Bags as decor and storage

Hi, my name is Carol and I'm a bag collector. 

Phew, there it's out in the open, my weakness is for bags. 

Not shoes or dresses or cars or one of many, many other things I could collect. 

It's bags. 

I'm not sure when my fascination with bags first started. I wasn't interested in them in high school and I lugged a backpack to work when I first started working. Nothing flash, just a plain old backpack. It kept my stuff dry as I cycled to work. Job done. 

I guess the first time I can really remember thinking about bags was when I was looking for a decent camera bag after I bought my first slr. I wasn't happy with the cheaply made bag that came with my camera and I started looking at better quality waterproof bags. Especially Lowepro bags. At that stage back in the late 80's, Lowepro was the only bag type I really knew about and knew I could buy here in New Zealand. I first spotted them mentioned in an American photography magazine. I looked at British Photography magazines too but couldn't find a lot of the brands they mentioned there, over here. Anyway over the years I've owned many different camera bags as my equipment has grown and changed and then shrunk again. (Over the years I've owned a Minolta film camera and large lenses and huge flash unit and correspondingly large bag. Then a couple of Canon dslrs and lenses plus a large backpack and then I downsized drastically to a Canon G11 that could nearly fit in my pocket, while I saved up for the gear I now have. My Olympus OMD EM5 and lenses that I carry in a Golla Riley Pro shoulder bag. A much smaller and lighter kit than my Minolta and Canon gear.)

Over those years I tried out numerous backpacks for my heavier gear and since buying my Olympus gear in 2014 I've tried out 3 or 4 shoulder bags too. I have to say here, that I think most photographers are on the lookout for the perfect bag but I don't think it exists. The perfect bag is really a couple of bags. One larger one to fit all your gear in when you need it and one smaller one to carry only what you need when you need to travel light. The one perfect bag is a myth. Which is a shame really. (I really like Hermione's bag in Harry Potter. Could carry everything including the kitchen sink and still be light to carry. I think that could almost be the perfect bag.)

Somewhere during that time I started to get interested in other shoulder bags. Not purely women's handbags per se but a mixture of messenger bags, handbags, cross-over camera bags and bags for your electronic devices.

I must say here that I've never been interested in designer or high-end handbags. They clash with my hiking boots and I find them a bit gaudy and sparkly for the places I like to hang out. Most birds would be scared off by shiny sparkly bits on a bag except perhaps the Magpies and after having been dive-bombed by a nesting Magpie in the past, I'm not too keen to attract them.

Anyway, that brings me to my current collection of bags which I had stashed in my wardrobe. I pulled them all out to go through them and donated  three handbags to the local Hospice shop. This has left me with five bags left. One handbag, one colorful bag my sister brought me back from Thailand and three messenger type bags. I didn't really want to stash them all back in the wardrobe and I was sick of shifting my currently used bag around the house as it didn't have a set home. So I came up with the idea of hanging my current bag on the wall where I could easily get it when needed. Then I put the handbag I wasn't using in the larger messenger bag along with a smaller messenger bag and hung that and my Thai bag on the wall too. (see the picture above) (My current passion is for army style canvas bags. Soft and moldable to your body whilst being tough and hard wearing.)

I've found the bags on the wall have added a bit of color to my bedroom whilst also adding some extra storage space. (Storage space is sadly lacking in our home. No hallway cupboards and no linen cupboard either so any small places I can add storage is good.)

So what do you think? Do you have some bags or baskets tucked away in a cupboard that might look good displayed and provide some extra storage?

  

How easy is it really, to walk away empty handed?

"It is desirable that a man... live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety."

David Henry Thoreau

I love the idea of the above quote. To be so unattached to my things that I'm able to walk away after a fire, flood or war and miss nothing. To have nothing that can't be replaced. It sounds so freeing.

This quote is from Thoreau's book 'Walden' published in 1854 and the paragraph this was taken from was discussing the merits of quality clothing versus cheap thin clothing. Taken out of it's context though, it sounds like everything should be easily walked away from and that's how I am taking it for this blog post.

I guess in 1854 it was a lot easier to walk away from everything. I'm not sure it's so simple now.

So I asked myself, what things in 2018 would I have difficulty leaving behind and can I find a way around losing them? 

After a bit of thought I decided there are three main things that I would have difficulty leaving behind.

1. Important documents
2. Photographs
3. Artwork

Important documents

I know from experience how hard it can be trying to prove your identity in a modern world without the correct paperwork. The modern fixation with red tape and bureaucracy have made it extremely frustrating, costly and time consuming to get anything done and if you don't have proper identification you pretty much don't exist in the eyes of some places.

A possible way around losing these documents could be keeping them in a fireproof safe or a safe deposit box at the bank. This wouldn't save them from everything that could possibly happen to them but it would sure take a load off your mind knowing they were as safe as you could make them.

