General Musings

OK I am really hit and miss at this whole blog thing. I am really going to try getting a bit more regular at it as part of my Diploma in Permaculture Applied Design learning pathway and recording. To help in this endeavour I have actually registered on the Diploma and so I am really need to get more focused about it.

As a start I am going revisit my bedroom design and my health design. I am also doing another minimalist month as can be seen below:

There are more things I have got rid of than the things above but again it has totalled more than the 496 things I was supposed to do as part of the minimalist month challenge. This is such a simple thing to do once you get used to the idea and it becomes quite addictive. I have also added the extra layer of randomly picking things up around the house (especially those things that don't have a home and seem out-of-place or a bit forlorn) and asking"does this bring me joy?" This is a question advised in the Marie Kondo book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying: A simple, effective way to banish clutter forever and it really works for me. As part of this latest de-cluttering cycle I asked this question about some of the many ink pens I have and realised that although I really like ink pens I don't need more than a couple and so the extra ones don't being me joy because they never get used and are taking up space in my house that they don't need to.

Anyway I really just wanted to put keyboard to computer screen to prompt myself to start writing again and I have done that.

More minimalist musings

The fab collage above shows some of the stuff that has left my home since January. I did another minimalist month in March and then May getting rid of another 1000 things. 

Then last month I got rid of a load of stuff on ebay. I have to say this minimalist process is great fun and really, really good for the soul. It is something that I am going to endeavour to do at least twice a year if not once a quarter. I still have way to much stuff so I know that doing this is worth setting in stone so I have added it to my calendar!!

Minimalist January - complete - 496+ things GONE

Well I did it and more. It got to day 22 and I decided to get rid of my duplo train track which we occasionally take to home education group gatherings. Well there were over 110 pieces in that so that took me well over my target of 496 things.  I am really pleased and it went really well.

All the items sold on ebay other than Indie's dolls. Those will be going to charity as soon as I can get them there if no-one wants them on facebook.  The other things on ebay did really well and from things we sold we made £127 which is great because our dishwasher is broken and cannot be fixed :-( so we are getting a new one.

Anyway I loved this process and I am wondering when I can find the time to do another month of this some time later this year. But for now let the de-cluttering stop!!!  And marvel at some of the 496+ things I got rid of below!!

For those of you who like tables and to able to see the last few things I got rid of, here they are!!!

Day	Picture	Reason why
18		I whole load of wrapping paper, gift tags, party invitations I am nevr going to use. These were freecycled.
19		More knitting and crochetting magazines. These were freecycled.
20		More bits and pieces that I don't need. These went to charity shop and there were more than 20 items in this bag.
21		Musical instruments. Some went to my local community cafe, others went to charity shop and the 2 alto recorders are going to find a new home soon.
22		A whole load of duplo train track. This is the sort of thing I would love to keep - just in case - but I really am getting fed up of "just-in-case" or "in-case-my-children-have-children" items so this will be going on ebay if no-one wants it on facebook.

Minimalist January - part 2

Week 2 of the minimalist challenge is going well, so well in fact that I am posting this a day early!!

I had already got up to 11 and had already done 15 so I only had 12, 13, 14 left to do but I wanted to try and do 29, 28 and maybe 27 so that I had less to do when I was away. The smaller numbers were ok but those bigger numbers - they were a challenge without really cheating and counting things like marbles or pens!!

So I really put my mind to it and I did better than I thought I would as you can see below.

It was great to get some inspiration from some great articles about minimising though like this one.

Even dd and dh got in on the action with Indie getting rid of some items which are part of day 26 below and she got rid of a whole lot of dolls which went on ebay here but aren't included below as I didn't want to include too much of her stuff.

Day	Picture	Reason why
12		I am a bit of a bag lady so there is really no surprise that I had spare bags that I really don't need and don't use. These are just some of them that I could bear to part with. They went to charity shop.
13		Here are some of the books I got rid of but these went to my local library because they are happy to take good quality books.
14		Household magazines like Prima, Good Housekeeping, etc. These went on freecycle.
16		Juno magazines which I had read. These went to a friend.
17		A whole load of various crochet magazines which I had read and noted the patterns I needed. These went on freecycle.
23		Bad picture (sorry) but here are our unneeded Xmas decorations. We have one box of decorations and it was beginning to overflow so it was time to freecycle some.
24		A set of books that went to charity and a set that went to Amazon for some money.
25		A bunch of seeds I had left over from the Grow Wild Kew campaign last year. Some will be sown and the rest have been freecycled.
26		Some games we don't use which have been taken to charity shop and a bag of dd's clothes which are too small for her. It was great getting dd involved. We totally tidied and zoned her room as we went too (see below.)
27		A bag full of painting stuff that we don't need any more.
28		A whole load of various craft and knitting magazines which I had read and noted the patterns I needed. These went on freecycle.
29		Another whole load of various craft and knitting magazines which I had read and noted the patterns I needed. These went on freecycle.

