Let’s Talk Packing

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Posted on February 4, 2023

I guess you thought from the title that I meant packing up an entire house.

No, just planning for a 4 night trip away. However, it will be to an area of distinctly inconsistent weather but it seems to be bordering on the cooler side (for summer) at the moment.

Two pairs of shoes.

A dress which can be worn with or without a cardigan.

Two pairs of trousers – emerald green linen pants and a pair of white slim-fit pants.

Two 3/4 sleeve tops.

Lightweight black pullover and cardigan.

White cotton shirt.

Short sleeve top.

Two scarves that will add both warmth and interest.

This is to cover predicted temperatures from 9C to 29C but mostly between about 15C and 22C.

It is interesting to note that the majority of the items were opshopped. The leather shoes were new last summer and one scarf and one top were bought new several years ago. The other scarf and cardigan were inherited from my mother. I made the white shirt from fabric that was given to me.

Packing Priorities

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Posted on January 30, 2023

We now have a contract for the sale of our home. While the contract is still conditional for a couple more weeks, it is time to really start moving forward with preparations for our move.

I have been sourcing previously used packing boxes and today I packed up 9 boxes of books from the bookshelves in our office/library area.

With a little over 7 weeks until moving day most of my focus is going to be on preparing for the big day and blog posts will mostly reflect that over the coming weeks. I will cover various aspects of how we handle the preparation.

It is 17 years since our last move. We have spent much longer in our current home than anywhere we had lived previously. However, we have decluttered and simplified during that time and it will be interesting to see how that impacts the moving process.

When we came here both of our daughters had left the family home but only relatively recently so we still had quite a lot of possessions that related to them but that is no longer the case.

More information on our future plans will unfold over the next few weeks.

Castle on the Move

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Posted on November 20, 2022

I can now reveal part of the reason for some of my extended absences from the blog. We are on the move. Our home of the past 17 years is listed for sale and we are ready to relocate.

Years of gradually decluttering and living simply are now paying off as it has been a relatively easy matter to have the house ready for prospective buyers to inspect.

Long-term readers of the blog will be familiar with glimpses of various sections of the interior of our home. The images below are some of the professional ones used in the listing of the property.

We are hoping the property sells reasonably quickly. Our plans include an interstate relocation so stay tuned for more exciting news.

Meanwhile, the regular posts will continue as we juggle the balance between keeping the house in ‘show home’ condition and continue our day-to-day lives.

Shopping and Sad

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Posted on January 5, 2021

We live in a semi-rural area which is about 30 minutes drive to the Sunshine Coast.

Today we braved the retail chaos which is becoming more pronounced as each year goes by. Early January is a particularly crazy time as we combine post-Christmas sales, back-to-school preparations and the inevitable holidaymakers. I think this year is worse than usual as more people are around as they are not travelling further afield.

This was our shopping list:

Roll of chicken wire – to fence a dog run for our puppy
Screws for attaching metal sheeting – to complete one side of the dog run
Galvanised pipe and connections – to make a hanging rail for the laundry
Small saddle brackets – to attach gate for dog run
9V battery – replacement for smoke alarm
Prescription medications – essential
Toaster – a replacement as the previous one has ceased to operate
Pet medication – essential

The list was thought out, planned and could hardly be described as frivolous. Since it is a 70km round trip we try to make sure that we make the journey worthwhile. We did not spend any longer than necessary and were home in under 3 hours despite the busy carparking areas and heavy traffic in every direction.

This is the hanging rail assembled. It needs to be painted and then installed.

So, why am I sad?

I think it was witnessing the overwhelming amount of stock in every shop we passed and the hordes of shoppers buying more and more stuff. Is it to replace an item, as with our toaster? Perhaps but I am more than mildly sceptical of that reason for more than a very small percentage of purchases.

The passion for decluttering in recent years and resultant overflowing charity shops leads me to think that many of today’s purchases or the goods they are replacing will be charity shop stock in a matter of months.

Many items, including clothes, electronics and household goods can be purchased cheaply and we do not value or care for them but almost regard them as disposable. When they break, are superseded by a new model or are simply no longer the ‘flavour of the month’ we toss them aside. Many of these discarded consumer items end up in landfill but to salve our consciousness we drop them at the charity shop. Unfortunately, a significant proportion still ends up in landfill and takes up time, effort and resources of those who volunteers to assist the various charities.

Everywhere you turn there are empty shops and businesses. Online shopping continues to gather pace. Are we buying more stuff because it is so easy to click a few buttons and it turns up on our doorstep in a matter of days? Is the lack of effort or consideration required making us shop more?

