Introducing Future You

You come home from a long day at work. A busy day - the phone didn't stop ringing. A stressful commute - the platform more crowded than usual, the train ride bumpier and slower. You work hard, and you deserve to put your feed up and chill.

The last thing you feel like doing is prepping for the next day at work. Why start tomorrow's workload before you have to? This is when you always intend to prepare a packed lunch for the next day, or plan the weekly meals, but this window between workdays is precious. You don't want to let the stresses of the world invade, or the to-do list take over your last bit of free time. You'll do it tomorrow - after all, you can get up a bit earlier and make a salad before leaving that will taste that bit fresher. And no one ever finishes their to-do list, do they?

Does this feel familiar?

Current You is about to open a bottle of beer and sink into the comfy sofa. Current You defers the urgent bank transfer/tax return/meal planning/clothes mending/food prep to tomorrow morning, the weekend, next month. In other words, Current You is delegating the task to Future You.

So meet Future You. Future You Tomorrow Morning is tired. Her Past Self Last Night went to bed later than she ought to because Game of Thrones. Future You Tomorrow Morning tries to pull some clothes out of the cupboard, hopefully not too crumpled. She rushes into the kitchen - no time for coffee or making lunch - and grabs a banana as an on-the-go breakfast (it's fruit, it must be healthy). She runs out the door, realises halfway to work that she forgot an essential document and her socks don't match, and soon caves to the need for caffeine and sugar at the cafe in the train station on the way through - after all, a cappucino and a croissant won't make much of a difference to anything.

So before you crack open the beer and sink into that sofa, do Future You Tomorrow Morning a favour. Get your bag ready to go and by the door. Get out clothes and check they are clean and presentable. (And matching). Prep the coffee machine. Put water in the kettle and a teabag in a mug. Future You is stressed - give her a break. Give her a helping hand.

Coffee all ready to go for the morning. Just add heat.

This is a deceptively simple idea. Once I started spotting ways to give Future Me a headstart or a helping hand, I kept finding them. There are two stages I've observed of this mental trick:

At first, you focus on short time gaps, but there's a pretty immediate feedback loop. When Present You this morning finds that Past You Last Night laid out some clothes and got the coffee ready to go, it's a small but awesome feeling. Everything is a bit easier, a bit less stressful. And you're more likely to pay the favour forwards, to make the bed and clear the breakfast things away and check there's something for supper for Future You When You Get Home Tonight. 

The gradually you start visualising yourself further into the future and making better decisions more frequently. Flossing your teeth is boring and annoying, but I think of Future Me in the Dentist Waiting Room in a few months' time - I bet she'll be glad Past Her flossed. (Most of the time).

Where does it end? All the bigger life goals I have for Future Me Twenty Years Down The Line - a life focused on producing rather than consuming, with time and space and energy to dedicate to people and projects and causes I care about - start to feel more real with this trick. I'm not completing a boring chore or crossing something off the to-do list - I'm giving all these Future Mes a gift, and I can't wait to see what they do with it.

My favourite apps for simple living

Simple living and smartphones aren't exactly ideal bedfellows. We're all trying to reduce the amount of stuff we own, to opt out from the need to keep up with fashion and technology trends, and to disconnect more. Being able to connect to your work emails through your phone 24/7 is not quite conducive to this.

But I am trying to reconcile my work life with my simple living philosophy, and unfortunately right now a smartphone is an essential tool for my work. 

So how can I turn the smartphone from a disruption of simple living to an enabler? Can my phone help me to slow down?

I've found a few apps and functions which I find great for this, so here they are. 

 1. Podcasts

There are various podcast apps, so pick the best for your platform. There are podcasts out there about anything - I can now use my walk to or from work or a lunchtime walk to learn something new, and/or to connect with someone else's simple living experiences.

2. Finance trackers

Again, several models out there. I'm using Toshl because it's free, but the basic principle is to track all your expenditure and see immediately how much of your budget is left. If you pay for an upgrade you can manage several budgets at once but I'm cheap, so I am just using this to track one kind of expenditure - the one I am struggling most to contain.

