Room For a Pony?

Last week we had an issue in our house. My OH broke my vacuum cleaner, I was very cross that he had broken it, even though it was an accident, as he broke it with my bugbear at the moment, his tools. OH is a builder, and will insist on bringing all his tools in at night from the car, and apparently they are TOO EXPENSIVE to go in the shed. TheShed is a very secure brick building, right next to our back door, and has a lockable double glazed window, and a very secure wooden door, which is also lockable. He broke the vacuum cleaner by dumping his tools on top of vacuum cleaner, in the bay window in our dining room, where I now keep the vacuum cleaner. And the reason it lives in the bay window in the dining room, rather than the huuuggggeeee walk in pantry that I have, is that I have emptied a lot of stuff out of pantry so OH can keep his tools in there. So you can understand why I was cross. OH was cross too, firstly because he got into trouble for breaking it and secondly because he says it is the ponies fault that he broke the vacuum cleaner.

Now, when he broke the vacuum cleaner pony was, as far as I know, eating her breakfast, not in our dining room, but in her stable. Or she could possibly have been in field arguing with the ponies in field next door. But I know she wasn't in dining room breaking the hoover. OH's reason for blaming pony? 'if there wasn't so much horse stuff in there, I might be able to get my tools in the pantry where it's supposed to go'.

Now, I don't know about you, but I have a certain amount of 'stuff' that has to live at home. We have a perfectly good tack room at the yard, with plenty of space to keep 'stuff', and it's all secure with a lockable door, and there are some vermin proof bins and cupboards that we can use, BUT some 'stuff' has to live at home. I have cleared out the pantry this weekend, and although I hate to admit it, there was an awful lot there. We have 1 pony that is a 5ft rug, but I have:
 

2 5ft 3in turnout rugs
2 5ft 3in fleeces
3 5ft coolers and 2 5 ft stable rugs
3 new headcollars and leadropes
a leather headcollar
a bag of stirrup leathers and irons
a bag of numnahs from pony through to full size
2 sets of travel boots
a very large bag of bandages and gamgees
2 jockey skull caps with silks
2 pairs of children's jodphur boots
a couple of grazing muzzles
2 full lunging sets (although I can't find my whip?)
a full grooming kit and a box with assorted brushes and sponges in which I must have put away wet as they are all very mouldy
a bag with hay nets in
a saddlery bag containing some shampoo, mane and tail conditioner and coat shine which I didn't know I had, and nothing has even been opened
a first aid box with 3 tubes of Sedalin, a bottle and a half of a Metacam in, 4 packets of Bute, 4 tubes of Gastroguard (very expensive stuff that), some Nobute, some purple spray, vet wrap and a tub of louse powder that has started to leak and made everything smell of aniseed
and a bag containing horse boots, from pony sized turnout boots to a set of full size clackety clack over reach boots that were all the rage on the Showjumping scene a few years ago!

Quite a lot of stuff, and most of it I didn't realise it was there. But OH just doesn't understand why I need to keep it all at home and not at the yard. Well, our tackroom is quite large, and very tidy and I don't really want to clutter it up with all this stuff. On top of that some of the rugs don't fit her anymore (been slimmed down) so there is no point having them up there, and the others that do fit her are for spares, or I'm saving them for shows. The travel stuff needs to be at home, as they will be used at shows and I don't want them to get dirty, and if I take the spare grooming kit up to use that will get dirty too, and that's for shows as well. The spare hats are Frankie’s that she has grown out of, as are the boots, and I'm saving them just in case we have another baby or someone smaller than Frankie needs them. The lunging sets live here as I don't lunge her much myself and YO has a full set that she keeps to hand at yard. She doesn't need the grazing muzzles yet and the first aid box needs to stay at home as some of it is very expensive. I have taken a headcollar and lead rope up this morning with me, but brought a couple home to wash. The rest of the stuff is just things I have saved over the years. Some of it has been from horses I have owned myself, and some of it I have had for current pony and for whatever reason I am not using at the moment.

OH now has a nice tidy pantry to put his tools in, and I won't get cross with him for leaving his tools all over the house. The only problem I had then was where was I going to put everything? So I got OH to empty shed of anything we didn't need (3 trips to the skip) and have converted the shed to a tackroom. I have even got him to use some of his VERY EXPENSIVE tools to put some hooks on the wall to hang stuff up on and put up a couple of shelves. So it looks like a proper tack room now. But he still can't really understand why I need all this stuff. He did say I should sell some of it on Ebay or something, but you can guarantee the minute I do that I will need something that I have sold. I then pointed out that now I have a dedicated space for pony stuff then I don't need to sell it, and in actual fact should buy some more stuff. He then pointed out that if I was going to do that then I would have to save some money somewhere, and seeing as how shed was bigger than the stable the pony lives in, it would save us livery each week if she came to live at home, and would save him cutting the grass too, and then I wouldn't have room for anymore stuff. Must admit he is right, and in future when I am looking at all these lovely equestrian properties that are for sale, with 'room for a pony', I will need to check with estate agents that as well as 'room for a pony' that there is room for all their stuff too!

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