Why I love my wardrobe

If you had told fifteen-year-old me that I would love love love my wardrobe, I would not have believed you. I hated shopping, hated fashion, and generally wore whatever came to hand first - usually a block-coloured v-neck sweater and a dark pair of trousers.

If you had told me even a year ago that I would love my wardrobe, I would not have believed you. I still hated shopping, hated fashion, and still wore whatever came to hand first - usually a block-coloured v-neck sweater and a dark pair of trousers.

In January this year, I started something called Project 333. The basic rule involves limiting the number of clothes, shoes, accessories etc to 33 items for 3 months. I told a few people I was planning to have a go at this, and they thought I was bonkers.

The core of the challenge is to limit the number of clothes, shoes etc that you wear for a period of time. The original challenge is 33 items of clothes, shoes, outerwear and accessories for 3 months, but you can set your own challenge. I exclude scarves, coats, belts and jewellery.

Ten months in, I still hate shopping and fashion - but I no longer pull on the first thing that comes to hand in the morning. A number of people have commented that I look smarter. I wear a greater variety of clothes, styles, colours and combinations than before. Despite having fewer clothes in my wardrobe.

I am more aware of how I present myself, and I take better care of my clothes and shoes. When I get dressed, or set out items for the next day, I think about a variety within the outfit and through the week. I do less laundry than before - although I do have to be more organised so I don't run out of things!

I think not just about a garment but about its function within the wardrobe, which helps me when I do make rare purchases or when I plan to make clothes. (Still largely at the planning stage...) This has transferred across to other things I own - I look for duplicates not just in type or appearance but also in function, which helps with decluttering elsewhere.

I have also given away several bags of clothes to charity, so that the clothes not included in my 33 almost fit into one suitcase, where before they filled two. I have emptied a huge box of old clothes, and either donated them or turned them into cleaning cloths. I would have done this earlier if I had realised that cotton t-shirts make marvellous dusters.

When I open the wardrobe in the morning, I am greeted by bright, clean clothes neatly arranged. It welcomes me home at the end of the day, a reminder that order has a place in my cluttered life. I am a total convert and will not be returning to my old arrangement. Which would you prefer?

To anyone thinking of trying this challenge, go for it!!! You can find out more on the Project 333 website.

On letting go of the last box

It's astonishing how much an off-hand comment from the unlikeliest of places can have an unexpected impact.

At work, we were discussing my new colleague's unpacking process over lunch, and several people commented on still having sealed boxes from moves years or even decades earlier. I felt mostly smug - but there was a guilty twinge. I have one last box in the basement. (The previous box - containing every pair of jeans I have ever worn, or so it seems - was finally dealt with earlier this year.)

The box contains all my old notes and files from university. I have left it because I couldn't decide what to do with it. I know I would like to keep my old essays - I have a small box of precious things I keep for sentimental reasons, like old diaries, photo albums, the first thing I ever knitted, letters from friends. The essays could go in there. And the scrap paper or rough notes - chuck.

But the research? The hours of my life spent standing in front of a photocopier in the library coping chapters and academic articles. The realisation that I could not access these again without paying for them. The guilty knowledge that some never got read. The secret hope of one day dusting them off, to research and write a historic novel. This expands beyond the notes in the basement - I have another two or more shelves of books, articles and so on from my final year dissertation in the spare room.

And then my new colleague commented that research moved so fast that it is quickly out of date. 

Duh. Why didn't I think of that?

If ever I do get around to writing a historic novel, the evidence for and understanding of that time period will have moved on since my first year of university. And I know I would enjoy doing that research. Not having a box of dusty old articles in the basement would not really be much of a barrier.

So finally - thanks to an off-hand comment at work - I am ready to let go of the last box.

(That just leaves the unknown number of boxes in my mother's attic. But let's forget that for now!)

Woot woot! Five years (and a few days)

 So, err, sorry guys. I set this as a scheduled post so I wouldn't forget to write and then... I forgot. And it got posted. As a bit of a non-post.

So now I'm a couple of weeks late, but what the hell. The 8 October marked the five-year anniversary of my first post on this blog, which you can read here.

Looking back at that post, I'm struck by two things. Firstly, my choice of Meadow Orchard as a blog name foreshadows my discovery of permaculture in the last year rather neatly. A meadow orchard is a form of landscape encouraging meadow wildlife among fruit trees, so very positive for biodiversity.