There is plenty of discussion amongst marketers on how to make sure that people continue to buy more and more stuff so that retailers and businesses can continue to increase their profits. At what cost?

We are drowning in our stuff and killing the planet in our quest to have more and more. I feel like something has to change and soon.

My personal action is to try not to waste anything, use what we have, source items secondhand where possible and be mindful that we have ‘enough’.

I wrote this post just over 6 years ago. There is a link to an interesting short video which is worth watching.

One Small Cupboard

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Posted on August 16, 2020

I started thinking about how to begin this post and went trawling through the archives of the blog. What an eye-opener!

This photo is from a blog post in January 2015. It is one half of the the cupboard in the office/study – the other half is my linen cupboard. You can read the whole post here if you are interested.

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These are before and after photos from a follow-up blog post in June 2015. We had down-sized from the 4 drawer filing cabinet to a 2 drawer one. This also meant that we were able to create an extra shelf using an offcut of melamine shelving.

Fast forward 5 years and after gradually reducing the contents of the filing cabinet, we were able to get rid of it completely and relocate the last few remaining files to the filing drawer of the desk which had remained unused up to that point.

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We decided to add another shelf but also removed the previous extra shelf as the cut edges had never been painted. There is plenty of space.

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Two shelves in place.

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The contents rearranged and easy to locate.

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The plastic crate on the floor of the cupboard is going to be our evacuation/emergency box. There will be a few things stored in it but the primary thing is a checklist of what to add (eg: medications) and what to do in specific situations. The contents and list may have slight seasonal variations and will be reviewed at regular intervals. My camera is sitting on top of the box.

It is interesting to see the evolution of the organisation of various spaces in our home. We have lived in this house for almost 15 years which is considerably longer than we have ever resided anywhere else. There has not been the impetus of an impending house move but we have actually decluttered quite a bit by doing it slowly and consistently. The blog is quite an amazing record of what we have achieved in the last 9.5 years.

Shopping Expedition

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Posted on August 9, 2020

When we went to Brisbane on Friday I made the most of the opportunity and bought a few things that had been on my ‘to buy’ list for a while.

My lipstick – yes, I only own 1 lipstick – was almost depleted.

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I bought a lip brush so that I can utilise all of the remaining lipstick.

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A new lipstick which will last for several years. The previous one lasted over 3 years so I expect this will last at least as long, especially as I am no longer going to work every day and sometimes do not wear any make-up.

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It is perhaps a little more pink than I have worn previously but I am sure I will get used to it. Samples to try out are no longer provided so the best I could do was to look at the small colour chart on the display stand.

I also bought a pair of stockings as I had managed to ruin my last remaining pair around the time I finished work – over 12 months ago. As you can see from the last sentence, I rarely require stockings but they are not something that I can easily buy locally so it is in my best interests to have a pair on hand if needed.

On the Wall

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Posted on July 1, 2020

It probably seems counter-intuitive to be sharing about our latest acquisition when I am often extolling the virtues of decluttering and minimalism. However, I do not subscribe to the bare, sterile aesthetic that is sometimes associated with minimalism.

Carefully curated and intentional purchases form the basis of our home decor and today we were able to collect this newly-framed piece.

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We have been looking for an appropriate piece of artwork for the corner of the dining area for some time. As GMan would say, “We will know it when we see it”. Well, we found this right under our noses. It is an enlargement of a photograph I took when we were on holidays in the south-west of Western Australia in 2005. This and a couple of other enlargements were lurking in a bag in the cupboard and I found them when I began sorting out our collection of photos.

The next step was to have it suitably framed. As with any professional framing job, it was a challenge to decide on a frame and surround which would complement the piece. We made our choice and left the work to be completed.

When we collected the finished framed photo I was very happy with the result. It looks perfect in this corner.

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And with the blinds drawn.

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Chairs, Clothes and Other Bits

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Posted on June 17, 2020

We have recently replaced the protective felt feet on the legs of our kitchen chairs. There are four high chairs which fit around our large return bench/meals area.

This project was undertaken two chairs at a time so for several weeks there have only been two chairs in the kitchen at any given time. I realised how much less cluttered the area felt with only two chairs. Since there is only GMan and I here most of the time, there is really no necessity to have four chairs.

The next question was, where could we store the other two chairs so that they would stay clean and be easily accessible when we had additional guests? We found that the wardrobe in the guest room would be perfect but the space was currently occupied. My off-season (summer) clothes were hanging on the rail and the floor was filled with about 100 magazines which are some of my retirement reading material as well as 5 large photo albums.