3. Bulk

Bulk is an app developed by Bea over at Zero Waste Home (which should totally check out if you don't know it). It picks up on your location and gives you a list of shops in your area which offer products in bulk, so you can cut out packaging. The shops are rated by other app users so you can see which are best for dry goods, which for fruit, which for oils and lotions... I'm dead impressed because it's got loads for Brussels!

 

Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with any of these app's developers nor am I making any money from this post.

Knowing when to take a break

I've been thinking and reading and talking a fair bit about self-discipline over the last months. As you know, I struggle to resist the call of chocolate chip biscuits at work and tend to have more projects on the go at any one time than I can possibly complete. I don't do sport or exercise anywhere near enough and the housework is usually just overlooked.

As I suspect are many people, I am an expert in feeling really guilty about 'being bad' - whether with my health or my home - though not very good at turning that into action. It's actually a fairly familiar background feeling.

However, I had a conversation last week which has made me rethink this. After a busy week at work, I felt I ought to get out of the house and do something at the weekend, towards one of my other goals, but I was so tired physically and mentally that I really just wanted to curl up with some knitting, an old DVD and a cup of tea. The response was that self-discipline also means not pushing yourself too hard, knowing when you have earned and in fact need a rest.

I realise that I generally feel that I should be doing something productive, and if I'm not, I feel bad. But after putting in a lot of time and effort at work, it's perfectly ok if I preter to read than to sweep the floors. I do want to get that done too - but feeling bad about not doing it will not help, nor will pushing myself to sweep the floors at ten o'clock at night, or clean toilets first thing on a Sunday morning.

I really enjoy a lot of the posts about home from people like Rhonda at Down to Earth and Shannon at Radical Homemakers. I love the idea of home as the harbour we come back to after our trips out to sea - some beautiful, some tempest-tossed, some fruitful and some frustrating - where we restock and repair. nourish body and soul, and prepare for the next trip. Today, home is making pancakes for brunch in spite of the state of the floor.

Two steps back, three forwards

Life is definitely more of a rollercoaster than an ice-skating rink. That would be challenging but predictable. Who needs predictable?

Progress in life is generally two steps back and one forwards. There are always set-backs, challenges and unforeseen circumstances, but then we find our rhythm again. I've been very busy at work recently but over the last few days I have really enjoyed rediscovering simple satisfactions - my first batch of homemade yoghurt in a month, breakfast scones with a pot of coffee to start the Sunday, and slowing down to savour the ironing, the washing up and sweeping.

In this, I am very much enjoying having Rhonda Hetzel's book Down to Earth, which my lovely lovely sister gave me for a belated birthday gift and which is just perfect for dipping into for a moment of reflection and not a little inspiration.(If you haven't discovered Rhonda's blog then you need to follow this link now.)

Even though the housework, balcony garden, this blog and myriad other aspects of my simple living journey have fallen by the wayside in the last weeks, I notice that each time I come back to simplicity with renewed focus, renewed energy and renewed efficiency. This is partly because of the accumulation of skills and basic equipment (so I can now whip up a batch of yoghurt on demand without needing to do research) and partly because each time the whirling world of work and social life draw me away from simple living, it's even more blissful to come back to it, even more satisfying to gradually find a tidy, clean home emerge from the chaos. 

It's like taking a really deep breath, the sense of a knot of tension unravelling in your stomach that you get when you walk out of a major client meeting that you've been really anxious about.

So hello, everyone. I'm back. What did I miss?

Slow Living 2014 - March/April

This post is part of a series started by Christine at Slow Living Essentials.

{NOURISH} More yoghurt, and my first sourdough loaves (second one better than the first but it's not quite there yet...) I can definitely smell - and taste - as the wild yeast culture evolves and matures.

{PREPARE} Pickled beetroot. Can't wait to start eating it in a few weeks time after the vinegar-y tang has mellowed. This time I added cinnamon and cloves as well as black pepper to the red wine vinegar - it smelled very Christmas-y.