The second thing that strikes me is that the lifestyle I was then interested in building - log fire, fruit trees outside the back door, home comforts and handmade crafts - is still very much what I am endeavouring to build today. 

And I've definitely made progress, which I reflect on every night as  we sit down to homecooked healthy food on a handmade tablecloth on a second hand table and talk about our next beer, and when I draw my homemade curtains in homemade pajamas and slippers made out of old jeans and cardboard.

I thought for my five-year bloggiversary, I'd share five posts and an assortment of photos representing five themes of this blog:

Mindfulness

Washing up: A philosophical meander

Decluttering

 Decluttering is an exponential function

Living better with less

Project 333

New skils

My very first skeins

Savouring simple pleasures

Two steps back, three forward

 

Deadline decluttering

I've generally been pretty good about limiting clutter building up in the last few months, apart from two key areas - the table for mail for processing, and the spare room. On Friday morning, the spare room looked like this:

Two forces have combined to give a deadline for the decluttering. Firstly, I made a deal with my boyfriend to get something I want in exchange for clearing the build up along the sofa and on the desk, and the second is that we have a guest coming this weekend. Both dictated that these spaces needed to be clear by the end of this weekend. And I have found that the deadline has really helped:

Miles better. There is still a pile on the desk and a bag on the sofa - both my boyfriend's - but it already looks so much better and I feel so much lighter. Why didn't I do this ages ago?

I struggled to motivate myself to spend my weekend sorting through this stuff - I hate decisions and I'm really good at procrastinating. I found it useful to remind myself that if, as I hope, I will eventually have animals to care for (not to mention children), then I absolutely cannot procrastinate. If animals need to be fed and watered, brought in for the evening or given other care, that has to be provided regardless of whether or not I want to spend the afternoon on the sofa with a bottomless pot of tea.

Now I think I'm going to go make some cushions and a throw to prettify the sofa so I want to keep it tidy in future.

P.S I must confess much of the staff has moved rather than been given away...

Project 333 - take three

This weekend marked the end of my second 3-month stint of Project 333, so on Sunday afternoon I duly got my bags out of the basement for the selection of my next 33.

 

It's getting easier and easier to select my 33. The first one took ages and was a real wrench to make decisions. Now I can see duplicates or near-duplicates more easily. I see combinations more easily, and I am more aware of when I actually wear things. There are several lovely items of clothing that I have held on to in the hopes that my life would enable me to wear them but in reality I spend less than one day a year lounging on a beach with a book. I prefer holidays with interesting things to see and do, with time lounging in the shade with an ice cream/cold beer and a book. Why do I have garments specifically designed to be worn over bathing suits on the beach? Very silly. Another bag of clothes I don't use is heading for my favourite charity.

You will not be surprised to learn that I am a complete convert to the principle of Project 333. I don't think I will ever go back to that awful crowded wardrobe. I'm not sure how much longer I'll stick with the 33 rule, but I will continue to limit the contents of my wardrobe and rotate through the seasons.

I still haven't managed to make much of what I think I want to create but that's ok. I'm wearing everything in my wardrobe now, can always find what I am looking for, and have a clear idea of what I want to add. Laundry is less stressful and my clothes are better cared-for. Best of all, even when the house is a tip, getting dressed is always stress-free, and I have a daily reminder of the benefits of minimalism.

Progress, or My Easter Monday in pictures

:: Finished scarf with tassels ::

:: Pickled beetroot ::

 

:: Fresh beetroot and radishes growing beautifully ::

 

 :: First try at a loaf with my sourdough starter ::

 

:: Skirt lining - just needs hemming and putting into the skirt ::

Not the to-do list, or past and future challenges

We all have a to do list. I don't know about you, but mine is epic, vague, scattered across my computer, my phone and my memory, and nothing ever gets done. This is something I do intend to address.

However, today's post is not about the to do list, but the want to try list. I don't know if this happens to other people who start to build a more deliberate, individually crafted life, but the list of things I want to try keeps getting longer and longer and longer. I really want to render lard. Why? I don't use lard in anything, but maybe I could or should. And it's another skill, a historical one linking me with generations past, and one which would come in very handy should we ever raise and butcher our own animals (in another lifetime). Plus it looks so white and fluffy in blog posts. Want.

