There’s something in the air

There’s a definite sense of spring being just around the corner. The snowdrops in my front garden burst into life a few weeks ago and the crocuses joined them shortly afterwards.  When they first started to flower, I couldn’t help feeling a sense of wonder. Not that I’ve never seen snowdrops or crocuses before or even that I’ve never had spring flowers in my garden before. But just something about the renewal of life in spring, the constant cycle of the seasons. The fact that nature never forgets to regenerate and come back to life after its winter rest.

And now the daffodils are out as well and delicate, pretty pink and white blossom is appearing on trees everywhere.

The days are getting noticeably longer. It’s no longer dark when I get up in the morning and we’re almost, almost at the point in the year when it’s still just about daylight when I put my key in the front door when I get home from work. And I’ve woken to the sound of the dawn chorus on a couple of mornings.

Over the past few weeks my thoughts have been turning to spring cleaning. It somehow feels like the right thing to do and makes me wonder if maybe the old cliche is actually more of a human – even an animal – instinct.

Over Christmas – which does seem ages ago now – I re-read Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying. At first I felt a little disappointed in myself and slightly ashamed that I needed to read the book again. I had thought that having read it a year ago and having done some de-cluttering, that would be the end of it and that I’d never need to de-clutter again. But I was encouraged to read Marie Kondo herself commenting on Instagram a week or so ago about the difference in people’s reactions when they read her book for the second time compared to their first time. So it seems that I’m not alone!! And if I’m honest – I know that I didn’t completely de-clutter my home last year so the job hasn’t really been completed.

But most of the spaces that I tidied and organised last year have stayed that way and I have to say that a lot of them do make me smile when I see them. Using small boxes, lids, even small jars and pots to organise the contents of a drawer definitely works – it’s a great way to stop things becoming a tangled mess! and makes it much easier to see what’s in there and find what you’re looking for.

So my partial success is spurring me on and I’d say that I have more faith and confidence than I had a year ago that it works and also that it is sustainable.

Yes – there’s definitely something in the air. A sense of new life, a sense of fresh beginnings. And for me there’s a feeling of renewed energy and enthusiasm to clear my home of some more of the things I’ve been holding onto for too long in an attempt to take another step closer to creating a simpler and less cluttered life.

Turning on a new tap

Similar to turning over a new leaf …

I had a new tap fitted on my kitchen sink recently. The previous one had been dripping for ages – months  – and eventually got to the point where it was so annoying that I had to do something about it. The first plumber I contacted didn’t turn up. The second one did turn up and said he’d done what he could but wasn’t sure if it would stop the dripping. He said the only solution might be to replace the whole thing. Within a week, it was dripping again. For several more weeks I ummed and arrhed about whether to contact him again or whether it would be best to give up on him and find yet another plumber. Eventually I decided to call him again. I received a text message to say that he was in France and would contact me when he was back.  Several more weeks passed. And the dripping was becoming more frequent – and more irritating. And guess what?  I didn’t ever hear anything further from him.

I finally decided that enough was enough and phoned a third plumber. He turned up and replaced the whole tap. It cost a bit more than I was really expecting but by that stage I was beginning to think I’d be living with a dripping tap for the rest of my life. The complete silence in the kitchen when he’d left was so lovely that it felt like money well spent.

And not only was the silence delicious – but the shiny, new tap seemed to ‘spark joy’ every time I went into the kitchen and suddenly I felt an urge to keep the room clean and tidy. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been on a de-cluttering mission since the beginning of the year and have been trying to follow the advice and tips given by Marie Kondo. I had been wondering, though, how it was going to be possible to apply her principles to my kitchen as it’s tiny. And I do mean tiny – it’s 2.7m by 1.7m – so space really is at a premium!

Marie Kondo recommends not keeping anything on kitchen counters. But I’m really not sure that’s going to be achievable in a kitchen this size. Perhaps my best bet will be to aim for as little as possible on the counters… I really do think that some things will have to stay on the counters – such as my container of wooden spoons and the Vitamix . I actually don’t have enough cupboard space for the Vitamix…

So – the kitchen is currently about half done. When I first moved to this house around five and a half years ago, I did have some shelves put up in the corner above the fridge. I just knew that I was going to struggle with only one small cupboard for food.