Photographs

In a modern world where everyone shares their breakfast lunch and dinner with you online it can seem like there's too many family photos to keep safe but if you look hard at the images you have and only keep the very best photos, discarding multiples, blurry images, over or under-exposed images and the weird images (you know the ones where someone makes a face, or shuts their eyes or sneezes), you'll find that you have very few to store. 

I noticed a while back, on a news report about the Syrian refugees, that quite a few of them had packed photos on mobile phones and usb sticks in their belongings. I have a usb stick with important photos on it too, just in case, but in reality I know I might not have it with me if a disaster struck so I also have them online in cloud storage. As long as I can remember my passwords I can access them from anywhere. I also share some images on Instagram and Facebook so I can see them there too. 

Artwork

When I was a child and some of my artwork got damaged I used to get upset about it but nowadays I work small, take photos or scans of my work and sell it printed on items online. The original images stay with me but if they were lost or destroyed I'd still be able to see them online so I'm not really too worried about this either. 

It seems to me that anything I may be worried about losing in 2018 is in fact safely backed up or can be safely stored with a bit of forward planning. Maybe it's easier for me to walk away from home empty handed than I thought because everything I care about is backed up safely.

"But wait", I hear you say, "What about jewelry, or trinkets handed down?" 

Well, I don't associate things with people. I love photos because they can remind you of the people you love and places you've been, which I think would be very useful in later life if I had dementia but I don't get those sorts of feelings from things. They're just things to me. I have no interest in glittery things either. I don't wear rings. I only wear sleepers in my ears and own no other earrings. My only necklace is a Maori carving in green-stone on a piece of leather that my husband and children bought me one year for Mother's day and if that got destroyed in a fire I'd still know my family loves me. It wouldn't be the end of the world for me to lose any of it. It's just stuff. 

I guess at the end of the day, it is possible for me to walk out and leave everything I care about behind, as long as technology is backing me up. I mean really, if the world was ending and the cloud disappeared I think I'd have more to worry about than a few photos and drawings.

Is that cheating? Yep, I think so, we have so many more ways to access what is important to us now than they did in 1854, but, to be fair, I think nowadays we have become much more bogged down in red tape and bureaucracy as individuals and somehow we have now also become the keeper of our family histories. As we now document every little everyday thing thing that we do, I think we have created a huge load/responsibility for ourselves to preserve things that I'm not even sure should matter that much.

I guess as individuals we each have to decide what matters to us and what doesn't and that's what minimalism is all about really. Sifting through your stuff, your commitments, your life and decluttering the rest, so that we can all live as freely as possible.

(I hope it goes without saying that the most important things in my life aren't the above things. My family and our newest family member Bayley, a black Labrador are way more important than papers, photos or art.)

I'll leave you with a pic of Bayley.

Have a great week!

Okay maybe three because she's so gorgeous!

The Way We Use Our Spaces

Recently I've been wondering whether we really still have too much stuff or whether some of the cluttered feeling in our house comes more from a misuse of our available space and a lack of storage where it's needed.

Hubby, when he's home, spends most of his time between his workshop and his office off the lounge. Which to be honest is a bit of an eyesore with not enough storage space.(see pic below) . 

Did I say, ' a bit of an eyesore?'

I spend my daytime hours when I'm at home either at my desk, which is also in the lounge, or in the kitchen, laundry, or garden. Our current office spaces don't have any real storage. Hubby has a few drawers, otherwise everything's all over his desk and I have files stuck in boxes in a cupboard off the lounge that are a pain to get into when you need something in a hurry and a few art supplies stashed in a drawer in the spare room.

The picture below is of the office space we built for me in a corner of the dining room just after we moved here. Hubby built my desk for me. It had lots of positives like great lighting, lots of space and close to the kitchen for working while keeping an eye on things cooking but unfortunately the cold draft from people going in and out the back door (out of sight to the right of this picture) and the constant disturbances from everyone coming and going decided the fate of this office space. So I ended up moving into a dark, out of the way corner of the lounge for the last year or so. 

Looks great but has too much through traffic and cold drafts in winter.

Another problem has been a lack of linen storage. The previous owners of our house had removed the linen cupboard from the hallway and extended the bathroom into the space. They had then created a cupboard in a corner of the dining room, I suppose to replace the missing linen cupboard, but it's in a really silly place and the door opens over the doorway into the lounge. Blocking traffic flow through and around the main hub of the house. It turns out that they must have built the whole wall between the lounge and dining area as it doesn't show on the original house plans at all and after removing the wallpaper from the wall you can see that that whole section of wall has all new wall linings. Effectively they took an open plan house and partitioned it all off. 

Our problems; 

• We had a cluttered lounge filled with office stuff and overflow from my daughter's room. 
• A large master bedroom space with more floor space and storage than we needed and all the best but unused light.
• My daughter's room with not enough closet space or floor space to play and so her things were spilling into other areas of our house. 
• We also had no linen cupboard as the people that lived here before us thought it was a good idea to take it out and extend the bathroom and then partition up the lounge and dining areas and squeeze a cupboard into a random corner. 
• No proper storage for office related things and a messy office just by the front door and my desk in a dark corner.

