Things Learned

For some reason I have been thinking back over the first three weeks of living alone and enumerating the lessons that have come my way. Not in any kind of order:

* Don't put the cordless phone base station next to the amplifier.

* Vacuum before you think it needs it, and the same goes for mowing the lawn.

* Always take the battery out of the smoke detector before grilling.

* Self-adhesive wall hooks sound good, but they don't work.

* There is no time you can start cooking dinner safe in the knowledge no-one will call. And it's more friendly in the long-term to say if you're busy rather than spoil things in silence.

* It takes the same total time and much less effort to shop three times a week without worrying about missing items as it does to try to do it all at once.

* Don't buy fresh vegetables on spec. Know what they'll be used for, and when, or buy frozen. No, AND buy frozen.

* There is no such thing as finishing furnishing.

* If a recipe calls for white wine, don't use white wine vinegar thinking it'll be similar. It might work, but dilute it.

* Washed clothes take more than a few minutes to dry. More than a few hours, sometimes, depending on the weather.

* If things are piled neatly enough, it looks like you've put them away. That works better for boxes of items than it does for clothes.

* It takes ten minutes longer to get out of the door if you're not leaving anyone behind in the house.

* Recipes are overrated, and most savoury dishes can be cooked by a mixture of instinct and the cooking times on the packaging.

* Put away the previous washing up before starting any more, or the new will make the old wet again, and you'll run out of rack space.

And, the biggest lesson:

* Despite many dark warnings, most things are possible if you give them a go in a positive kind of way.

But isn't it shocking how many things I didn't know? I expect there's many more yet.