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I set about working out how I could re-arrange things.

The clothes were moved to the empty hanging space in the third bedroom which is used primarily as my sewing room.

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The photo albums provided the impetus to continue working on sorting and culling my photos – both digital and hard copy. You can read more about that in my post from yesterday. They will live in the library/study until they are no longer required.

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The magazines have been relocated to the drawers of the dressing table in the guest room. I intend to make a start on reading them and expect that once I have finished reading them I will pass them on to someone else who may be interested in them.

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The chairs are now in the wardrobe but easy to retrieve when we need them.

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I am pleased with the final result and as an added bonus I have been spurred into doing some more work on the photos as well as making a start on reading my large collection of Australian Geographic magazines.

Minimalism, Decluttering and Zero Waste

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Posted on June 15, 2020

While each of these concepts or activities are all different and stand alone, they can be inter-related.

Here are some definitions/explanations of the three terms.

Minimalism – is a tool to rid yourself of life’s excess in favor of focusing on what’s important—so you can find happiness, fulfillment, and freedom. This comes from ‘The Minimalists’. You can read the full article here.

Decluttering – to remove things you do not need from a place, in order to make it more pleasant and more useful. From the Cambridge Dictionary.

Zero Waste – is a set of principles focused on waste prevention that encourages the redesign of resource life cycles so that all products are reused. The goal is for no trash to be sent to landfills, incinerators or the ocean. From Wikipaedia.

Minimalism and decluttering are very personal and subjective topics and I am not here to tell you that you must only own a certain number of a particular item or what you should or should not remove from your life or home.

There is no good reason for the order in which I listed these topics but I feel as though decluttering should come first. I think it would be almost impossible to consider minimalism without first removing the clutter.

Identifying and removing clutter is the first step to clearing both physical and mental spaces. However, beware of anyone who tells you that they they decluttered their entire home on the weekend. It is best done as a considered and incremental process otherwise the results are likely to be the same as a ‘crash diet’. You may lose your way and end up in a worse position than when you started.

Below are are couple of photos of my bathroom. It did not always look like this. I do not expect that is how yours should look. It is simply an example.

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It is close to 20 years since I began to question the variety of lotions and potions I seemed to have but I did not throw any away. I gradually used things up and did not replace them. Routines have been simplified and we no longer use shampoo or conditioner. I mostly wash my hair with plain water and occasionally use a small amount of body wash. This was not a conscious decision but a by-product of questioning what we really need. I am not alone as you can see here.

The reason that I mentioned not using shampoo or conditioner is that is a perfect example of how minimalism, decluttering and zero waste can be tied together. My shower shelf and bathroom cabinet are not cluttered and our bathroom needs are minimal. There are no shampoo bottles ending up in landfill or at best, possibly being recycled. Additionally, trying to avoid harsh chemicals and toxins ceases to be an issue.

You do not need to subscribe to any particular philosophy but living an authentic life which works for you is important.

Your thoughts?

Easily Pleased

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Posted on June 11, 2020

Those of you who know me well or have been following this blog for an extended period of time will be aware that shopping is not a great love of mine. For the most part, I have pretty well everything I need. However, my plastic spatula which I have owned for at least 20 years met an untimely end courtesy of the blades of the blender. I realised that I definitely needed one so checked online and found that Big W had Pyrex brand large and small silicone spatulas on special so when we were out and about on Tuesday I attempted to get one of each size. The small ones were sold out so I will look again another day as GMan is keen for a small one to use when making sourdough.

In the meantime, here is the new addition to my collection of kitchen utensils.

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Coincidentally, I had planned to clean out the utensil jars and drawer. Each time I do this there is usually something which I decide is no longer required but I have culled my collection of utensils to a point that everything is worthy of its place in the kitchen.

Like all decluttering/streamlining projects, there is no ‘one size fits all’ as we all have different needs in the kitchen.

I have 2 utensil jars. These hold the majority of frequently used utensils.

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Here they are laid out on the bench.

The hand beater lives in the side of the regular cutlery drawer.

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The contents of the utensil drawer. These are generally too small or too sharp to stand in a utensil jar. Some, such as the vegetable peeler and measuring spoons are used every day while most would be used at least once a month and a few less frequently.

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I have an expanding bamboo divider which helps to keep them in some sort of order. Once I had wiped the drawer and the divider, I replaced all of the items.

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