The place nobody goes...

Do you have a place in the house where you put boxes and bags of stuff until it is overflowing?  Well, ours used to be the loft but in our current house, the loft is pretty non-existent so we have a huge area under the floors.  Unfortunately, despite being a large space, we still managed to fill it to the point of not being able to climb more than foot inside.

It seems that whenever anyone asks, “Where should I put …?” we have fallen into the trap of replying with, “Um, under the kitchen.”  Thus, it is pretty full and we had no idea what lurks in there.  Nothing worthy of a trip to Antiques Roadshow though.  Unfortunately.

So, this weekend, I decided enough was enough and a sort out was needed.  The house has never looked so much like a jumble sale.  Hannah loved it though – all this new and exciting stuff to play with.  Just a shame that her excitement didn’t rub off.  Hard work, chaos and tiring – yes. 

Still, we have filled our two black bins, given four bin bags to charity, another two bin bags of children’s clothes to family, and have 29 items on ebay – which doesn’t sound too bad until you realise that eight items are bundles of clothes of up to 35 pieces each and I have ironed, photographed and described each for uploading on the internet.

And for our weekend of work, we now have a tidy (although sadly not empty) space under our kitchen that nobody ever sees.  Was it worth it?  Yes!  Especially if it makes us a few pennies.

So by 6pm on Sunday night, it was all done and the house had some resemblance of order again.  So what did we decide to do with the rest of the evening?  Relax?  Um, no.  Because Michael reminded me that there was not a lot of things for lunchboxes for the week.  So out came the cookery books and ingredients and more mess ensued.

But, the result of this task was some lovely muffins that are not only quick and easy to make but taste fantastic.  So, if you fancy a go, here is the recipe for choc chips (will do more as the week goes on):

Choc Chip Muffins:

375g self-raising flour

90g butter

220g caster sugar

140g choc chips

310ml whole milk

1 egg lightly beaten

1.  Sift flour into a bowl and rub in butter.

2.  Stir in sugar, choc chips, milk and egg -  do not over-mix

3.  Spoon mixture into muffin cases (placed in a muffin tin) and bake at 200 Fahrenheit for approx 20 minutes.