One Week

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Posted on January 8, 2015

It is now one week into 2015 and this morning I woke up to the shocking news of a targeted terrorist attack in Paris. Like many others around the world, I was both sad and angry to hear this news. However, I was heartened to see the defiance of ordinary citizens in major centres all over Europe. They took to the streets in their thousands to show their support for freedom of expression.

Like them, I have a life to live and am not going to be sucked into the cycle of reporting on this and no doubt future ‘bad news’ stories.

I looked back at this blog post from New Year’s Eve when I wrote, “Meanwhile, I tried to keep my focus on blogging but there were times when I just felt too overwhelmed by events in the world around me to write about simplifying our life.”

One my my resolutions, if you wish to call it that, was that while I would keep abreast of news events here in Australia and also globally, I would not let the news define me.

I tend to deal in reality and don’t lay much store by clairvoyants, horoscopes, tarot cards or any of the other multitude of ways to “see” the future. I did laugh though, when I read a horoscope (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) in our free Mx newspaper at the train station yesterday. Normally, this paper would be well in the recycling but I brought it home to finish the special holiday edition of the Sudoku puzzle. This is what my Aries prediction for 2015 was:

“Random events will continue to occur around you. There’s no order to the universe. Life is meaningless. Stop trying to find meaning where there is no meaning. You cannot control the uncontrollable, so stop imagining there are arbitrary rules for dividing up and understanding existence by indulging in horoscopes.”

I liked the phrase, “you cannot control the uncontrollable”. There is definitely some value in that.

Meanwhile, today I will do some paid work as well as ironing, preparing dinner and perhaps some more sewing.

A Little Bit Every Day

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Posted on January 7, 2015

My method of keeping things organised to to do a little bit every day, or in my case every evening. At the risk of sounding like a cracked record, I work full-time hours and long days because of the distance that we commute but that is our choice.

Last night I did the bit of ironing that was waiting to be done, one load of washing and hung it out then put the next load in the machine. It was not a full load so when we arrived home this evening I pulled the top sheet off the bed and that made up the load. It is all washed now and in the basket.

It has been cool and damp here all day so the load that is on the line is not properly dry even though it is under the verandah. The next load of washing will be hung indoors overnight.

This is a portable rotary clothesline which I find invaluable in the wet weather.

This hanging rack is usually used to hang shirts waiting to be ironed as well as ones that I have done but tonight I will hang the freshly-washed shirts on here to dry.

I will put the dehumidifier on in the closed room overnight, the clothes will be pretty well dry in the morning. This eliminates the smell that clothes develop if they are damp for too long.

Once the washing is hung out I will finish stripping our bed and remake it with fresh linen. Then it will be time to crawl into bed.

I am working from home tomorrow and will make it a short day so that I can catch up on a few more jobs here.

By spending a bit of time each evening on household jobs, I can choose what I do on the weekends.

A Sleepover & Singapore

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Posted on January 6, 2015

We have a guest who is having a sleepover tonight.

Psycho Dog is on the left and Cousin P on the right. Cousin P belongs to my sister who lives about 20 minutes drive away. It is great that we can share the dog-sitting when either of us go on holidays or simply will be away overnight. The dogs get on well together and seem to enjoy the company, although they are usually both exhausted once the other goes home.

The other news of the moment is that we have booked our flights to Singapore for a holiday later in the year. No other details have been arranged although I will look for some suitable accommodation before too long. Unlike our other overseas trips we will not be touring. We will spend a week in Singapore, hopefully close to the centre of town. There will be no changes of accommodation and we will simply use public transport to make our way around.

Do It With a Diary

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Posted on January 5, 2015

I have never been very good with using a diary but I am hoping that this year will be different.

When the question was asked on an online forum of what your New Year’s resolution would be, this was my answer:

“I am going to stop trying to squash so much into the available time and learn to allow some slack. Recently, I seem to be stressing about meeting deadlines/arriving by a certain time etc. My mental health deserves better.”

The fact that it was 4 days before Christmas may have had something to do with my response, however, it was something that I had considered several days earlier of my own accord.

Now I just have to work out how to put this into practice. One of the first things is to use a diary. This neat A5, day-to-a-page diary was part of a Secret Santa gift which I received so it is definitely going to be put to use.

If I write things down rather than trying to carry a whole load of information in my head it will relieve all of the things I am trying to remember as well as showing clearly what is actually doable in one day. It also means that all of those little jobs that I think of that I am going to do one day are now allocated to a time and day. I choose the time to fit my schedule and will then just do them. No more forgetting the little stuff and trying to squash too much into the available time.

A grand goal and I am really hoping that I can make serious progress on achieving it.

Tomorrow is my first day back at work and I have 2 jobs listed in my personal diary. Post a parcel and take the apparently faulty iPhone charging cable back to the Apple store as it was only bought in July last year.

How do you feel about New Year’s resolutions? Do you have any plans to do things differently this year?

Sew My Stash Sunday – 1

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Posted on January 4, 2015

I do not usually read heaps of sewing/craft blogs because they often feature projects or items that I am simply do not interest me.

However, I stumbled across this idea here and seemed almost too good to be true. Basically, I can sew or make whatever I like as long as at least 50% comes from my stash. I had pretty well intended to do this but had not thought of articulating my ideals quite so eloquently. I love sewing and am working towards decluttering more stuff so this challenge will definitely help.

My personal plan is to post each and every Sunday about what I have done in the preceding week which fits the challenge. This will help to keep me accountable and will also be an interesting future record of just what sewing I achieved in 2015.

To see what I did last week see my previous post.

Thanks to the lovely Leasa who decided to run with this germ of an idea and also StitchnSewCreates for linking to the original. Please check out these blogs if you are interested in this project.

