The time has come (in fact it is long overdue) to get rid of these.

The pots got frosted and the plants got blight.

They were lovely in their day.

I am sad to see them go.

I am glad to see them go.

They were half hidden behind some roses and I didn't realise just how far gone they were. A few more broken potss, some randon bits of wood, a cracked plastic bucket, a rusty chair - a little rust is quite romantic in a vintage sort of way, a lot of rust is simply a hazard. Why did I hang onto all this for so long?

What have you been hanging onto for too long?  Can you get rid of it this very day?

..for butterflies.

Perhaps they are all in your gardens?

There's a fine line between wild and completely out of control, and I think I may have crossed that line!

It's been too wet to strim the long grass but I will wait until the cormflowers have gone anyway.

The birds are very happy.

The evening light is lovely and I am on a  roll with clearing the 'identity clutter' now that I have got some moomentum going. It's proving to be rather ineresting...

..is much underrated.

July has been about super healthy eating, and August is going to be about unclogging (decluttering).

Out with the university flies and all the garden design plans, drawings, client notes and phtographs I made over a decade or so. It's called 'identity clutter' apparently and is even harder to deal with than shoes! Any tips most welcome..

Just to let you know I plan to post just twice a week or so during August (with apologies to those of you who read the blog as part of your daily routine).

This time it is papers.

I am sure there are people who simpy deal with them without fuss, but I seem to need to make a project of it, so I am doing a vatiation on the 30 day challenge where on day one you gat rid of one item, day two  two items and so on...

I have written the numbers 1 to 30 on a sheet of paper and will put a line through one number each day - a low number if I am busy, a higher one if I have more time. I have already scored off number 30.

By the end of the challenge I will have got rid of 407 bits of paper from drawers and files and shelves!

Meanwhile, am waiting for snow..

..to make a fresh start.

Food shopping tomorrow!

It is eleven days since I did that clutter clearing. It was so fruitful I am still energised by it and enjoying preparing the house for winter (and possible emergencies - candles, torch batteries, camping stove etc).

Clothes next perhaps.

What are you sorting/getting rid of/simplifying/organising? Are you finding that the more you do, the more energy you have?

..of taking a short break, is coming home with a slightly altered perspective on things......the lovely holiday lodge had absolutely no clutter, but everything that was needed. That may be why it was so relaxing.


So I have ready for the charity shops and the recycling centre -
two duvets
one large cushion
one pillow
one mug
one lamp
one large saucepan
four child buoyancy jackets
three adult buoyancy jacketst
wo pairs of flippers
six jumpers
five tops
two coats
one chair
one bookstand
twelve DVDs
various flowerpots, baskets and tins.....
and more.

But rain stopped play. The buses were cancelled, there were landlsides and flooding. I am grateful that my house is four feet off the ground but a neighbour in the glen closer to the river is not so lucky and his house is flooded to waist height.

I do hope you are waarm and dry.

I wrote the above yesterday, but the rain has eased a bit and all my things were collected today!

 ..for clearing the excess stuff.

I've used Marie Kondo's method of asking 'Does it spark joy?' and the 'one in, one out' method. Fly Lady treats clutter clearing as an ongoing task so it doesn't accumulate in the first place and Margareta Magnusson in her charming  book with the less charming title of Death Cleaning asks this great question -

Will anyone I know be happier if I keep this item?


The sheer entertainment value of a young unknown Japanese woman with an approach from a very different culture, an American with a very down-to-earth common-sense attitude and a Swede aged 'somewhere betwnn 80 and 100' with a gentle sense pf humour, not to mention the various minimalists along the way, have kept me pretty much on the straight and narrow. 'Make it fun, it will get done' says sensible FlyLady.

Worksfor me!

Hyacinths in almost every room of the house. Amazing colours, diivine scent - how romantic is that?

THOUGHTS ON THE BLOG. Sandra mentions peace here on Live Simply Simply Live. I decided that conflict and controversy would have no place here, no matter how exercised I feel about current afffairs. I try to remember that there are millions, billions of little pockets of peace on our planet. This is one of them.

I just recycled three old pairs of shoes, two stained tea towels and a faded napkin.

Why do we hang on to such things?

Algae, mould, rust, flaking paint and chipped enamel. On a hot summer day with flowers all around they can look romantic. Shabby chic even. But on a wet dull February day they just look pllain shabby! Some of these things have been here for nearly twenty years. I've had my money's worth and it's time for some new ones.

When we can get to the shops - which may not be too long ....

I am so looking forward to getting into the garden.

..if you grow this!

The scent is heavenly but the leaves of the heliotrope have given me fingers which burn. I've had an allergic reaction - my index fingers and thumbs, and my nose cheeks and forehead where I have touched them are bright red and painful. Gloves are a must now when I am handling this plant!