{REDUCE} Well there has been quite a lot of decluttering - clothes, books, household goods. My skirt made from an old pair of trousers and old shirt of my boyfriend's is progressing. I've also started another round of Project 333 in my wardrobe, and am attempting something similar with my library of books. I've also been using leftover breat crusts to make croutons which are a handy addition to a soup or stew, or a nummy snack.

{GREEN} Another batch of homemade handcream - this stuff is the bee's knees. We've also been engaging in a slow, gradual repair of a leak in the toilet tank by using vinegar and baking soda to erode the build-up of calcium and the red metal deposit we get from the water here. (I'm not too sure what it is.)

{GROW} This week I will harvest my first radish. Radishes are going strong and the beetroots will gladly use the space they leave behind them. However, I haven't planted anywhere near as much as I wanted because I haven't found the tubs/containers and have so far refused to spend major money on plastic ones from the gardening centre. I have realised that a lack of planning is definitely delaying/inhibiting my growing here.

{CREATE} Oh so much knitting.

{DISCOVER} A growing appreciation for craft beer, and a common interest in attempting homebrewing with my boyfriend. We're currently researching the necessary ingredients and kit, and I hope we'll have a go at this in a few weeks.

{ENHANCE} Spending time with friends, with my boyfriend and also by myself. I'm rediscovering the pleasures of reading a single book continuously instead of constantly jumping from book to book.

{ENJOY} Life is good. Still some issues around balance at work, but in general, life is good, and I get a warm feeling every time we sit down to share a pot of fresh-brewed coffee and a slice of homemade cake, everytime we sit outside on our balcony with a locally brewed beer and admire the laundry blowing in the breeze and the radishes spreading their leaves. Simple pleasures.

How about you? How has your month been?

All or nothing

As a general rule, I have two speeds - frenetic and stationary. Momentum easily overwhelms me - if I'm doing nothing, I find it hard to get started, but equally once I'm up to speed I struggle to slow down.

This generates a number of challenges - it affects my sleep because if I'm active late in the evening, I struggle to stop and wind down, or alternatively if I'm inactive I don't really feel tired because I've done pretty much nothing.

It also means that I struggle to maintain routines - I let the dirt build until I go on a cleaning frenzy (known as a 'Monica moment'). I would so much rather get the housework done gradually, so the house is never a tip but never spotless and I feel generally positive.

This morning my boyfriend and I were very busy and productive. We took apart the toilet to find out why water was constantly draining into the toilet bowl, and have managed to both identify and partially fix the problem without forking out any money. He replaced the toilet seat. I cleaned the bath tub (oh boy did it need a clean).We cleared out our basement and chucked quite a bit of stuff.

When we got back up to the flat, I sat down and started pondering the bookshelves in the spare room. My boyfriend had to intercede and remind me that we need down time too - that weekends are good at getting things done but should also involve time to soak in the bath, read a book and generally relax.

I'm wondering about trying to do just one thing a day for the housework - no particular order at first, just to get into the habit of doing something when I come in from work. I did once embark on an elaborate cleaning routine and it lasted several weeks before it collapsed. But when I started decluttering, the one-a-day approach really helped me.

Do you have any favourite tips for building up a routine to stay on top of housework?

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.

There's so much time

When I first came to the concepts of simple living, slowing down and doing it yourself, I thought it would take a lot of time. Baking your own bread takes longer than buying it from the bakery, no? And so on across the board - we are exchanging our time for better quality, more ethical or more personalised products - food, clothes, household, leisure etc. 

This weekend has been very slow and simple - and yet I can't believe how much time I have. I keep looking at the clock incredulous that it is so early, that I can still do so many other things with my day.

Yesterday we had friends over to watch the rugby, so pretty much the whole afternoon was absorbed with drinking, eating, cheering and chatting. The morning was taken up with the weekly food shop. Yet somehow I had time to do a load of laundry, the week's ironing, some crochet, and make a pot of soup from leftover veggies from last week - with enough for me to take some into work next week.

Today, even after a lie-in and clearing up after yesterday, I have found time to make a batch of breakfast cereal, bake bread and prepare a pot of fruit salad for the week, in addition to tackling some paperwork. My boyfriend and I wandered around the local market (I picked up some yellow beetroot - a new discovery!) for a while, and later played a board game with a pot of tea. I've still had time to sit and read a book, to watch the skies turn orange, and to drink several cups of tea.