My items from last week are still on ebay and don't end until Sunday but have sold already which is great. I have also freed up at least 3 whole shelves by getting rid of these magazines and various other things.

	Here are the photos from dd's room transformation. I wish I had got some before photos as well because you can rarely see dd's floor. I am hoping that the re-zoning of everything to where it is most useful to her might help her keep the floor tidy but we will see.
Above is a photo showing that there is enough floor space to actually lie down!! Not something you can ever do in dd's room. Here are her newly arranged shelves with boxes and baskets all ordered and organised. This will not last but it looks good at the moment.
	I have tried to organise her shelves so that the books she uses more often are nearer the bottom and ornaments she doesn't play with are at the top. The same with the red shelves in the photo above. The more ornamental things are on the top shelf and the precious things she uses more often are on the bottom shelf.
With the 3 sets of wardrobe shelves (to the right and above) I again tried to find out from her how she uses her toys and boxed them up appropriately. This means that she can get a box down to play with something and there then might be a small chance that she then puts it back!! I think these will need re-visiting as her room becomes messy again. I will then try to find out what is not working and why but by this time she as getting tried of tidying and sorting.
	A happy dd using some floor space for writing her book whilst listening to music. So even when I sort out her desk so that she can write on it she wants to use the floor because she can!!
The 5 piles of stuff that we got from her room which she doesn't want any more. Result!!

Minimalist January - part 1

I am going to play my Minimalist January game a bit strangely because I am away at the end of January and don't want to be left with took much stuff to get rid of at the end of the month when I am not even in my house.

So for the first few days of the challenge I am going to do extra later days as well as the early ones.

Let the de-cluttering begin!!!

Day	Picture	Reason why
1		Tap Shoes I don't use and them and never will. They have gone to a good home where the kids do dance.
2		New Rock Shoes & Keyring These are now on ebay here.
3		Wooden Fairy Village This has found a fab new home with neighbours who I know will get lots of use out of it. I am really pleased because I really, really didn't want to get rid of this.
4		Jewellery that I made and some I don't need These have been given to a friend as a present which she will really enjoy.
5		Socks - socks are only small so 10 pairs of socks = 5 This is what I love about this game. You start seeing everything differently. I had too many socks and had had too many socks for a long time and suddenly I am seeing opportunities to get rid of stuff everywhere. Even getting rid of 10 pairs of socks is a small step towards de-cluttering and it is becoming a habit.
6		Sea glass, sea pottery and marbles I had a lot of this stuff that was on display but I didn't need all 7kg of it so I got rid of 5kg of sea glass and 1kg of marbles and sea pottery.
7		Wool This was a tough one as I LOVE my wool. But I thought I could donate these few balls to either the new York Timebank craft group or some other crafty group.
8		Empty Jam Jars We had planned to make jam and chutney but didn't get round to it so there are being offered on freecycle.
9		Open University course books Put on ebay here.
10		Oracle cards and sets Again I have too  many sets of these so I picked my favourite and these are now on ebay.
11		More Open University course materials These are now on ebay now.
15		Empty bottles and Bach Flower remedies These are not getting used in my house so have been offered on freecycle
30		Books and Game These have been given to my brother and sister-in-law for their gorgeous new baby boy. They are all learning to read books and games.
31		More Books There are always more books to get rid of. I used to have a tendency to think that I needed to keep all books that the kids may at some point want to read but I now know that will more clutter they are actually less likely to read the books they want to read because of being overwhelmed by the number we have.

More next week!!!

Finding a rhythm and the minimalist game

Looking back at my post from August and especially the one from the start of 2014 here it is fascinating to see what things have changed since then. I am now employed at the Northern College of Acupuncture (NCA).  It is a blessing to work at such a worthwhile place even if it is only very part-time. I hoping that my computer programming skills might help here as well because the NCA are considering changing their client database structure.

I never got round to adding alarms to my phone for reading books and doing crafts because I wasn't organised enough at the time. I also realised I was too busy finishing my Shamanic Practitioner training, my Permaculture Association Trustee duties (where I was made official administrator back in July) as well as the needs to my immediate and wider family. However I have now started using google calender, google tasks, google keep and their associated apps on my phone so I am wondering whether, once my OU course is finished in July, I will add these things to my to-do-list if that is what I think is the best use of my time.

