A question..
How many people live in your home?
And how many socks?
|
A question.. How many people live in your home? And how many socks?
10 Comments
..with a difference. If you have to structure your own time as I do (as a self employed artist) you may find Donald Miller's Storyline schedule interesting. It is a sheet which you fill in each day - available free from http://storylineblog.com and scroll down the sidebar to Productivity Schedule download. I've been using it for just a few days and it has been really useful. It helps me focus on what is important to me, it helps me make time for enjoyable things every day (though I do enjoy the work I do!), and it helps me manage my mental energy. There is a 'mind trick' devised by the psychologist Victor Frankl which I find works remarkably well for me.... Do you think it might work for you? Naomi Seldin has some interesting things to say about dealing with sentimental and inherited clutter (see here) and the biggest secret she says, the one that will set you free, is 'Your kids don't want your stuff!' Discuss/consider/send it to your mother/ask your children now.....  When you find  the perfect notebook  buy five! It's better than going back for more and finding they are discontinued. Other things I stock up on - The right colour of tights Pens the right thickness (how I wish I'd bought five -or ten - when in Stockholm - it is ridiculous to love a pen so much!) Tealights when they are on special offer What do you stock up on?  It seems many of us are spending January organising stuff! (There are some good tips in yesterday's comments - thank you all.) Between boring tasks like my tax return, I am travelling the Himalayas, walking across Afghanistan, spending time alone in a remote cabin on Lake Baikal, and living a hard yet fantastical life in Alaska - my Christmas books seem to have one thing in common - Snow! I switch from the sublime to the mundane. back and forth. More about the sublime anon, but here are a few gems from Fly Lady which get me through the mundane but necessary household jobs.... :-) You can do anything for fifteen minutes Anything is better than nothing This is not a chore, it is blessing your home Later is now Remove anything from your bedroom that would look out of place in a nice hotel bedroom Housework done incorrectly will still bless your family Babysteps Cath raised an interesting point in her comment on yesterday's post. If we love books, which come in assorted shapes sizes and colours, but we also love a calm and serene environment how do we create this? For ideas on book storage click here - gorgeous rooms filled with books, but not one of these is restful to the eye. We've made one of our bedrooms into a study, and all our books are in there, covering two walls. Two desks, a comfy chair and a lamp - this is my ideal arrangement. See here, and here. Of course I sometimes take a small stack into the cosier sitting room, and there are always a few beside the bed.... A dining room or a guest room might also double as a library.  You could organise them according to colour! This is the header photograph from the Danish blog Style Files but I do like my books organised by subject..  If it is not possible to have a separate room you might have some of your bookshelves with doors - sliding doors, to hide a television, or books, take up less space; or blinds, or a Japanese paper screen, or ceiling mounted curtains - but solutions would have to be thought through carefully to balance accessibility with visual impact. Lovely challenge, isn't it! PS If you liked the Worst Ice Skater Ever video on Saturday's post, you may have missed at the end of the video it says 'click here for a longer performance' - I think it's worth watching. About 8 minutes. Clever, and funny.
Wednesday is anti-procrastination day over at www.flylady.net so it's a busy day here! I start it out thinking Oh no, all the boring things I've been putting off, but it's amazing how I cheer up as the day goes on and I tick them off, clearing my head as I go. Lighter. It works. My 98 year old student (yes, you read that rightly) and I have agreed to do a simple drawing a day to get us back into the drawing habit. A little pocket size sketch book and 10 - 15 minutes a day.    Don't know where to start? Draw your breakfast!
Don't forget to comment on 9th Nov post for the chance to win Getting Things Done book... It seems November is my time for sorting books. Well, an annual review is no bad thing. I shall re-read my own November Simply Organise posts (I wrote about organising my books from 25 Nov till 5 Dec in 2010 and concluded with the statement If I'm not going to re-read it, use it as a reference, or recommend and lend it, I don't keep it). I currently have a stack on the floor of the study which is 19 books high. My aim is to have them all on the shelves, ideally with a little room to spare (I've never managed this yet). But I think it would feel better to treat myself to a new book now and then knowing there is space for it, than having the slightly guilty feeling that I experience when I buy a new book knowing there is nowhere to put it - and I am not going down the road of more bookshelves! We have a LOT of bookshelves.... Some wet evening, sometime soon, I shall pour a glass of something nice - warmed spiced wine? - and sift and sort. I think it might be do-able in one evening, amazingly. It took at least a week first time round How do you manage your book collection? Men are hoarders, except maybe Leo Babatua. Discuss! See here for the greatest hoarder the world has ever known....not what you might think. I'm sorry I'm having trouble with this link - but you can Google - You Tube Behind The Cloud A Tour Of Google's Secretive Data Facilities...(I've given the game away now!) 'Cloud' sounds so light and fluffy and innocuous doesn't it.... Yes CHRISTMAS!