And they’ve proved to be a very good decision.  As you can see, they are where I keep storage jars of dry goods – rice, cous cous, lentils, cereal, dessicated coconut, nuts, seeds and so on. It’s like an open storage cupboard – with the added advantage that I can see exactly what’s there – and not much gets lost at the back!

And I have to say – I’m quite proud of my ‘spice rack’ – shown in the picture on the right. I used to keep spices in a little wooden box with a shelf inside and a wire mesh door. It looked quite sweet but – to be honest – I couldn’t really see what was in there.  My new spice rack is made of three drawer inserts from a mini drawer unit from Ikea. They’re the perfect size for spice jars!  And now I can see clearly what I’ve got.

 

 

The outer part of the drawer unit – minus all the drawers and turned on its side is now my CD rack!

 

 

 

 

Another thing I had already done when I first moved in was to reduce the number of plates I kept in the kitchen. I have 2 dinner plates, 2 side plates plus one that belonged to my Grandmother and two pasta bowls on a corner storage rack with 2 cereal bowls plus two others and two mugs next to them on the shelf. This is more than I need for myself on a day to day basis. The other plates are stored elsewhere in the house ready to be used if I have more than one guest.

It then occurred to me that I could apply the same principle to my cutlery drawer! So I took out all but two knives, two forks, two desert spoons and two teaspoons – and again I’m managing perfectly well!!  And actually – it’s made me question whether I really do need all the wooden spoons in the pot on the counter… I’m sure at least two of them have never even been used!!  Would you excuse me – I’m feeling the urge to go and reduce my wooden spoon collection …

 

 

 

The sun has got his hat on…

Hip, hip, hip hooray!  The days are getting longer and the sun is getting warmer.  So I decided at the weekend it was time to get my rotary clothes drier out of its winter hiding place in the shed and back into the hole on my patio and to start putting washing outside to dry. To me – putting the clothes drier up  and being able to dry clothes outside again is one of the signs that summer is well on its way.

For the past few years I’ve been using soapnuts to wash my clothes with. They look a little odd – and not at all as if they’ll clean your clothes. But they do!!  And what’s more – they do a great job! They’re hollow, brown shells about the size of cherries and are quite sticky. They grow on trees in India.  They come in an unbleached cotton bag with a biodegradable inner polybag. And inside the outer bag – with the soapnuts – is a smaller bag. You use this to put 6 to 8 half shells into and then pop the little bag and the soapnuts into the washing machine with your washing. Then just wash as normal.

Each mini bagfull of soapnuts can be reused 2 or 3 times. It’s a really economical way to wash your clothes – each 500g bag lasts for ages!!

I used to find it tricky to remember how many washes I’d done with each little bag. And then I came up with – what I think – is a pretty ingenious solution. Between washes, I leave the little bag in a dish where it dries out ready for its next use. One day it occurred to me that what I needed was some way to count how many washes I’d done with each litte bagful of soapnuts. And then it came to me – I could use some pistachio nuts – the ones that flatly refuse to open and allow you to get to the nut inside. So next to the dish that the bag goes in, I have three pistachio nuts and each time I do a wash load, I put one of the pistachios into the dish and when there are three nuts in the dish, I know it’s time to change the soapnuts.

And on the subject of pistachios – I came across a great little tip a while ago for opening the ones that are midway between those that you can open easily and the ones that you know you’re never going to prise open (the ones to be used as counters!)  What you do is take one of the half shells from a nut you’ve already opened and put it in the little gap between the shell and the nut of the one you’re trying to open. Then twist and hey presto – another nut for you to eat!

Now back to the soapnuts – and another cool thing about them – because they’re a natural, plant product, when you’ve finished with them for washing, they can be put into a composter. And the same with the bags they come in and the little wash bags.