It's not a ripple when you drop a pebble in a pond - smooth, even circles gradually spreading. The process is more akin to simulations of how pandemic diseases spread (there's an example here if you don't know what I'm talking about). One dot glows. Then several close by. These fade as glowing dots appear, covering ground but seemingly hapharzadly, faster in some directions than others. It always looks a very wild kind of spread, unlike the orderliness of the ripples. (Hope I haven't freaked anyone out with the pandemic simulation!)

That's how simple living is evolving for me. Not a steady, orderly, progressive interest, but surges of interest in certain areas, drawing me into related fields, before another surge draws my attention elsewhere but the prior interest draws me back and soon, before I know where I am, I've covered the globe. 

Yoghurt making leads to cheese making and sourdough and beer and fermented foods. Homemade beauty proucts lead to homemade cleaning products, no-poo and growing my hair out, which leads me to begin to develop confidence in my own unconventional fashion choices prompting me to try Project 333 and ultimately set out to customise and handmake my wardrobe. Setting out to grow a few herbs introduces me to permaculture and soon I've put my name on an allotment waiting list and started looking into heirloom seeds, green manures and polytunnels. Now I find myself reading about rendering lard, building a garden smoker to smoke bacon at home, and goats' milk vs cows' milk.

I'm just taking a moment to step and think 'woah!' It's great that I've read loads on keeping chickens and am already aware that, for example, chickens are not naturally vegetarian, they like taking dust baths, they need grit in their diet and fresh eggs do not need refridgerating. However, given that keeping chickens is a long way off, maybe I should focus on things I can do now? So I can add to the progress I've made which, when I get caught up chatting with a colleague, seems to be rather a lot by 'normal Western life' standards. To be entirely honest with myself, reading about chicken-keeping is another form of escapism, a distraction from the life I'm trying to build here, today, and which requires me to step away from the computer screen.

It's very easy to get so caught up in the idea of the simple life that we put less energy into actually living it. Perhaps it's better to log off and just be present here.

Ha ha!

Ta-da!

 

As regular visitors may know, I have been struggling with this chaotic pile of spare stationary for a while. Tired A4 binders rubbed shoulders with beautiful unused notebooks and spare birthday cards, while the odd bookmark floated around:

Only a few hours ago, this is what it looked like. Now there is space... So much so that the assortment of spare screws, nuts and bolts next to it now looks like an eyesore.

This has been an area I've struggled with for a while. I feel it is wasteful to discard items I may need, and storing these could save me the purchase cost. On the other hand, this is clearly clutter of the worst kind - I trigger a minor landslide every time I need an envelope. I've dithered and dithered and dithered, and some reason today I just suddenly felt ready to tackle it.

One of the reasons I was holding onto this was even though I don't exactly get through a folder a month, I knew I needed a new organisational system for my paperwork. It was all a big higgledypiggledy and I needed to sort through, set up a system that kept important, archived documents somewhere safe and out of the way, and files I need to access regularly somewhere easy to reach. I didn't want to discard the files until I had sorted this out.

I divided this up into two stages - stage one was the paperwork filing system rework and stage two the stationery pile. I sorted the paperwork a couple of weeks ago, so no longer feel I need most of this. Following advice from you lovely people, I have divided the surplus into two piles - one for practical stationery and one for pretty things (notepaper I was given at the age of 12 and is no longer appropriate, postcards I picked up on my travels etc). The first will go to Les Petits Riens - I don't know if they can use it but if they can't no one in Brussels can - and the second will probably go to one of the local creches.

I am of course keeping some things - I am keeping the unused notebooks, some of which may be included in gifts and some of which I may use. (Anything not used by this time next year goes, though.) I am keeping envelopes and jiffy bags, which can be costly and which I use to send gifts and letters to the UK, and I am keeping nice birthday and Christmas cards. Craft tools (paintbrushes etc) have been collected into a box that was seeking a purpose.

The rest is gone - and now I have space! I must confess, it has already been partially invaded by stuff that's been lying around the living room, but that does mean I feel the gain in space in a room I use everyday rather than a cupboard used intermittently.

What's amazing to me about this is how challenging I found it for so many days when I wanted to tackle it - but suddenly one day I came home and just did it, after work and while dinner was cooking. It was so easy.

Now, how can I hold on to that feeling and build some more momentum?

