Checking in

It's been a while, how are things?

Last month I turned 33. We went for a bus ride, had coffee and cake, and walked around some of the lesser known parts of the city. I finally visited an estate right by the motorway that has always captured my interest as we drive home. Can you see the man poking out from between his sunflowers? I asked him if I could take a picture, he seemed pleased as punch despite apologetically explaining that he 'tends to go a bit nuts with his seedlings every year'.

Turning 33 was a weird thing. When I turned 30, I promised myself that my life would begin in earnest; that I would make radical changes and become the person I wanted to be. And I did make some changes, but overall its been a mixed bag. I realise that part of me is still trying to be someone that I am not. From the way I dress to the hobbies I pursue and the opinions I express, I keep playing it safe. I've worked out why I do this, but after revelation comes the hard work of living an authentic life and to hell with the perceived consequences.

In the spirit of that, I've started the 'Konmari' process again; and this time I'm doing it completely by the book. I got myself in a nice relaxed frame of mind, and spent a while thinking about what I wanted my house to be - and my lifestyle in it. And then I questioned every aspect of it, did a gut check, and thought about it some more until I knew I was pursuing something true. And then I realised that I had a lot of tidying up to do.

So far I've done clothes (will need to revisit as I don't have enough clothes at the moment to purge) and books. The books that 'sparked joy' for me were a small handful - vegetable growing (still waiting on that allotment), sewing (I don't even sew yet) and a few fiction books. I threw out the Spanish course (useful, logical - and completely not me) and kept the Russian course (impractical, difficult and utterly beguiling). Interestingly I now don't own a single recipe book or magazine, even though I deeply love my grub.

Next I'm going through the 'komono' - or the 'why the hell do I have all this random crap' category. It's going to take a few months

This afternoon's komono is craft supplies. This is going to be an interesting one. Making stuff, being self reliant has always been a part of my identity - I come from a family of makers and I learnt to knit at the age of 4 - and yet its fallen down my list of priorities in recent years. I have no idea what is going to 'spark joy', if anything, and this time that is OK.

A wintry walk

It's a bit parky here. The 'Beast from the East' propelled me along the beach this afternoon which was quite invigorating. The beach was deserted bar that lone figure in the distance, even the seagulls were sitting it out at sea. I realised that there was no turning back unless I wanted to lose my nose to frostbite, and so my mile long walk turned into a 3 1/2 mile winding route home that kept me perpendicular to the wind.

I nipped into a charity shop on the way and found these two Le Parfait jars for £1.50. I will be making jam later this week and now know for sure that I have enough jars. The lovely yellow cotton fabric was another £1.50, it's going to be a throw for an ugly burgundy tub chair.

Stay snug!

Small swaps and a simple knitting project

Last weekend, when it looked like winter was done and spring was here (it's 4⁰ in the sun right now, gotta love British weather) we took a walk along the shoreline. Whilst the kids collected crabs legs and amputee starfish, Mr PL and I collected this:

All from a narrow 200m stretch of shoreline, and only as much as we could carry without a bag. There was much more to pick up; and we focused on the stuff that we thought could do immediate damage to our sea life. One of the things we found but didn't pick up was a kitchen sponge, the kind with the scratchy plastic scourer on one side.

I haven't used one in years and have tried a variety of alternatives, including crocheted and knitted cloths (no abrasion but great for wiping and damp dusting), loofahs (expensive if you can't grow them yourself), wooden brushes (expensive and short lived) and steel scourers (great for tough baking stains).

These days, along with a steel scourer for tough stains, I use one of these:

I whipped these up from a large ball of jute garden twine I bought to wrap Christmas presents; just 20 rows of garter stitch worked across 17 stitches on 5 mm knitting needles. They tick all the boxes. They are just abrasive enough to remove sauce gack, don't scratch glass and they dry quickly. They are cheap too - my £2.50 ball of twine from Wilko's is probably enough to make 7 or 8 of these.

If you don't know how to knit, this Youtube video series explains the basics very well. These would make a great 1st project after you've mastered the basics, much quicker and more useful than the misshapen scarf that I made when I learnt to knit!
 