Anyway over the last year I have started finding a much-needed rhythm to my life. I feel this has been partially due to my Shamanic studies as well as my continued learning about Permaculture design methodology and how it can help design all areas of a person's life. I have started surveying and assessing the way my house works for us as a family. As a home educating family and my occasional need to work from home we have a myriad needs of our house from accommodating large numbers of children and parents to my needing a place to tutor students or work as a shamanic practitioner. This has led to my contemplating designing a number of rooms in the house and de-cluttering as a by-product of the design implementation. I am going to continue this de-cluttering and am thinking of doing the Minimalist game with my dd in the New Year as a way to maintain and tweak the design. Starting from the 1st January we are going to throw things out or ebay them every day. The challenging bit is that on the 2nd we have to throw 2 things out, 3 on the 3rd, 4 on the 4th, etc.

As part of evaluating my bedroom design over the last few weeks I have already made some changes which have resulted in at least the 6th January being sorted as I found 6 bags I don't need. Whether I will manage all the way through January will be interesting but I like the SMARTness (see below) of this game and if it works I will be implementing it more than once as a fun SADIMET tweak to my de-cluttering designs.  My bedroom was my first design within my house but I have my dining/kitchen area that also needs designing as well as potentially my loft, garage, Shamanic room and porch.  Let's see if this game works or not!!

Specific - follow the instructions
Measurable - I follow the instructions or not
Achievable - 496 items = a lot but I have many things I don't use so hopefully it is do-able
Realistic - see above
Time-bound - this is the best thing about this game.  It is very specifically time-bound.  By the end of January 2015 I will have 496 less things cluttering my house. 

The other great thing about this game is the fact that I am limited on time at present but I want to keep my momentum from the Permaculture Association National Diploma Gathering going.  I have put on hold starting any further designs (I have an "exercise" design that I need to write up) whilst I concentrate on finishing my OU course and settling into working at the NCA.  I am however wanting to continue de-cluttering and finding more rhythm in my life.  If anyone wants to join me in the game let me know!

Zoning the areas of the house helps with decluttering

	Over the last few years our house has been in an interesting state of upheavel.  As part of my Permaculture Applied Diploma I have been re-designing our house and trying to zone it so that things are in the right place, easy to find but most importantly easier to keep tidy.  This is not an effortless feat seeing as I am messy and I tend to have at least 5 craft projects on the go which seem to spread themselves around the house.  I am trying to find a dedicated craft area but at present we are still trying to finish the kitchen before we can work out what to do with the old dining room, before I can then work on the rest.
However, I have managed to majorly re-design my bedroom!!!  It isn't totally sorted but it is working really well.  Observation in this area indicated that having all the resources around the edge of a long, thin room was making the room thinner and minimising what could be achieved within the left-over space.  In the future the room could be split into two decent sized rooms but this isn't wanted or needed at present.  There was also a need for a space in the house in which to exercise.  Putting all these needs together I evaluated that using the furniture to make a border down the middle of the room (above) could create more usable space whilst splitting the room into two distinct zones: the dressing/clothes area (to the right) and the exercise/study area.
	The study/exercise area needs work but it is a start and the implementation of these changes and the creation of a separate dressing area has resulted in a less messy space and has also led to de-cluttering of clothes and bedding.  It seems that zoning has a knock-on effect in that it makes it easier to sort, de-clutter and cyclically makes it easier to maintain. Result!!  This design is a great example of using the OBREDIM permaculture design process.  All this sorting and tidying in one area also had a ripple effect across the whole of the house.
Above there is a new shelf put into the living room for the kids new craze of loom-banding. Another thing in the house which is in the process of being redeveloped and redesigned after major building work is the kitchen (read about the renovation here.)  This has been a long and drawn out process because resources meant that we could pay for the building changes but couldn't afford to pay for the decorating or new kitchen design. This has meant that progress has been slow. However this has allowed time to see how the space is used by family and visitors to the house.
	Surveying and analysing in this way has been productive and enlightening and has meant that the design for the kitchen has been re-evaluated and re-designed at least 3 times over the last year. The implementing of the new design is going to take a while and there is more evaluating that needs to take place but one thing I have been able to do is work out a new way to not waste food.  I have designed a simple cataloguing system for the fridge and freezer using magnetic tape.
It started (as can be seen above in the bottom half of the picture above ) by just using whiteboard markers. They are not easy to wipe off and made the system awkward.  Magnetic tape may also end up having cons as well but is working so far.  The freezer (above) is divided into drawers so people know where the various foods are.  This also means that energy use is lessened because the freezer doesn't need to be opened for as long whilst someone tries to find the right food.

The fridge has a space for the food actually in the fridge as well as a consider buying section.  The space for the magnets which signal the food stuffs which have been used but don't need re-stocking as yet, are at the bottom of the freezer door. Anyway progress is being made using various design techniques and I am very happy with results.