll consider anything. And he’s promised to take photos of anything he does with them : )