And now, I have plenty of time to sit down and work on this... A mystery? Ahah! All shall be revealed.

Where did all this time come from? What did I used to do before that took up so much time, and has since been dropped? I haven't been aiming to do anything, pushing myself to do more - just taking it slowly and savouring each activity. Where did the time come from?

How homemade is it?

I’ve been pondering this question for a little while, after reading this post over at Taylor Made Ranch. How homemade is it?

We met up with some friends over the weekend. These friends are also living a simple life, although I don’t think they have defined it as such. They aspire towards having a farm or smallholding, they make the most amazing walnut wine, use cloth nappies with their small son, and knit lovely homemade gifts. (They gave me a fabulous hat for Christmas.) We were talking about how do-it-yourself and many of the old skills so often discussed, rehearsed and learned in the online simple living community - cooking from scratch, making your own cheese and so on.

We were discussing whether something is really homemade if you get a kit. If you don’t source and measure the ingredients yourself, but everything comes pre-measured, pre-washed, pre-prepared, and you just have to mix it and stick it into the oven. A posher version of instant cake mix.

I would see this approach as a stepping stone or halfway house. For instance, my little cousins make their own Christmas cake. They are able to do this at the age of 8 and 10 because they get a kit, with all the candied citrus and dried fruits included. When you’re learning - at whatever age - it’s a great way to get started, minimising your risk, your initial outlay, stacking the odds in favour of success.

But I think you should ideally want to move past this. If you are baking your own cakes but ALWAYS buy pre-measured kits, for years, then this feels a little like cheating. It also undermines the cost saving side of doing it yourself, which I feel is important.

However, how far should you take this? Where is the line? Is a half-baked loaf which you bought in the supermarket and finish off in the oven for ten minutes homemade? (By the way, whenever you see somewhere offering sandwiches or bread ‘baked in store/here’, this is what they mean.) I bake bread using flour, yeast, water and salt - but I don’t grind the flour myself, or grow the grain. The yeast is shop-bought, not a homegrown sourdough starter.

I frequently find myself wanting to take things ‘back’ a notch - to go from mending a jumper to knitting a jumper to dyeing the wool to spinning the yarn to carding the fleece to shearing the sheep… At what point is it homemade? It’s a sliding scale, rather than an either/or.

I sometimes feel that it’s not enough, I’m not doing enough of these things, but I keep reminding myself that as with a cake kit, it’s a stepping stone. My first cheese will probably be made from shop-bought yoghurt, but my second might be from homemade yoghurt using shop-bought milk, and maybe one day I will have a goat for milk in the back garden.

Slow and steady

It takes time to build a slower, simpler, more deliberate life. It doesn't happen overnight. But it's easy to get impatient, to be super enthusiastic, and to try everything at once, make a total shift. It's very tempting to try making cheese, baking bread, planting a garden, making soap, sewing a tablecloth and knitting a jumper all at once.

The problem with this is that it's overwhelming. Each new skill, each step, takes time. There are new skills to learn, which may take years to fully develop, and possibly new materials to get to know. Then you will need to experiment to see how the new 'thing' fits into the rest of your life, and how you can best use it towards your goals. In all this there will be much trial and error, with a good helping of frustration. 

There may well be tantrums, and I have had plenty - over bread that just wouldn't form a nice, bready dough but insisted on remaining very wet. Over beeswax resolutely adhering to a measuring jug. Over curtains that became all twisted as they were sewn. Over struggling to stitch a buttonhole on a shirt.

Focusing your efforts on one 'thing' at a time - a new skill, a new habit, a new recipe - means that you give yourself the time and space to get to grips with that one thing more fully. Once you have achieved a degree of comfort, even if not proficiency (ie your bread isn't perfect but it is edible) you can think about adding something else in to the mix.