Has anyone else been Kondoing? This week is books. I have an awful lot of books. I love my books, but I can't read so well as I used to.....

The thing is they might come up with a cure for my eye condition! (AMD). So I think I must ask of each book If I could see again clearly would you still spark joy?

and start afresh

..that Human beings can only truly cherish a limited number of things at one time.

Marie Kondo

I like this fact - it's like a relief to know this!

And I think that I do cherish the things that are left more.

Loving it.

..that the 'click point' is when I have no more stuff than I can properly handle.

Getting there...

Are you?

The shed was Barry's domain. He was the patient fixer of things, he mowed the lawns, replaced the lightbulbs, made the gates both red and yellow, cut the hedges, climbed the ladders into the loft, dealt with the mice, mended the fence, chopped the wood, and more. He also kept all the leftover bits and pieces from every job he did and hoarded sets of tools for cars and bikes long gone and collected more jars of  rusty nails than can be imagined!  Just in case.

In a fair world women would not be left to clear out their mens sheds.

But what a support team I have behind me!  I loved all your suggestions - I will adopt the explorer/playful/inner child mindset, I will whistle up the courage, I will probably sigh and swear and laugh (my helper has a great sense of fun). Bribery is a great idea, and I am already thinking up ways to celebrate....

..is everywhere.

I was going to post the song The Last Rose of Summer but it was too too sad!

The invasion of the mice meant I had to get into the cupboard under the eaves, so while I was in there I pulled out the boxes to investigate exactly what was in them.  The contents are currently spread all over the guest room - but it was the final cupboard in the house - nearly there!

And I've just had an offer of help with clearing the shed.  Yay!

While the chimney was being swept I found myself starting to clear the linen cupboard (thinking of you Mary and being careful of my back!). A day later the job is nearly done. How did I come to have so much surplus linen? Who needs 19 tea towels? I think I find fabric almost as hard to part with as books..

And why do I invest so much emotion in an old faded towel?

Marie kondo says that Japanese people have treated material things with reverence since ancient times and that there are three facets to the spirit that dwells in material things: the spirit of the materials from which it is made, the spirit of the  person who made them and the spirit of the person who uses them.

I find this fascinating.

And I'm keeping that one.

But parting with this lot!

Specifically papers. Personal papers you don't want to keep.

It's hard for most of us, and we're all different, but here's what's working for me.

I am easily overwhelmed but I want the job done. They weigh on me these thoughts from my past. They served their purpose, but that was then and this is now and they don't spark joy they just give me an uneasy feeling every time I look at them.  I motivate myself by looking at blogs and videos (there are millions of them, including mine!) I remind myself that I have rarely if ever regretted getting rid of stuff. I look around at the areas I have cleared and feel the calm spaciousness. I also remind myself that it is highly unlikely that anyone else would ever want to, or have the time to, wade through them. I won't be leaving them to my old university either :-)

I consider just burning the lot, but I am too curious about what I've written....

Sometimes I start with a quick first pass getting rid of the obvious throw-aways. That reduces the pile. Good. Then I might do one of several things. I tell myself I will stop as soon as I feel overwhelmed (I've just done that with a drawer of cards which have been sent to me - very emotional.) I will go back to it another time.

Or I commit to dealing  with the first 2/5/10 sheets, read them, decide keep or shred and put them in the keep folder or shred them straight away. I know I may go through the keep folder again at some point but as the aim is to reduce the pile I try not to put 'maybe' ones in there. I get some momentum going and begin to enjoy it.

Or I set a timer for 15 minutes and tell myself I am allowed to stop when it goes, or keep going if I feel like it. I often do keep going - it's the starting that's the hardest.

I've been 'Kondoing' since I first came across Marie Kondo's book in 2014. i knew that her tender animism towards objects combined with a kind of ruthlessness or clarity of purpose was for me and it's worked well for me. The loft and the basement are clear. Yay! The bags of shredded paper go into the compost bins. A friend who took a welding course when she was seventy and has been making sculptures ever since, took away a box of old tools from the shed yesterday. An art teacher is taking a big bag of surplus paper and materials. The old lanterns have gone to the charity shop since I bought the lovely new ones, and a feeling of lightness is coming over me, and a spark of - is it excitement? - is stirring somewhere deep within...

Find out what works for you and go for it!

I have been shredding more notes.

Tonight I sat at my desk reading Colette's Earthly Paradise in the light of the lamp, drinking coffee from a favourite cup and eating a Tesco's Finest Spicy Dark Chocolate Ginger biscuit, and I chanced upon the wonderfully funny piece where, as an old lady she is being interviewed by a very young journalist who, seeking perhaps the secret of her success asks about her notes...