Slow Living 2014 - February

This year I am again joining Christine over at Slow Living Essentials in her monthly stocktaking. February has been a bit of a rollercoaster, as you may be able to tell - I'm loving the gradual building up of the slower, simpler life - the way I can encorporate new skills and new routines into my life - but am finding the conflict with my job frustratingly difficult to manage. 

{NOURISH} Yoghurt! This month I experimented with making my own yoghurt and found it so easy and so fun that it's fitting in very easily and naturally with my routines. I have taken your advice to make two or three jars at a time - they last a week or two just fine in the fridge, and it means I only need to make yoghurt once a fortnight or so. Plus it's so much cheaper! Homemade yoghurt is around €1.28 per litre, while the shop-bought was costing me around €3.36 per litre. Big difference - if I eat around half a litre of yoghurt a week, making my own yoghurt for a year would save me about €50. Not bad...

{PREPARE} Not much here, I'm afraid... What can I preserve this time of year?

{REDUCE} Making my own yoghurt has meant reusing glass jars, so one less glass jar and plastic lid in the recycling/landfill every week. I've also kept the various things I dropped and broke this winter - a pie dish, a plate, an oven dish - to use in the base of pots when I plant things up later this spring.

{GREEN} Not much progress here either - I still use mostly homemade cleaners and beauty products, our heating has only been turned on three times this winter (all occassions purely for the benefit of guests) and our electricity usage is less than half the average for comparable households (young couple, no kids, in appartment), at least according to our energy supplier. I'm not really sure what I could do from here - any suggestions?

{GROW} I BOUGHT SEEDS!!!! Hahahaha... Progress on this, finally! I'm so excited. I still need to get the actual pots and the potting compost, but I should be able to plant something in March. I decided to order online from a UK supplier, largely because I know the Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society (who have a fabulously useful website) is a good bet for beginners. It's awarded to plants that grow reliably without being too fussy about growing conditions or being prone to particular problems. I hope to be self-sufficient in radishes by the end of April. (Mine is a small dream.)

{CREATE} Much going on here, as always! Finished the blue cardigan, now already stuck into a scarf for a colleague, with birthday makes lined up.

{DISCOVER} It might sound naff, but I feel that the growing daylight hours feel a bit like a discovery. It's so cool and I'm not sure I have ever been so acutely aware of the extra minutes of light, the extra mood boost from a few minutes of sun. It's been drawing me outdoors more, to rediscover the city I live in.

{ENHANCE} Really enjoyed my father's visit at the end of February - it's so rewarding to spend time together just chatting, and we had a good laugh and a long walk in the sunshine, both things I desperately needed after a tough week at work.

{ENJOY} Barring the last week of the month - always a tough one at work - I am, you know. I really am enjoying all of it. Even the ironing and the washing up. Life is good when you let yourself live it. (Note: must remind self of this in last week of month.)

If this month had a motto, it was 'turn your face to the sun' - seek the joy and the warmth and the welcome.

Our own adventures

I'm having a very decadent Sunday curled up with a cup of tea and some Narnia films. And I'm pondering on the subject of adventures.

Something I have observed is that, in my own procrastinating-y escapist-y way, I tend to watch films, read books or blogs etc on a given subject rather than living it. Rather than doing the washing up, running a mop around this place or getting the sewing machine out, my instinct is to watch Little Women for the thousandth time or delve into the archives of another simple living blog. I find it easier to experience my adventures vicariously through other people's experiences than to knuckle down and have my own.

I think I am getting a bit better at this - at turning away from the screen to pick up a broom or some knitting needles. Slow progress, but progress it is.

But I do wonder why it is so hard. All stories are on some level about the adventure of life, and you can have an adventure without ever going beyond your front door. Yet real life sometimes seems less entertaining than the fantasy world, where we see all the sweeping vistas and epic battles and profound moments without the drudgery, the endurance, the battles to drive onself on which take place every day, every hour, every minute. 

Whether we're battling with a Tolkien-esque mountain or simply trying to work through a backlog of dirty laundry, it seems monumental, overwhelming, and we have to take one step at a time. But climbing the mountain seems more glamorous; we definitely underestimate the challenge - and thus the satisfaction  (I hope) - of small battles, unnoticed but important achievements, in every day lives.

 

I often feel so far from where I want to be that I wonder why bother. Why not just stay on the sofa in my pajamas with endless cups of tea?