Throwing yourself headlong into a multitude of crafts and activities just makes it more likely that the frustrations will win out, and you'll give up. Focus instead on conquering just one thing, and treat it as an exercise in focus, in patience, resilience, self-will. Multitasking just means doing several things poorly instead of one thing well, I have found. Focusing on one thing allows you to progress further quicker in that area. You notice your progress, you can feel proud and that motivates you to keep going.

Each activity also very naturally opens up 'extensions.' You might start experimenting with recipes to try your own thing. Baking bread might lead you to try other forms of grain, get a small mill to grind flour fresh, or make your own butter to accompany it. That might in turn lead to trying out scones and biscuits using the buttermilk, or a foray into homemade costmetics as buttermilk is so good for your skin. Perhaps buttermaking draws you into cheeses, or handling grains prompts you to try brewing beer or making barley water. Let your journey evolve naturally. Start from where you are and see where it leads you.

I have really been trying to keep this in mind recently, as I am definitely experiencing a renewed focus on the simple, deliberate life. I am continually tempted to get some cushion inserts so I can make cushions for the living room or do a workshop in woodwork, pottery or jewellery-making, or have a go at making cheese, soap, yogurt or beer. These are all things I want to get to but I am continually reminding myself to slow down, to consolidate the gains I've already made this month, and to take the time to enjoy where I am now, enjoy the journey, rather than focusing on a 'destination'. In fact I think I will probably never feel I am doing 'enough' simply because there will always be more things I want to do, to make, to explore - but I'm beginning to see that as a good thing!

Slow crafting

I've never really thought about how I go about crafting before, but I've spent quite a lot of the last couple of days meditating while knitting. Normally I knit in front of something I've seen before - usually my favourites of The 1940s House genre, or The Good Life or Little Women or No Impact Man. I'm kind of tuning in and kind of knitting.

Now I'm just knitting. Just knitting.

And it's slowing me down utterly. It's brill-i-ant.

Even more surprising, though, it's also focusing me. Rather than picking projects up and putting them down, it's making it easier to focus on one project at a time, and to resist the temptation to be a butterfly. The interim result is this:

Squee! Why do I ever stop knitting? How do I ever stop? It's addictive and relaxing and intriguing and this lovely woolly panel looks and feels and smells so woolly. I always thought knitting jumpers took months and months, but clearly when you keep picking your knitting up and stop wondering off to try another craft, it just keeps growing, and I'm savouring every minute instead of distracting myself with a screen.

This is the largest piece of work I've ever had on my knitting needles, and I'm finding it really quite heavy now. I have to hold it slightly differently than smaller projects - sort of propping up the knitting and then manouvreing the needles on a plane. It looks like Mrs Weasley knitting. I'm feeling very Mrs Weasley.

I am permitting myself one other project. I hit the fabric sales on Saturday to get me some new tablecloth fabric. Two for everyday and one white one for best was my brief. Check out my fabrics, aren't they cool? I love the sand-coloured plaid but oh my god I could not resist the gingham. I'm dreaming up a cross-stitch border for that one...

This may not sound like I'm focusing on one project at a time, but I was so tempted to buy fabric for future projects in the sales (cushion covers, more curtains?, perhaps gifts for birthdays) and resisted. No more crafty purchases* until tablecloths are clothing the table and the jumper is clothing me.

*Obviously this excludes thread, top-up yarn etc needed to complete these projects.

Check out this bad boy

Phwoarr...

Our Christmas dinner turned out beautifully - beginner's luck, perhaps? I reckon that good quality ingredients and a straightforward recipe may also have been factors. The turkey was bee-otiful and my boyfriend made a cranberry sauce with port and cinnamon so tasty that he is currently making several jars of the stuff so we can have some in the cupboard. Yum!

We're very much enjoying the slower approach to Christmas - some festivities every day, balanced out with plenty of doing nothing, chilling, drinking tea and reading books and curling up on the sofa. There really is quite a lot of work involved in 'doing' Christmas and I think spacing everything out a bit more helps balance the workload.

I think the one thing we didn't do so well at this year is minimising waste. There have been several moments of 'it would be a shame to throw this away, but what can we do with it?' For example, the boozy fruit and nuts from the mulled wine. Next time we do Christmas we will hopefully be better at anticipating the byproducts of the Christmas season and using them.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas too!