There! I've said it! I usually say I don't want to think about it until December. It must have been that snow on the mountains a couple of days ago....so look away now if you just can't bear it. I've decided to face it in order to decide how I want to spend it. I want it to be a winter holiday. I want to relax and have fun, to go to at least two concerts, to be free to out if it snows, walking, taking photographs, playing with the children. Perhaps I'll go and see the lights and the sights, and the special exhibitions this year. And read lots of books. I'd really like to be ready by the sixth of December and have a whole month 'off' until Twelfth Night. Entertaining friends and family and having them to stay would be good. Oh, and being free to accept any nice invitations that come my way. I'd rather like to stay overnight in the city so as not to have to rush for the last ferry after a concert. I'll be kitted out and stocked up for possible power cuts, blocked or icy roads and any other winter emergencies....the freezer and the pantry full of lovely food, preferably (but not necessarily) home made, and all the ingredients to hand should I feel like baking or making sweets. I don't want to start Christmas early, but I want to know that when I am ready to start it - put the decorations up for example, or wrap the presents - I have everything I need and don't have to make the thirty mile round trip to town to get things. No rushing this year. All the back up work done well ahead of time. All this does require that I give it a little thought.. now. Today I wrote the word Christmas at the top of a fresh page in my notebook. That's my small start. I'm still having fun clutter-clearing old cards. I look through a stack asking Will I want this on the shelf? (see post 12 October) and this helps thin them down a bit! In other words if the card doesn't really appeal aesthetically, I read it, say it's time for you to go, and recycle it. It gets easier the more I do.  I bought these little card/photo holders years ago, because I couldn't resist the lovely colours. I use them a lot, not usually all at once like this, though it's rather nice. You can pop a card by your bedside, on the bathroom window ledge, by the kettle..and change them on a whim and in half a minute.
The holders are from Paperchase (I love that shop! Be warned, they have a sale on. I stopped myself from buying 30 pieces of multi felt deer table scatter..I mean do I need 30 pieces of.......in the middle of some serious decluttering?) There was snow on the mountains today!  One way that I re-use cards from my huge collection is to put one from the drawer on the shelf when I put fresh flowers out - I look for one which suits the flowers - in this case the card has both the colour of the vase and of the flowers....  ..and a whimsical message which makes me smile.  I get to enjoy them all over again! (But I will reduce the number a bit, and remember that I don't expect anyone who gets a card from me to keep it forever, and that no-one's going to be upset if I recycle their card!) For a month I have focussed on clearing the most visible clutter in the house, for just 15 minutes each day. I thought my home was quite clutter free but in fact when I looked at it dispassionately (hard to do!) there was lots of tucked away clutter (clutter being defined as anything I didn't use or love, or which didn't make me smile). Now I'm on the clutter in drawers and cupboards. I have lots of this. I thought that out of sight was out of mind, but in fact it is all there in the recesses of my mind as well as in the recesses of the cupboards, annoying me and yes, stressing me, in a quiet and insidious way. October focus is on paper clutter - I am flying through it! (Thank you to Jill and Lynne whose kind comments about the drawing course on yesterday's blog made my day!) 
Quiet still life.
I'm heading this post Simply Organise, but it feels more like it should come under Simply Live. I'll try to explain.. I've been following Fly Lady's system for organising my home for a month. It's been the easiest month of housework I've ever done and the house looks and feels clean, warm, relaxed and happy. It's the relaxed and happy bit that excites me most. No more nagging voice in my head every time I look at a job undone. This was not a big loud voice you understand, just a little niggly one, but it was always there and I hadn't realised how wearing it was, how tiring. The other major effect is that I feel as though I have so much more time. I DO have much more time! I feel as though I'm taking living simply and simply living to a new level for me and it feels exhilarating.  ..time to notice how amazing the rowan berries are this year. I admit that when I first looked at the Fly Lady website I was really put off by the look of it. Not my style, I thought (a bit snobbishly!)