So pretty much the whole thing is biodegradable – which appeals to my environmentally friendly values.  OK – I do realise that there must be some airmiles involved in getting the soapnuts to the UK. Perhaps that’s a story for me to investigate another time …

The outer bags come with a couple of lovely wooden beads on the tie closure. I’ve been saving the beads and threading them onto a cord. It’s actually one of the cords that formed the tie closure on one of the outer, main bags I bought. I’d like to collect enough to make them into a set of mala beads to use for meditation.  But as the soapnuts are so economical, I have a feeling it may take me some time to collect enough beads …

 

The underworld under my stairs

The cupboard under my stairs looks oh so innocent from the outside…

 

But it’s the place where loads of things had been shoved over the past five and a half years. Things that I’d forgotten I even had. When I first ventured in there to de-clutter and give it a bit of KonMari treatment, I couldn’t see what was in there. The area immediately behind the door wasn’t too bad – it was as I peered into the thin end of the wedge shaped cupboard that all I could see was a jumbled mess of stuff.

 

 

So it all came out and needless to say, I could hardly believe that so much had fitted in there!

As recommended by Marie Kondo in her book ‘The Life-changing Magic of Tidying’, I sorted everything into categories – household cleaning items, decorating, car, tools, shoe cleaning and so on.  I was quite amazed at the number of different shaped and sized screws and nails I’d accumulated over the years. Could one woman possibly need to stock/store quite such a huge variety?  And that’s one woman who doesn’t even really do DIY…

As I was sorting through the items, the obvious thing to do seemed to store anything I wasn’t likely to use very often in the shallow end of the wedge. So things to do with the car went into one box, shoe cleaning items went into a sturdy paper bag and decorating things went into an old plastic storage box that I came across. I must have had it since the 1990’s – possibly even 1980’s. But it’s a good sturdy thing and I liked the idea of giving it a new purpose rather than throwing it away.  I gave it a wash, put the decorating things in it and into the corner of the cupboard it went.

I removed a couple of hooks from the tall end of the cupboard. These had been getting in the way of the ironing board ever since I’d been storing it there. And suddenly not only did the ironing board fit in more easily but I was also able to store the long part of the vacuum cleaner there and my steam mop.

As I’ve already said, the area immediately behind the door wasn’t too bad – although it still benefitted from some tidying and reducing. I had already created a makeshift shelving system in this part of the cupboard using an old side table with an empty wine box on its side on top of it.  The box still has the dividers in it and works perfectly as a wine rack!

 

On top of the wine box is another cardboard box on its side containing spare kitchen rolls, a box of cat food and although you can’t see it in this photo – inside the Nike box – also on its side – I’ve stored tins of cat food. And then on top of this box are cleaning things.

The whole cupboard feels so much more organised and I can find things much more easily.

 

 

It never ceases to amaze me how so often when you’ve been thinking about something for a while, suddenly other related things seem to pop into your life.  Whilst I was giving my understairs cupboard the KonMari treatment, one of my Facebook friends posted an article about scientific research that had been carried out into ways to keep your brain in good shape – particularly as you start to get older. One of the suggestions was to come up with new ideas every day – to be creative and inventive.

It occurrred to me that by using things I already had but being a little creative about how I used them – like turning boxes on their sides or storing things in ways you possibly wouldn’t normally do (tins of cat food on their sides), I was in fact pretty much putting this into practice.

So the whole exercise of de-cluttering my understairs cupboard suddenly seemed like a win-win-win situation. Not only was I de-cluttering and re-organising, I was re-using things I already had instead of throwing them out – and into the bargain, I was doing my brain some good!

 

Coming back to focus

For the past couple of months I’ve been working on de-cluttering my home. My sister gave me a copy of Marie Kondo’s ‘The life changing magic of tidying’ for Christmas. I was delighted as we’d been talking about this topic for a few weeks and I’d been thinking  for quite a few months that I needed to de-clutter. Truthfully, I seem to have spent most of my adult life feeling that I need to de-clutter…

Sometimes I wonder whether I’m actually a bit of a hoarder and slightly more horrifying is that I have been asked this question by other people on a few occasions. I genuinely don’t believe that I am – I believe it’s more a case of not wanting to just throw things away if they can be used for another purpose. And this has turned out to be the case with some of my de-cluttering and re-organising. I now have numerous boxes and box lids creating sections within drawers.  Then there’s my desire not to simply throw things in the dustbin to end up in a landfill site.