A slower, simpler Christmas

We are getting stuck into preparations for our first Christmas at our home. This will be a break from all previous years for a number of reasons. It’s the first time we have hosted a Christmas in our own home; it’s certainly my first Christmas in Belgium; and also my first Christmas without either my family or my boyfriends’.

It is therefore a chance to explore what ‘our’ Christmas looks like. My family is very big on tradition and reluctant to change anything about the family Christmas. To an extreme degree. To give you an idea, one year we suggested playing a board game on Christmas day, after dinner. My younger cousins were horrified at the suggestion: ‘We don’t play board games on Christmas day, we play them on Boxing day!’

This year gives us a chance to bring together our favourite traditions from different cultures and give some new ones a try as well. There will be turkey and cranberry sauce and mince pies and port and mulled wine. And pan dulce, candied fruits, turron, stollen, fernet, mate and dulce de leche.

Rather than one Christmas Day, we're going for something closer to the traditional twelve days of Christmas - we're doing a private Christmas dinner on the 24, one with friends on 25 and more friends over on 26. Then family over 27-29, and a day to breathe before more friends over for New Years. Rather than putting the whole focus on one day or one meal, I'm really looking forward to slowing down and savouring this time, and having some Christmas joy every day.

 The biggest change, though, will be the presents. Normally, the family Christmas tree is swamped by presents and you can’t stand next to it because the presents spread out across the floor so far. I’ve also observed a form of gift inflation, where each year there seem to be more. This kind of large-scale gift-giving is very alien to my boyfriend, who grew up with more moderate presents, and feels increasingly empty to me.

I get the impression from some of my family that they feel they need to spend money on a gift. I really don't want things - I've had a tough enough time with the little decluttering I've done in the last months without adding more stuff into the mix. I've asked several family members not to spend much, to just get consumables like bubble bath or a bottle of wine, or even better, to come visit or otherwise plan something together. Somehow I feel that many of them are sceptical about the idea of not giving me things, and ask for more substantial suggestions.

It’s taken me a long time but I have finally thought of something I want. A colander. That’s going to be my suggestion next time someone asks.

This year, my boyfriend and I have set a limit on the value of Christmas gifts, and even though the base of the tree seems rather sparse, I’m much happier with it than I would be with a sea of wrapping paper.

TV vs wood-burning stove

I’m struggling to come up with creative ideas here. I’ve been finding recently that I just don’t want to watch anything. In fact, in general we rarely watch tv, we tend to watch films or old tv series that we particularly enjoy. We’ve run out of many of these and find ourselves idly flicking through channels. There’s nothing on, so we turn the tv off – but don’t really have a replacement activity.

Sometimes we play board games but that does involve a fair degree of energy and mental acuity, which neither of us has after a long day at work. We can read books, but that’s something we do separately rather than together, and our evenings are most valuable as a moment to connect, snuggled up together under a blanket and sharing thoughts, support and body warmth. (The lack of heating is beginning to make itself felt)

I’ve searched online for ideas of things to do to replace tv but haven’t found anything appropriate. It needs to be an activity that we can share, that doesn’t involve going outside (at least at this time of year) and helps us wind down from a busy stressful day ready for sleeping – and preferably with no investment needed. Most suggestions online involve big projects around the house, outdoor activities, or individual activities for one person alone.

What I’d really like is to replace the tv focal point with something like a closed stove, so we can do what we do when we visit my father, sit around the fire and talk, idly picking up a magazine or book or listening to music in between random and meandering conversation. Unfortunately it’s not really a possibility in an inner-city flat on our current budget – maybe something to look into for future years.

 Picture from The Telegraph article: Can you really save £300 a year with a wood burning stove?

Somehow, without the background crackling and flickering, it’s hard to replicate that atmosphere of relaxation and openness. I don’t know why but just sitting on the sofa feels like not doing something, rather than intentionally doing nothing.