Recent thrifting

I'm on a roll. First up:

This beaut now sits on top our only chest of drawers. We are pretty minimalist when it comes to clothing, but Mr PL's new work uniform takes up a lot of space, and I was struggling to find a taller chest of drawers that would fit the space. £2.50 later, another small house problem solved.

Also, check out that interior (before it got stuffed full of my undies and sundries):

 

A couple of books at 20p a pop, including an anniversary edition of 'The Little Prince' and a cute little book called 'A Hole is to Dig', illustrated by Maurice Sendak:

This household encyclopedia, published in 1932, teaches you everything from how to cook celery on toast to keeping axolotls as pets:

I'm reading it with caution, because old books like this make me want to go full vintage in all aspects of my life. I can't watch Miss Marple without getting the itch, and step by step instruction manuals are just plain dangerous to my tenuous grip on the 21st century.

This marble lamp, another £2.50 well spent, to replace a cheapo desk lamp that casts too much shadow. Vintage, but marble is all the rage these days so I'm bang on trend for once. Also, no shade please, we're millennials:

And finally this lovely little wooden pot for 50p - somewhere to dump my headphones and the earrings I've forgotten to take out in at bedtime:

And now I need to stop before the house fills up again.

The run up

The festive season is upon us - the advent calendars are up, the weather is frightful and petitions to Father Christmas are being mentally written and rewritten.

Yesterday I made it to the my first ever 'Snowball Saturday', thrown by our exceptionally gifted hostess friend each year. I DIYed my own vegan advocaat for the Snowballs; which went down a little too well.

Mr PL ventured out to Lidl for provisions - their Favorina mince pies are vegan this year and were just the ticket for a hungover brunch - eaten in bed with a pint of coffee, because I just couldn't muster the energy to worry about crumby sheets. I reflected that I'm too old for this sort of thing, and vowed never to do it again.

This week will be a flurry of festive prep and for once I'm looking forward to it. A simple, thrifty and fun christmas that won't break the bank.

Chillin' Tuesday

I'm almost fully recovered from my organisational meltdown. I'm back on a system and things are working well. I have a weekly plan to do certain tasks on certain days; and life is starting to run smoothly again.

I used to think that housework was a never ending chore and even though I had a lot of downtime due to procrastination, I never got to just relax. I always felt guilty for the things that I should be doing. Now even if the house is a sty, I know that I have a system and a schedule in place to deal with it. I still feel a little guilt, but it's lessening. I never thought sticking to a routine would be so freeing.

I've set aside Tuesday as my free 'day'. All of the kiddos are out at school, so I do my daily chores and the rest of the day is mine until school's out. It's taken me years to come around to the idea that I can take time off, but I'm just a better person when I do. The kids generally follow my lead and if I am calm, relaxed and happy I can respond to them as such.

Unfortunately yesterday was such an odd day weatherwise, alternating wet and biting with dry and mild all day, I stayed in for most of it.

I started rereading this book, one of my absolute favourites:

Written during the great depression, it always gets me out of a thrift-induced deprivation funk. And speaking of orchids:

Mr PL once rescued this one for 50p from the yellow sticker pile, it was in a sorry state. This is its 3rd year of flowering. I can have orchids on my budget.
 
I drank unholy amounts of tea and ate an unhealthy amount of coffee cake:



In the afternoon I risked the elements and took myself off to my local yarn store:

Lots of bright colours and greys, the picture doesn't do them justice.

And that was that.

Hot mess

My name is Aurora and I don't adult well.

The chaos of the Easter break has reminded me that I'm still the daydreaming, flighty space cadet that I was as a 4 year old starting primary school (my first taste of shit getting real) in life. I'm easily distracted and need constant prompting to get through the day without veering off on unproductive tangents. I've had a lifelong struggle with project management, time management and stuff management. I have numerous unfinished projects that seemed like a great (and manageable!) idea at the time and I have a list of goals that I'm resigned to never achieving because I just KNOW it will all fall apart.