What notes? When I am gone they won't find a single one. Oh, I tried! But everything I made a note of became as sad as a dead frog's skin, as sad as a plan for a novel. Trusting to the advice of writers who did make notes, I made some notes on a sheet of paper then lost the paper. So i bought a notebook, one of the new spiral ones, and I lost the notebook, after which I felt that I was free, forgetful, and prepared to accept the consequences of that forgetfulness.

This is how the inside of the desk drawer now looks. It makes me so happy!

To quote Colette again (I think she is my all time favourite writer)....

..I am so happy I am almost ready to start feeling guilty about it.

..on a major project.

I can't tell you how many times I have headed purposefully to the studio to declutter and organise it, stood looking at it and turned back and walked out, simply not knowing where to start, overwhelmed by nearly two decades of stuff....

I did the same again this morning.

The weather has changed to cool and rainy so I wasn't going to be gardening, and I have to say I felt somewhat invigorated by the change in temperature and humidity, but still I couldn't start, so I went to Marie Kondo's Spark Joy for some inspiration and found it on page 31 under When You Feel Like Quitting.

That woman is brilliant.

The photographs are taken after I had already removed a large seed propagator, the large glass bowl of a broken lamp, a bag of recycling, an old fire extinguisher, a pair of leaky wellies and a large tin of paint!

A chance lighting effect. Flowers under a lamp are always lovely. These little roses remind me of summer. Yes, as is my habit, I am still resisting autumn!

What I thought was going to be a 'tweaking' of my wardrobe has turned into something more.

It seemed a good idea to put all the things I rarely or never wear - you know the ones you put on but always put back on the hanger - into one pile -it's huge!

Now how ruthless do I want to be? I suppose the answer will be in looking at the pile and asking myself of each thing 'How does it make me feel?' and 'Would I buy it today?'

Reminding myself of how I want my clothes to make me feel....

I think my favourite charity shop is about to get a big donation.


Thank you for sharing your good ideas!

..I was a minimalist at heart, I now know I am. I had the two bedrooms which had been damaged by a leak in the roof decorated this week (didn't do it myself this time - bliss!).

I just loved them bare and almost empty.

I am thinking very carefully about what goes back in..

Tables (I may paint them), lamps and plain white bedlinen - definitely.

White cotton curtains? I swithered for a bit as there is a blind, but I like the softness. I don't even mind that they are so old they have a few little holes - call it wabi sabi..

Rug, mirror and clock.

Yes.

Birds and writing lamp too.

Beautiful raku pot by Peter Sparrey

flowers by the bedside. Always.

Barry's side too.

There must be an end to this Kondoing lark, surely! After all the amount of stuff I have is finite, and I am being very careful about not accumulating more.

Has anyone out there actually got to the end of it?

This wet day it is some old files of garden designs. Yesterday it was hundreds of slides. The miscellaneous and sentimental categories seem to have combined....

I watched a very moving programme about grief on iPlayer. Rio Ferdinand is a brave man.

Someone described grief as 'love with nowhere to go'.


Later - I sought more wisdom from Marie Kondo's Spark Joy. She asks Are you enjoying your tidying festival? And yes, I am really. I'd just forgotten to notice I was actually enjoying it! She also adds Even if you fail, don't worry. Your house won't blow up.

Phew.

Three days of cloudless blue sky and warmth! Bliss!

My favourite job was cutting back the dead stems on the golden marjoram (origanum vulgare aureum). The smell so summery. I also cut some grass, raked gravel, cleared moss, cleaned out the greenhouse, sowed some seeds, potted on giant sunflowers, planted out nemophila Baby Blue Eyes,  and found someone who actually wants all the spare bits of wood, bricks, tarpaulins, rusty workbench, old barbecue, bundles of canes and other assorted clutter from the back of the shed.

Yay! A good day's work.

Time for another hot soak..

I was very taken with Cath's metaphor - her house as a vessel (which could be a jar or urn but which I envisaged as a sailing ship).

It made me think of all the 'stuff' in the house as ballast - too much and you sink, just enough and it provides stability in stormy weather. Then there's the journey, and safe havens and harbours and anchors, and of course everything 'ship-shape' inside....ie in it's right place and working!

This is the kind of thing that Lucille puts under the heading of 'how to derive entertainment from mundane chores' See her Hokusai in the Car Wash - love it!

I would have put the music 'Sailing By' on this post if I had time to figure out how to do it without you having to look at ads first....but sorry, I'm going Christmas shopping and to party at Glasgow School of Art. (New dress!)

Maybe tomorrow..