Then I realised that I had another, bigger reservation and it had nothing to do with the website. It was that I was embarassed that I should need such a website. I'm a grown up I thought, I'm not living in chaos, I should know how to run a home without any help. But who taught me? No-one is the answer. I had to pick it up as I went along. I think we so undervalue the job of homemaker/housewife that it's simply taken for granted that women will grow up knowing how to manage what can be a very complicated life, multitasking, balancing a job, a home and a family and the huge responsibilities that entails - running a household requires so many management skills of quite a high order. Looking back, I really could have done with some of Fly Lady's systems - it might all have been so much easier. As a young child I had a stay at home Mum who managed everything perfectly - but I had no idea how she did it. It just happened while I was at school. Clean clothes appeared, meals appeared, library books were returned, holidays happened, presents arrived on birthdays. It all went so smoothly, but we never talked about how. How did you learn to run a household? Tell me do.... What do you do with all the greetings cards and postcards you receive? I have years' and years' worth of them in chester.. 
Leo Babatua of Zen Habits recently acknowledged his debt to Fly Lady as being an influence on his minimalist journey. Both are brilliant in their own way.
I'd never heard of Fly Lady and when I looked at the website I could see that many of Babatua's ideas were really straight from there. Fly Lady presents them as plain old common sense (and they are) and is clearly aimed at women, and perhaps particularly at women who are struggling to keep their heads above water. (CHAOS for example stands for Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome.) It has 500,000 followers. What Babatua has cleverly done I think, is to make common sense cool, not boring. (The Fly Lady site is decidedly uncool.) He makes it look like a sophisticated modern philosophy (Minimalism), with a touch of eastern allure (Zen). He has also made his site attractive to and relevant for men, and the trendy young. He has 250,000 'crazy, sexy, cool' followers.... Though I don't subscribe to either, preferring to dip in when I want to, I like them both and have found helpful and occasionally inspiring stuff on both sites. Have you? Julia sent this link to the poem Marginalia by Billy Collins who was America's Poet Laureate in 2001.
http://www.billy-collins.com/2005/06/marginalia.html I'd not come across it before and love it. Thank you Julia. I looked into selling my books on Amazon. Opinions vary. A lot. One argument against goes thus: by selling for a very low price on Amazon you are doing some small second hand book dealer out of business. This may well be true. The same is sometimes said of charity shops. One argument in favour is that you may be keeping books out of landfill. I'm not much wiser, and the books have gone to Oxfam. That way at least four people benefit. I get space. Someone gets a voluntary job sorting them.Several people get a book they want at a bargain price. Someone else hopefully gets something they really really need. Win all round. How do you dispose of unwanted books? A joke from florist and blogger Miss Pickering http://misspickering.blogspot.com How do you spot a blogger? They are the ones photographing the food instead of eating it. Tee hee - I don't think I have done this yet! Or have I?..... So what has happened in a year in the world of books, since I last took an overview of mine?
Well, lots of writers of blogs are producing e books, some free, some for a nominal cost, and some now selling through Amazon, rulers of the book world. Interestingly there still seems to be the demand for a hard copy. Seth Godin talks about his vision of the future of books in this 26 minute interview (poor sound quality) with Leo Babatua - www.zenhabits.net/seth/ Kindles and i Pads have improved and are cheaper. Some friends are enthusing about the Kindle, it is undoubtedly a space and shelf and weight saving option. Let's just say it's not on my Santa list for this year. I have ordered the illustrated version of The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal. Far from cheap editions and Kindle being the death knell of paper books, I like to think that books will once again become desirable objects to treasure and give as special gifts. I think this one may come into that category. Beautifully bound, it looks like a little work of art on its own. And it is a book I think I will reread more than once. Some independent bookshops still appear to be doing well. Take a look at www.persephonebooks.co.uk which has an interesting website, and closer to home Bookpoint in Dunoon www.bookpointdunoon.com which has a wide choice of books and an ordering service, a book group and author events. They also sell my cards! What do you think will be the future of books as we know them? PS The Hare With Amber Eyes came today, and I have to confess I am a little disappointed. Small things - it doesn't have a dust jacket which I do like on a 'special' book, the binding isn't as out of the ordinary as I'd thought, and the illustrations are not captioned on the page where they occur, which means you have to break from your reading to look them up at a table in the back of the book. It kind of spoils the flow. Also I had hoped to be able to see much more detail in the photographs of the netsuke, but they are not big enough. However, for the Amazon price of £14.49 (rrp £25) including postage, it is still a very nice buy. Shame I have to send it back because it has a big scratch on the cover!  Making room for the new, while keeping the best of the old.