If the characters - and real historical figures - in our favourite stories had stayed on the sofa revisiting their favourites, they would never have had the adventures we love to read. So I'm just going to pause the film now to do some washing up. If I can use other people's adventures to motivate my own, then it is a positive force in my life, not just a tool for procrastination.

Washing up: A philosophical meander

Today I was going to share a bit of a rant, as the demands of my job have been rather high recently, but I decided that was too negative and I'd rather focus on a slightly more positive aspect.

Do you have a focal point, a part of your life or home where you see the progress you have made and (in your mind's eye) the changes you still want to make? This is mine:

It's the window to the balcony, next to the kitchen sink. This is the window I gaze through as I dry the washing up every day. In the mornings, I get my first glimpse of the sun welcoming me to the tasks of my day. On clear evenings, I watch the full moon loom large, asking silent questions without answers and keeping watch over the sleeping rooftops.

In the summer, the clotheshorse sits just outside this window and I can see the clothes moving in the breeze. In the winter, we use this space as extra cold storage and you can probably find the beer for the next rugby match out there.

Just in front of the window is a row of jars reminding me that that we now cook so much from scratch that we need to keep the flour, sugar and oats within easy reach, that I make my own breakfast cereal, and the shopping list reminds me that we plan our meals and weekly shops with care. The empty dishrack and shiny clean draining board make me smile.

I can mentally see the changes I have yet to make. The first potted plants of my urban veg patch will be here - herbs and salad leaves, within easy reach of the kitchen. I've been thinking about making some bunting from some of the fabric offcuts and old clothes in my ragbag. The window is rather dirty and I hope to try cleaning it with homemade cleaners soon, so the light can stream in even more. There may also one day be curtains here - perhaps lace or net to let the light in, or red check gingham because sod it, tradition is underrated.

This is a space I come back to several times a day and each time, I slow down and I think about how after every meal ever cooked, someone had to do the washing up. After they signed the Versailles treaty in 1919. At the height of the Cuban missile crisis. At the battle of Waterloo. At every moment in history, people still need to eat and someone still has to scrub the pots and pans. I wonder what they thought as they did it? Did they feel the weight of history hanging around them like a cloak, or were they grumbling about some dried-on food?

It makes me feel connected to everyone who ever washed a plate, it starts me thinking about the unobtrusive rhythms that shape the lives of everyone, from a President to the UN Secretary General to seemingly insignificant employees and people at home, little cogs in big wheels making society work. 

So today I'm consciously revisiting this space to give myself a bit of a hug and remind myself that simple living isn't so much about what you do or have or make, but how you approach the tasks and rhythms of your life - slowing down to savour them, thinking about the meaning behind them, and taking pride in a task well done - even if it is only the washing up.

Slower means faster (knitting)

I keep getting so much done! I don't know quite how it works, that I feel much more relaxed and less rushed, and yet I get so much more done on my days at home. (Note: this doesn't apply to workdays.) I meet friends and do laundry and bake bread and do ironing and still have time to sit with a cup of tea and knit.

Today I sewed together the panels of the cardigan I am knitting. I've been super excited about this, and waiting for a weekend when I can get the sewing machine out without feeling rushed. I actually finished all but one of the pieces in February but then had to wait for more yarn to arrive from the UK as I'd run out (and had to do quite a bit of research to match the yarn, as I bought this years ago and most places no longer stock it.)

It's actually beginning to look like a cardigan now! Super exciting! Now I'm picking up the stitches around the neck to knit the neckband in, and then just the button and buttonhole bands to go! This will soon be finished and and I can't wait to wear this - the first full garment (rather than scarves/gloves kind of thing) that I've knitted and I'm so surprised by how quickly it knitted up, and how much I've enjoyed the very visible, tangible progress of watching the knitting grow.

I'm really beginning to feel the impact of slowing down, consciously trying to be present in what I'm doing rather than having something on 'in the background', and giving each task my full attention. I finish sooner, do a better job, and feel motivated to move on to another task. I still have a long way to go yet before I feel fully on top of all aspects of managing my home and, well, my life, but I am really enjoying the journey.

And you? Any Saturday craftiness to share?

And next up... Yoghurt!