Then when the pieces are too small for much else there is always the ongoing patchwork!

I know that my fabric stash is not huge compared to what some people have but it is getting to the stage of frustrating me because I have so many plans/ideas for a lot of the pieces and I simply haven’t got around to doing it. 2015 is the year.

UFO’s No More

Filing Friday (on Thursday)

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Posted on January 1, 2015

Welcome to 2015! A brand new year for you to make of it what you want.

I have been gradually decluttering for several years so there is generally only a few things here and there to leave the house. However, there are a couple of hotspots that just seem to invite clutter to hang around unless I am constantly vigilant.

In the lead-up to Christmas I was particularly busy at work so things got a bit neglected at home. Also, our car was badly damaged in a hailstorm at the end of November and was declared a write-off by the insurance company. So, as well as everything else we had to buy a new car, organise insurance, liaise with the towing company to collect the old car and so on. All of this resulted in paperwork, notes and phone messages on the desk. Everything was finalised on Wednesday – we have a new, insured car and the old one is gone so this morning I got up and decided that I had to sort out all of remaining paperwork.

I started with the desk, followed by the other hotspots which are the end of the kitchen bench and my dressing table. It then turned into a major clean-out of the filing cabinet and other folders so The Duke and I spent several hours working through it. Some papers had been carefully filed for up to 10 years without ever being looked at so we were really ruthless.

Apart from clearing the papers that were in the previously identified spots, I actually have nothing to show for our efforts except that the contents of the filing cabinet have been reduced from 3 drawers to 2. Everything was relatively neatly stored – it was just that much of it was no longer relevant.

The desk is mostly cleared – there are just a few more things that I need to put away.

I just need to set-up the pedometers so we can actually use them rather than be lurking in the bottom of the filing cabinet!

This end of the kitchen bench is one of the most frustrating hotspots – the pile of papers never seems to go away completely. It may seem counter-intuitive to put a basket here to dump “stuff” in but my theory is that it will be contained rather than expanding and spreading its tentacles across the bench. I have also designated Friday evening as “Filing or Fling” so everything that is in the basket by Friday evening will be dealt with accordingly. In a perfect world the basket would be empty but I will be surprised if that happens. 🙂

So, beginning next Friday (not tomorrow) the blog post will be about the filing or keeping the paper clutter at bay.

I would love to hear of any systems you may have in place to help you manage the clutter hotspots and filing.

2014 – A Year in Review

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Posted on December 31, 2014

Bizarre, tragic and downright evil are some of the adjectives which come to mind when looking to describe the events which shaped 2014.

Invariably, the most recent events are those which are clearest in our minds – the Sydney siege, the stabbing murders of 8 children in Cairns and the loss of the Air Asia flight. Unfortunately, the horrors seem to have been almost never-ending. Two Malaysia Airlines flights lost in very different circumstances, the untimely death of Phillip Hughes and the tragic death of Luke Batty at his father’s hand.

Two other matters were resolved with trial and sentencing of the perpetrators of crimes against Daniel Morcombe and Alison Baden-Clay.

On a different note the G20 roadshow came to town and despite Mr Abbott’s threats, Mr Putin appeared to depart with his shirtfront intact.

Ferries sank, volcanoes erupted, the Ebola virus rampaged through parts of Africa, we became aware of the appalling agenda of Islamic State and the fighting continued in Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan and Gaza.

It is not exactly a good news story. I am sure there were some highlights but I am struggling to find them.

Meanwhile, I tried to keep my focus on blogging but there were times when I just felt too overwhelmed by events in the world around me to write about simplifying our life. There was also a 6 week hiatus while we jetted off to the UK and Ireland for an amazing holiday. That adventure is documented here.

One of my goals for 2015 is to re-capture the enthusiasm for my simple,organised life and share it with you all on a much more regular basis.

Thank you for sticking with me and may 2015 be all that you wish for.

Happy New Year!

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 33,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 12 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

New & Shiny Stuff

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Posted on December 30, 2014

Regular readers would know that I am not an advocate of shopping. Of course, I buy food to feed us and things that we use in our day-to-day lives but I am definitely not into shopping for recreation.

Every now and then I have a day like today when all I seem to do is buy. I had to go to Brisbane this morning with The Duke as we were to pick up our latest purchase this afternoon, but more about that later. It meant that I had the whole day to fill in so my first stop was Spotlight. I bought 5 white buttons for a blouse I am making and I also took some time to look at the fabrics which were all 40% off the marked price. I do not buy things just because they are discounted but I found some fabric that I am planning to use.

The white piece is linen/cotton blend and I am planning to make a summer dress for myself. I also bought some white lawn (not shown) for the lining. I am going to use this dress as the pattern.

The red is a stretch cotton (t-shirt) fabric which I plan to make a copy of a top I bought earlier in the year.

The other piece is white with black silhouettes of kitchen utensils and I am going to make some more potholders and a cover for my Kitchen Aid mixer which lives on the corner of the bench in the kitchen.

After my Spotlight expedition I went to visit my mother and we went to a large shopping centre near where she lives. Apart from having lunch there we wandered around and I checked out several boutiques and I ended up buying a pair of white, slim-fitting trousers and a blue, patterned cardigan/bolero. I did try on numerous other pieces but I am very selective in the clothes I buy and wanted to be sure that were exactly what I wanted but more on those another day.

The final hurrah was to pick up our new car after our previous one was deemed to be a total write-off after the damage sustained during the recent ferocious hailstorm.

I am planning a much less adventurous day tomorrow. I will be staying at home and hope to get some sewing done. It will not be any of the new material just yet as I have a couple of other projects that I need to complete before I start any new ones.

What are your plans for New Year’s Eve? Partying or a quiet night at home?