What I am aiming for, I remind myself, is to know where each book is, and to be able to put my hand straight onto the book I want without having to move anything else first. I didn't quite get to that point last year (still have 9 shelves with books stacked two deep!) But I think maybe I can achieve that now. The other aim is to have relevant books, books which represent who I am today, not who I was x years ago. I don't know who said this, but I really like the concept. It helps me to be selective. And current. (I did get down to one row deep on all but 4 shelves. Next year....) Sorted bookshelves are now high on my list of life's simple pleasures! Looking at last year's blog for late November, I see I was having a major sort of my bookshelves, so I took a look, and yes, it needs done again.
Taking down the books a shelf at a time, I can see that some which I kept last year really could have gone and would not have been missed. That's good to know. They can go this year. They can go today. It should be so much easier than last year, sorting the books! I can see me making it an annual November task. Draw the curtains on the cold wet night, switch on the lamps, pour a glass of something and work my way through the shelves. Last year it took a week (I blogged about it from 25 Nov - 5 Dec!) this year I think I might do it in two, maybe three evenings. Hurrah! Simpler! Masses to do before Open Studios starts this Friday. I get a bit panicky as a deadline approaches, yet I still put things off! It doesn't make sense, but by this point I'm not thinking sensibly - I expend as much energy feeling guilty and castigating myself for leaving things to the last minute as would get the thing done. (I remind myself that this is how I usually do things....)
I'm painting the concrete floor in the studio white. I see it as a major, major job - all the stacked up paintings will have to be moved, and where to? And all the stuff under the worktable, and the boots and shoes and logs and other clutter that all end up here by the back door. It has to be vacuumed, washed, dried, painted, with time for the paint to dry before I need to use the space. I feel overwhelmed and begin to think it is an impossible task. Then I ask myself 'What would be simplest?' Just start. Take the first baby step. I clear a strip under the window from wall to wall, about 3 feet deep. I already feel better - because I have started. I wash it and go for a walk while it dries. Last thing I paint the clean strip. It's actually quite pleasant to do. I'll do more tomorrow. Now that I have started the panic subsides. I am calmer and I can see that it will all get done. It always does. But only if I start.... ..the wedding was lovely. There was rain, hailstones, and then just in time for the photos - sunshine.... Finally, finally, we have got to clearing out the loft!
Took a huge leap today from clearing a pile of paper yesterday, to clearing the loft - which long dreaded job was forced upon us by the need for new pipes up there - so the plumber has to be able to move around in it. I have to confess that clearing out stuff makes me bad tempered, and persuading someone else to clear out their stuff makes me even worse. But oh the sense of relief as it moves out! I did that oft recommended thing of putting stuff in boxes and bags up there, and a year (or three) later looking at them with a clear eye. Why have I still got almost every pair of curtains from every house I have lived in? Why have I got a full set of bank statements from 2005 - 2007? And an empty notebook with 1979 on the front cover? And the classic. University notes....all that work. Also, we bought a new set of suitcases, but still have the old ones and so on and so on....OUT! Some burned, some binned and I've booked a table at a table-top sale on Saturday to try to sell some nice candlesticks and a clock and jugs and plates and pots and lampbases and fabric. And curtains. Oh, and some books on living simply! (Could the burst pipes have been a blessing in disguise....?) Paperwork piles grow when I am not looking, and when I do look I groan inwardly!
Do you have this experience? Today, setting the calm mood required to deal equably with the paper stack, I picked some flowers, had a particularly nice breakfast while listening to the soothing voice of Agnes Obel, did the Onceover (see 26 Oct 2010), re-read the relevant section in Babatua's The Power of Less , set the kitchen buzzer for an hour, and sorted it. What a good feeling! Quite disproportionate to the small achievement I'm sure, but when I got one pile cleared I was ready and eager, well willing, to start on the next pile (yes, there's more than one), with the proviso that as soon as I felt even slightly fed up with it, I'd leave it for another session. Here is Babatua's advice for dealing with that pile of papers: 1 start processing from the top down 2 never re-sort, skip a single piece of paper, or put a piece back on the pile 3 do what needs to be done with that piece of paper, then move on to the next 4 trash it, delegate it, file it, do it, or put it on a list to do later I reach a point when I realise the clutter is holding me back from the work.
I took Gretchen Rubin's advice: 'Suffer for 15 minutes' she says. Decide to spend 15 minutes, not a minute more, on a job you really don't want to do. Do as many 15 minute sessions as it takes....it took two to clean up my worktop in the studio (see yesterday's post). See more at http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2011/05/sufferfor-fifteen-minutes.html How is your workspace looking/functioning? Is it helping or hindering your work right now....are you willing to suffer! |
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