A slow Saturday

:: Shelling more pumpkin seeds - this is two pumpkins' worth ::

:: Winding homespun yarn into a ball ::

:: Edging the baby blanket ::

Decluttering is an exponential function

Since my realisation that I'm really a bit of a hoarder (slight understatement), I've been trying some different methods for decluttering, and I've found a sustained method that seems to be working so far, which I thought I'd share with you.

I'm essentially following the example of 365 Less Things in that my goal is to remove one thing each day - into the bin, or into the assorted piles which desperately need to be shifted. (One for the second-hand book shop, one for the second-hand clothes shop, one for the second-hand games and DVDs shop etc. I'd love a Help the Aged or similar nearby where I could just drop everything.) However, I'm not stopping there - most days I am discarding more than one thing, sometimes ten or more. I'm finding it easier and easier to let things go - although it's still a wrench, even for the most ridiculous things. (I honestly spent the best part of ten minutes debating whether or not to throw out a half-used bottle of body oil bought about eight years ago and not used since.)

I'm not being systematic, not focusing on areas of the house or anything like that. As I go about my daily routines, at some point my eyes light on something and I think: I don't need that, it doesn't add anything to my life, it should go. My bathroom cupboard, for example, has been denuded of, amongst others: assorted bottles of lotion, oil, gel, perfume, make-up etc which were not being used and were also hideously old; assorted homemade lotions which were not being used and were turning worrying shades of green; hair scrunchies which had lost their elastic and were not being used; and assorted plastic jewellery items which (guess what) were not being used. In fact, I think something like 90% of my bathroom cupboard just never gets used.

This is so far having two positive feedback loops. The first is that the areas which I use most often are naturally where the impact of this approach is being felt. Each time I open my bathroom cupboard to pin my hair or similar, the items left are glaringly obvious, and increasingly look redundant. The rate of decluttering seems to increase exponentially.

The second feedback loop is that these high-traffic areas contrast increasingly strongly with areas I rarely use (spare room, linen cupboard, cellar), so I am increasingly struck by how cluttered they are and how many things could be disposed of.

I'll be sharing my tips soon on the psychological method I am developing to persuade myself to let things go - in contrast to this spatial method - but I wanted to share with you this very simple and slow decluttering method. Rather than taking on a daunting challenge of even setting a 10-minute timer, the process of only requiring myself to discard one item a day means I feel no pressure, and with items with emotional attachments I can build up to it - each day I look at it and each day the question mark shrinks a little until finally I have no remaining qualms about letting it go.

I am feeling noticeably lighter and like I'm breathing better, weirdly - but also increasingly aware of my clutter and increasingly keen to get rid of it.

Slow Living 2013 - October

This post is another in the Slow Living Month by Month series. It's a useful opportunity to bring together what I have been doing on this in the last month, and to remind myself of the progress I have made. After a rather un-slow September, I feel like I have been back on track this month - and am feeling much more positive as a result! I have to say that the major story this month is the realisation of just how much of a hoarder I am - and I have begun decluttering just one item a day to try to address this.

[NOURISH] I have reverted to live yoghurt for breakfast - it makes such a difference to my energy levels and (apparently!) to my breath. I smell better when I eat yoghurt. Who knew? More baking of bread, more meal-planning and home cooking (by my lovely boyfriend).

[PREPARE] My first attempt at mincemeat! I have no idea how this is going to turn out but I'm already looking forward to my first batch of mince pies. I've put two jars in the fridge and two in the cupboard, so I can see how the keeping times differ. My boyfriend and I also made fig jam. (Well, I saw 'we' - it was more him. I assisted.)

[REDUCE] I have rescued two pairs of shoes which had holes in the bottom, and have had them resoled. Several torn, worn and stained clothes have been unpicked, washed and pressed ready to be cut up for paper piecing. I do have to further add that as I have been decluttering more systematically, quite a few items have ended up in the bin (eg five-year-old make-up... euch!)

[GREEN] Still using green cleaners. I'm revisiting my cleaning routines to try to build 'a little and often' into my daily routines, making the best use of natural cleaners. I have also been experimenting with a natural dandruff remedy which is working a treat!

[GROW] No progress here this month... but I'm planning some planting for November/December! I have promised myself that when all the curtains are finished, I'll plant some bulbs. I'm having lots of fun looking into where I am going to start.