Thank you all for your advice on my dilemma last week. I have decided on my next challenge. As I am struggling so much with limiting and organising my stuff, in the end I decided to go with the option which did not involve buying any new kit or any ingredients which would need to be stored. For yoghurt, I have everything I need already in the house except the milk, which is easy enough to pick up.

After much reading, I decided to try incubating the yoghurt in the oven overnight. I had a slight mishap when I added the yoghurt starter while the milk was still over 80 degrees... Funnily enough the starter separated and didn't look yoghurty anymore. I realised my error, and prepared another starter which I added after the yoghurt had cooled. The jar spent the night in a slightly warm oven wrapped in a towel, and I popped it in the fridge in the morning. And lo! it had set!

Please excuse me while I do a happy dance... This has rather made my day, it's been a long, stressful, busy, hectic couple of days and very far from either simple or slow. I've also been rather cross and crabby, and a bit snappy at everyone, so I'm pleased to discover that checking on my jar of yoghurt has raised my spirits and put me in a more positive frame of mind for tomorrow.

The real test is of course the taste - I have't opened the jar yet but will let you know the verdict when I do. I've also realised that I have unintentionally made more than twice as much yoghurt as I normally eat in a week, so I might just have to make some cheese to use up the rest. (Sigh. It's a hard life.)

Slow Living 2014 - January

Better late than never... This year I am again joining Christine over at Slow Living Essentials for her Slow Living Month by Month series. I've found it a useful way to reflect on how much I have really achieved in a month - slow progress can be easily overlooked - while highlighting the areas I really would like to do more. This year she's changed the name slightly - Slow Living Monthly 9 - but it's the same principle, a look back at what I have or haven't done in a few key areas.

{NOURISH} Oh so much fruit salad! So much fruit salad for breakfast with organic yoghurt and homemade toasted muesli, such a yummy start to the day. And I have been taking in more lunches from home, which had rather tailed off towards the end of last year. Soups, leftovers from dinner, and freshly prepared salads - with some variety and some new discoveries such as yellow beetroot. I've also been baking more - bread and cookies.

{PREPARE} Erm not so much. I did mean to pickle some beetroot but I missed the season and there's very little left in the market. 

{REDUCE} Project 333 paving the way for epic clothes donation. I'm also making a skirt from a mpair of my boyfriend's old trousers - and absolutely loving the fact that this is totally free, so I don't feel any pressure to get it right. It's an experiment.

{GREEN} Not sure if it counts but I've started sweeping the kitchen floor regularly, meaning less frequent hoovering needed of this area.

{GROW} Still nothing... I really ought to order some seeds soon...

{CREATE} I finished the curtains in January, finished the buttonholes on a charity shop shirt, made a tablecloth and knitted most of a cardigan from my stash.

{DISCOVER} Can I put Project 333 twice? This really seems to have transformed my wardrobe, my morning routine and my whole attitude to clothes. It's making me think totally differently, and now I feel well on the way towards a pared down, simple wardrobe made of well-fitting, versatile and largely handmade items using natural materials and traditional techniques.

I've also discovered a nature reserve about twenty minutes away by bus - thanks to some friends who suggested going for a walk there. Unfortunately I didn't take my camera but it was glorious. And they have working horses (oh my god those guys are HUGE) and sheep and a little tea room and craft workshops and it's really really cool.

{ENHANCE} Besides the odd trip down to the local market, I think most of my energies in this have been put into blogging more regularly and discovering yet more simple living inspiration in the blogs of others.

{ENJOY} Lots of it! I'm having a lot of fun with all this. And we've had friends over for rugby afternoons - the pub wouldn't let us book a table, so we decided it would be easier, cheaper and more fun to have our friends here. And it was.

Vintage chocolate chip cookies

As some of you may know, I have been hitherto entirely failed to resist the chocolate chip cookies at work. They are terrible, industrial, mass-made biscuits that can last about a year in the packet. They don't even taste nice, they're just moreish.

Last month for the first time, I resisted the call of the biscuit jar all month. No cookies at work. (This doesn't apply to other biscuits, crisps, croissants... but I'm picking my battles - one at a time!) I'm keen to wean myself off this frankly addictive crap - eating real cookies is a far better option than the cardboard stuff from the supermarket. I wouldn't touch a plastic-wrapped cake or plastic-wrapped waffle - so why do I persist in eating plastic-wrapped biscuits?