Unfortunately, this impacts almost every part of my life, from friendships (C.H.A.O.S. - Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome as Flylady put it so succinctly) to parenting (almost nothing makes you a worst parent than being an overwhelmed irritable stress ball) to finances (whoops, forgot to write a budget again!). It's a little terrifying, and very depressing, to think that this will be my lot in life - stuck in a cycle of never really getting where I want to go, whether it's an appointment or a life goal.

I've adopted various organisational methods over the years, with varying success. When I firmly embraced minimalism I stupidly assumed that the holy grail was white space and an empty schedule; and truly, it does help. But I'll never be able to manage the minutiae of my life with just an appointment diary and my wits.

I'm trying out a couple of things that will hopefully help, including sleeping with said diary under my pillow to make sure I actually look at it once a day (last month I missed a hospital appointment that I had written down, set a phone reminder for AND thought about the night before. Seriously, I'm that bad). I've actually replaced that diary with a notebook and have been trying my hand at Bullet journalling this week, we'll see how it goes.

I shall report back next week. I need a few days to get on top of the backlog and come up with a plan.

On scavenging

Last week a couple of curtain hooks in our bedroom snapped; and I'd used up the last of the spares the last time it happened. I was miffed at the thought of having to buy a pack during a no spend week.

And then I found these in the wood chips at the local park:

I've no idea why they were there; perhaps they were left over from The Most Fancily Furnished Den Ever Built or something.

Last week I needed cable ties and the front of the school was littered with rubber bands from unfurled artworks being sent home. In the past I've picked up paperclips, unused nails, a copper olive that we used to fix a leaking radiator valve, a wooden dowel that became a plant support and a metal hair clip still on it's packaging - I only ever need one, to occasionally hold back my fringe. I know people get squeamish about picking things of the street, but that's what soap and water are for. There are classier people than me who do it too, like Bea Johnson and her hair ties.

Picking up litter has saved a trip into town, some plastic packaging, unnecessary clutter, and several quid this week. The universe has had my thrifty back and I love it.

Preparing for economic shocks

There is a good chance that the UK will vote to leave the EU in a referendum next week. Nobody knows whether this will be a good or bad thing in the long run, though both sides have vocal opinions about it. The markets and currency exchanges are jittery. In the short term we are quite probably in for another round of economic shock.

This isn't just a Brexit issue however. Plenty of experts have warned that the can of worms that was the credit crunch wasn't truly dealt with - that it was just kicked further down the road. Many ordinary people suspect this - they have endured almost a decade of sluggish growth, stagnant wages, zero hours contracts and austerity. The 'recovery' seems to be another round of asset bubbles ready to go pop.

In the run up to the referendum, I'm trying to get a few loose ends tied up. I've paid for next years school uniforms. We have made a few large purchases to finish our redecorating projects. The newly unfitted kitchen will be mostly complete next week:

Aside from that, my 'preparations' are just the things that have stood us in good stead through the economic turmoil of the past few years. Most of them are integral to a thrifty, simple life:

*Make sure all household paperwork is in order - in the event that we need to find alternative accomodation or switch banks at a moments notice, it's handy to know where everything is.

*Write a monthly budget - know what money is coming in and going out. It is much easier to find potential savings if you know where the money is going.

*Hold as little debt as possible - swap to lower rates of interest and pay it down as quickly as possible.

*Build up an emergency fund - several months income is the aim, but every little helps. I have been in situations where five pounds has been the difference between starving or eating for a week.

*Diversify savings - we hold several different accounts with different institutions in the event that one fails.

*Keep cash on hand - this is useful in domestic emergencies, and useful in the event of a repeat of Northern Rock.

*Keep and up-to-date CV.

*Stock up the pantry - we did this in the run up to the credit crunch when preparing for the arrival of our first child. Food prices (in the shops, not in the inflation indexes) rocketed, and we  saved several hundred pounds by stocking up. We also didn't have to worry about finding money for food in the event that maternity pay didn't stretch far enough. 

*Learn to live well on less - this is all about mindset. A healthy approach to needs and wants; a very healthy resistance to advertising and peer pressure; the curiosity to learn new skills; and the creativity to make a good life with less material resources.