At first the de-cluttering seemed to be quite easy.  Maybe because I started during a period of time off work and had five clear days to focus on it. My mind seemed to slot easily into the mindset needed to discard the things that no longer really serve any purpose in my life – or as Marie Kondo describes it – ‘spark joy’ for me.  But now it seems to have become more difficult. I’ve got piles and boxes of things around the house that need going through. Maybe I’ve strayed from the recommended method of doing it – one category at a time – and have got too many different categories half done.

In some ways it almost feels similar to my attempts to meditate.  I recognise that it’s a long-term process and isn’t going to happen or fall into place overnight. Both processes require patience and persistence.  And perhaps the need to constantly bring my mind back to what it’s supposed to be focusing on. Am I breathing in? Am I breathing out? Does it spark joy? Does it not spark joy?

Both processes are about focussing on the here and now and being present in your life as it is at this moment.  It seems  that Marie Kondo’s method of touching each and every object in your home does help you to ‘feel’ whether you really want each particular item. And focussing your attention on each object – even if only for a short time – does somehow seem to make decision making clearer and easier. Obviously though it’s going to be quite a slow and long process especially if you own a lot. Now I can understand why she says that it may take six months to de-clutter a whole house!

Interestingly – and this may be coincidental – or it may well be an effect of my so-far partial de-cluttering and slightly improved ability to meditate but I have begun to feel more focussed over the past few months and have a clearer idea of what I do and don’t want in my life. So I believe that Marie Kondo is right when she says that de-cluttering is about so much more than simply tidying your home and that it can have much deeper and far-reaching effects on the whole of life.

What could my life be like in a few months time?!!

What a load of rubbish

This is the sight that greeted me when I left for work yesterday morning. It’s two weeks’ worth of recycling produced by four households. Four very small households – two of which consist of just one occupant. I find it quite horrifying that we can produce so much waste in two weeks… and this is only the waste that can be recycled. On alternative weeks, you’ll find four wheelie bins of non-recyclable rubbish outside our houses.

I suppose on the plus side, this rubbish was at least going to be recycled.

One of the books that has had quite a profound influence on my thinking over the past couple of years is Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson.

Bea, who is French by birth, lives in California with her husband and two sons. Her zero waste lifestyle is based around the principle of the five R’s – refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and rot. By following these principles, the waste produced by her family over the course of a year that ends up in landfill fits into one mason jar. It’s an inspiring and thought-provoking book.

Having tried to apply her thinking and approach, I have to say, I take my hat off to her – it’s not easy to live a zero waste life … and I’m not claiming by any means to be anywhere close to achieving it. I think most of us have become so used to living in a world of pre-packaged goods and take for granted so many of the products designed for our convenience.

And strangely enough this was highlighted for me at work yesterday. I went to the postroom to frank a letter I had to send and had to wait whilst a colleague franked her post. I noticed though that rather than putting the envelopes into the franking machine directly, she printed a label for each one. I did ask her why she’d done it that way and she replied that it was quicker than putting each envelope through the machine.  It was on the tip of my tongue to comment on the non-essential use of sticky labels – not to mention the plastic backing from each one that would eventually find its way to landfill – but I didn’t say anything. Perhaps I should have done – maybe it would have made her think twice next time. I have a feeling though that I may have just received a strange look and she would have left the postroom thinking I was a little weird …

 

Spring bulbs

How lovely to see crocuses beginning to flower in my garden!

They are such a sign of spring to me – a symbol of new life, new hope and new beginnings. I’m so pleased now that I made the effort to plant them last October. For some reason I’ve missed the planting window in the autumn/early winter for so many years and then always regretted it the following spring. For a few years I seemed to slip into a bit of a decline during November and early December. After the clocks changed at the end of October I’d slow down and just feel like hibernating. And whilst I do believe this is a natural reaction to the shortening days and cold, dormant months of winter, I do sometimes wonder whether it was a touch of SAD.

But the past couple of years have been different – I haven’t felt it quite so intensely/deeply. There are two things that I’ve done differently the past few years that I think may have brought about this change. One is that I’ve taken vitamin D tablets from around October onwards. And the other is that I’m practicing yoga more regularly now.
Reminds me that sometimes in life if we make a little effort and then exercise patience and give something time, eventually we will be rewarded.