[CREATE] No shortage of items here! Another pair of curtains finished - that has to be the big one - plus I am working on a crochet blanket for a young birthday coming up soon. I've also had my first foray into candle-making, and have another pair of socks on the go.

[DISCOVER] I've been doing rather more reading this month, and have finished and enjoyed The English Village: History and Traditions by Martin Wainwright. A delightful and not-too-technical wander through the history of villages and their institutions, from church to pub.

[ENHANCE] This month I have invested in my more distant friends, with a number of letters and packages making their way to people with whom somehow I never manage to connect using more modern technology. The joy of surprise parcels and handwritten letters - both sending and receiving - is making its way back into my life.

[ENJOY] I have been really enjoying my 'slower' lunches at work the last week or so, taking the time to get out into the park and enjoy some fresh air.

That having been said...

I love ablative absolutes, don't you?

So no sooner had I finally blogged about the soul-destroying pile of crap beside my bed which I was climbing over every evening than something changed. We were watching a tv programme today about a compulsive hoarder, and my boyfriend gave me A Look. I protested that I was not a hoarder but as the programme continued, I found it harder to argue this point. I also find it hard to throw things away, even broken and unusable things, because I feel they have an inherent value and deserve a better fate. I hoard very little now, but the idea that this practice is just the tip of a potentially life-damaging iceberg is rather terrifying.

I'm wondering whether I need to come to terms with the idea that, in the process of simplifying my life, I just have to accept that some of the things I have accumulated to this point cannot be a part of my journey going forward. Eventually I will reach a point where I don't have any 'superfluous' clothes which I am torn between keeping, donating and cutting up for crafts. I will reach a point where every used item of clothing can be 'processed' for rags and reusable fabric. At the moment, I just have too much. An example: I have some off-cuts from the curtain lining. It's too small to be used for more curtains, and even if it were, I have no more lined curtains to make. I've been keeping them with the idea of using them as backing for a crocheted rag rug or something like that. But I also have several lengths of beautiful new fabric just waiting to be used, some Vogue patterns waiting to bring a new dress to life, and a wardrobe desperately in need of rejuvenating. Why don't I give up on odds of blackout lining and focus instead on these other projects?

I'm also realising that by perhaps overcomplicating my project list - by intending to do everything from scratch from the beginning - I'm disincentivising the smaller projects that I could more realistically achieve with the time available to me after my long days, and the rule I have somehow developed of throwing nothing away is more hindering than helping my creativity. There's nothing wrong with small steps - in fact, I am reminded of my colleague's reminder that when starting a new job, you need the humility to accept that you will make mistakes during the learning process, and that you have to give yourself time.

So today the space by my bed is clear. A lot of the mess has just been moved around - the clothes back to the wardrobe, the spare fabric into a box - but I've put some things on a 'to donate' pile. (Now I just need the steel resolve and ruthlessness to actually donate them, instead of rescuing things.)

Either way, I think I will sleep better tonight for having a less stuff to navigate.

Four minutes is four minutes too long

I was very lazy and took the bus home today. My work is not a long walk from home, but after a long day it's tempting to just hop on a bus, particularly if it's leaving fairly soon. Today, it was due to leave after four minutes.

I sat down and reached for my phone - there are useless games on my phone which are frankly rubbish but they help pass the time - and I thought: how silly to do something pointless for the sake of killing four minutes. Is a four minute wait really too long? I should value this down-time, when the rest of my day is so rushed.

It's not just me - the lady sitting next to me was trying to find a wifi hotspot, and all around me people were checking phones and emails, reading work-y-looking documents. We're all crazy and we all need to think of a four-minute wait as a pleasure, a chance to stop and do nothing for a few precious minutes - stare out of the window, people-watch, reflect. Mentally compose a blogpost. Unplug, switch off and recharge.

Does anyone have synonyms for those which don't make us sound like laptops or mobile phones? Perhaps even the language we use to describe this busy buzzy life needs to slow down and become more organic.

Even when it has slowed down, Brussels doesn't switch off -

The European Parliament just before dawn