After all that is done, I think you are as prepared as you can be. 

On the subject of the referendum, Martin Lewis wrote a great little guide about how - not why or which way - you should make your decision.You can read it here.

Learning from the past, not living there

This week I I stumbled upon season 1 of Home Fires. Of course, I caught onto it just as season 2 is finished and ITV have announced that they will not be commissioning a further series.

Set at the advent of WW2, the story revolves around the lives of members of a rural Women's Institute branch. It's beautifully cosy to watch - whilst not romanticising the war or the social realities of that era. There's death, classism, violence, misogyny and white collar crime - just like the good old days, just like now.

I have little time for period dramas that revolve around aristocrats and their antics (though they provide a cautionary tale for the rest of us should we feel like conceding the democratic concessions that we have). Instead I find stories and documentaries that focus on the social history of the common people particularly interesting, because often they show how people made happy lives with far fewer inputs of energy, material goods and entertainment options than we have today. There is plenty to be learned about living lower impact, thriftier and more sustainable lives by looking at how ordinary people got along in the past.

We face many challenges going forward - economic instability, climate change and resource depletion; and if some experts are to be believed, total environmental collapse - which is as frightening a prospect as world war on your doorstep. One of the lessons of history is that it isn't in fact a linear march of relentless progress and growth. I suspect that we need that vintage know-how more than ever, cautionary tales and all. 

Saturday work & play

The perennial bed in our local park looking glorious earlier this week

I have a weekend off, which I had totally forgotten about until yesterday. What a lovely surprise to realise that I have a whole day to put to my own purposes, though if I had remembered sooner, I could have made grand plans for an exciting weekend.

We had a very lazy breakfast whilst we watched old episodes of Count Duckula on Youtube. I loved that show when I was little and so I inflict it upon my own children regularly, along with Fraggle Rock. The youngest, who is about the age I was when I first remember watching them, gets as excited as I used to (OK, still do) when Duckula comes on.

The kids played Junior Scrabble whilst I attended to some long outstanding paperwork and online banking. This is one area I have really slacked off on. Being organised and on top of things does not come naturally to me and I have to work hard to make things work. If I don't stick to a system, things go to pot quickly. I'm going to reestablish a 'desk day', one morning a week, where I take time to deal with the finances, paperwork and calendars. 

I'm also trying to institute a tidy up hour on a Saturday to encourage the kids to tidy their rooms regularly. I've tried the daily tidy up approach and it leads to tears and arguments - a big weekly clean up will suffice, with some encouragement to keep it tidyish in the week. Today they are responsible to for tidying, hoovering and dusting their rooms, with a little help as required. I've bought a pack of superhero transfers and promised that they can each have one if they tidy up without tantrums.

That seems like more than enough productivity for a free weekend. The rest of the day will be taken up with reading, crafting, eating, and perhaps a film, topped off by the first England match of the Euros this evening.

Have a wonderful weekend.

After the declutter

A few months ago we jumped on the Konmari bandwagon; diving deep into decluttering once again.

I don't regret the purge one bit. There's only one possession, a book, that I regret parting with and I know that I could replace it easily enough. It was amazing to me to see how many possessions I had that I didn't truly love or served no real purpose - and by this point in our simplifying journey, we wouldn't have called ourselves clutterbugs.

What a wonderfully pared down house we now have - but in it's current shape, it's definitely just a house. There is no cosiness or sense of belonging past the people in it, even after 8 years.

Where once there was stuff, there is now empty space - and it isn't pretty. It an emptiness full of gloom, mismatched worn furnishings, woodchip wallpaper, carpets in need of deep cleaning and lots of small anoyances that require attention. Did I mention the woodchip wallpaper?

Being a rented house, we are obviously limited in what we can and are willing to do; and how much money we are prepared to throw at it - which is of course the root of our current predicament. We have to balance our desire to save towards our own house with making this one a home; and we never did truly nest here, always seeing this as a temporary arrangement.

We've started the nesting process now on a very slim budget. A fresh coat of paint in every room, a freestanding kitchen (more on that another day); and deciding on a style that we can take with us when we move.