So to reward my success and make the shop biscuit less appetising, it only seemed logical to bake chocolate chip cookies at home. I haven't made these for ages - if in fact I ever have, not sure - so I'm sure I'll have to bake a few batches before I perfect them. I used this recipe from BBC Good Food - it is called 'Vintage chocolate chip cookies', and I couldn't resist the vintage. I made them over the weekend and they disappeared very quickly, so this is definitely a recipe to be repeated!

Reflections on January 2014

For the last year or two, I have tried as regularly as possible to join in the Slow Living Month by Month series, started by Christine over at Slow Living Essentials. It's definitely a good tool to reflect on what I've done each month and remind myself of many areas where I don't do as much as I'd like.

However, I do feel that there are two or three key challenges which are becoming major themes in my journey, in this blog, and it would be good to take a moment to reflect on those separately and more informally.

So, January. First month of the year, traditionally a time for much-touted new beginnings and overambitious resolutions which last all of three days. I can't even remember what my resolutions were, but I am definitely feeling more purposeful in general, more on-track in terms of where I want to be, and also more content with where I am now, accepting that life is a journey.

Clutter - Living well with less

One of the biggest changes this month is that I have started Project 333. For the uninitiated, this essentially means putting 80% of my clothes and shoes in the basement, and living with 33 items of shoes and clothing for three months. I was a little nervous, and thought I might end up recycling the same few outfits on endless loop, constantly running out of clothes and stressing about the laundry. 

In fact, I'm loving it. I'm wearing loads of variations that I've never worn before, and have started to receive compliments on my clothes/outfit at least once a week from friends and colleagues, which is definitely new. Caring for my clothes becomes less daunting, with fewer of them to worry about, so I no longer scrunch worn clothes into a ball at the back of the cupboard. Clothes clean enough to be re-worn are hung up or folded. Clean clothes are ironed. Shoes are polished and waterproofed. Damages are repaired. It's all just much more manageable, and much less work. I'm even doing fewer loads of laundry.

It's also making me rethink how I approach my clothes, and I'm very slowly starting to improve my wardrobe - so the clothes are better fitting, more colourful and just more of an expression of me and my life. I'm already mentally preparing to let quite of lot of the clothes in storage go when I change them around in April.

Routines - Making housework easy

This month I've been holding back on urges to be ambitious and plan lots of routines. I'm focusing on allowing new habits to evolve however and wherever is easiest. Basically, the stuff I do that has an immediate positive feedback gets repeated, until it sticks. Taking more care with my clothes, it seemed the next thing to do to set out an outfit for the next day every evening. Doing the washing up in the morning before going to work makes the evening's pile less daunting, makes a more pleasant kitchen for my boyfriend to bake in, and offers me a moment of domesticity before work. 

The latest evolution is an extension of that. I got sick of the dirty floor one evening last week and cleaned it. And it was so lovely I wanted to keep it that way, so I've started sweeping the kitchen floor each morning as well. It takes me about three minutes but it makes such a noticeable difference. But I'm trying to be careful not to add to this - I want to give myself time for each new habit to become normal.

Self-discipline - Resisting temptation

I do struggle to motivate myself to not eat the chocolate bar, to go for a run, to get off the sofa and do the hoovering, to pay the bill that came in the post. I'm trying to improve my self-discpline in general, and finding that at the moment it really comes down to food and sport.

 

Basically, when I eat fruit salad and yoghurt for breakfast, I have MILES more energy and mental clarity during the day than just about anything else. Ditto for having a soup or salad for lunch, rather than a sandwich, and ditto again for snacking on fruit, vegetables and nuts through the day rather than less healthy options. It sounds sickeningly healthy and I'm not yet sticking to it everyday but it makes a very obvious difference to how I feel and thus on every other part of my life. My big achievement this month is that I HAVE NOT EATEN A SINGLE CHOCOLATE CHIP BISCUIT ALL MONTH. (NB this does not also apply to other kinds of biscuit, but I'm still going to celebrate it as an achievement.

The same goes for sport. If I get out for a run, I feel so much better afterwards, and yet it's still a struggle to motivate myself. A job with long hours is too easy an excuse not to do sport, and the same goes for the swimming pool's opening hours, the terrible weather outside, a sore back etc. I've done a little better this month than some, but I'm still not close to where I want to be (half an hour, five days a week).