Our solutions;

• Hubby and I decided to swap bedrooms with our daughter. We gave up the master bedroom to her as she has far more need of the storage and floor space in her room for playing and dancing with her friends than we needed just for sleeping. We had the largest room with the best natural light streaming though huge windows and yet the room remained empty most of the day. All that light and space was wasted on us. Now she has storage for all her books and toys/board games. She has plenty of floor space to spread out with her friends and the low winter sunlight in the room makes it a sun filled, warm, pleasant place to be for her. She loves it!
• We moved our bed into the spare room. It has ample space for us and a great large wardrobe so we haven't lost any space. It's on the South West side of the house so we don't get much sunlight until the late afternoon but that's fine because we're rarely in there during the day.
• Our daughter's bedroom we've turned into an office, it only has a single wardrobe so we've converted that into the linen cupboard. All the towels and spare sheets are in there and it's close to all the bedrooms and the bathroom where we need it.
• The office space is large enough to fit two desks and some shelving with room to spare, so all the files I have stashed in boxes will have homes as soon as I pick up another shelf unit. That also means that Hubby's desk can be cleaned up.
• Which leaves the lounge. I haven't taken a picture in there yet as I've got a large pile of things to be donated growing in there at the moment. I can also say that we've moved our home library in there too (it was in the spare room before) and it's so much better having the books near a comfy, well lit, place to read them.

So it looks like we had a mixture of problems. Some of it was due to too much stuff but a good bit more of it was due to us not thinking about how we could better make use of our available space.

The master bedroom doesn't have to be used just for the adults. I'm not sure where the idea came from that we have to have the largest bedroom in the house but it seems a waste of space to me. If I want some quiet time I can go to my room, lie on the bed and read or listen to music. I don't need loads of space for that. I've also discovered that if the kids have a nice space of their own to be in, they're more likely to spend their time in it. So the lounge is then quiet anyway. 

If you have a spare room you can turn into your office, do it!

This removes all the work thoughts to that room, where you can walk out, shut the door and leave them when you need a break. Having the office in the lounge just encourages working at stupid o'clock or when you should be having family time.

Storage is best placed where you need it. Linens and towels near the rooms you use them in. Files and office stuff in the office. Your home library is best placed near a comfy chair and a window for good light to read by.

Week 47 of 365 Challenge Rust Week

This has probably been one of my worst weeks during this challenge. Not because of the subject matter but because I seem to have come down with a dose of the winter blues this week. It's been one of those weeks where you just want to pull the blankets over your head and stay snug and warm in bed, but of course I couldn't do that. I have children and a hubby that need me, so I soldiered on with a distinct lack of enthusiasm for this week's challenge and most other things too if I'm honest.

Even my decluttering became a halfhearted, 'move stuff from here to there but accomplish nothing', chore this week. So all in all I can sum this week up in one word, "Meh". 

Hopefully next week will see an improvement in both the weather and my mood. The theme is music and music used to cheer me up when I was a teen so hopefully I can can find some music to lift my spirits and get my groove back on. Wish me luck.

Have a great week :)

The trials and tribulations of undies

Trial "test(something, especially a new product) to assess its suitability or performance"

Tribulation "a cause of great trouble or suffering"

Undies are both a gift and a curse although lately I've had cause to curse them more often than usual. In fact I've gotten so fed up that I finally decided to clear out my undie drawer today. Something I should have done ages ago that would have saved me a lot of hassles.

I don't know about anyone else but when I find a brand of underwear that I like I stick to it. The particular brand I've been wearing I've been buying and using for around the last twelve years. In various sizes cos you know pregnancy and weight stuff happens. Lately though they've been needing to be replaced again and as usual I went to my favorite brand and bought a week's worth to replace all my others. You can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that they'd changed the sewing pattern or style or something. They weren't comfortable at all. They rode up in the wrong places, usually at the wrong time and slipped down in other places usually also at the wrong time. 

In frustration I continued wearing my old ones while trying to find something similar from a different brand. Now this is where it started to get annoying, although now when I look back on it, it makes me laugh. One pair of my old undies started to lose it's elasticity and slip down inside my jeans. I don't know if you've ever had your undies fall down inside your jeans but it's uncomfortable and difficult to fix without drawing attention to yourself. The first time it happened I was out in public in a store looking for new undies, funnily enough. Needless to say I didn't hang around there long and so didn't purchase any replacements that day. 

That should have been an easy fix right? Get home take them off and throw them out right? Wrong. I thought maybe I could reuse them as a rag so I dumped them in the wash basket for a wash. I had good intentions you know, saving the planet sort of intentions. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" 

I forgot about them. 

They went through the wash and back into my drawer.

The next time I encountered them I was in the city doing some shopping and looking for.... you know.... new undies. The trip started out fine but ended with me walking around with my hands in my pockets holding my undies up. Not a good look. On the plus side though I did find some new undies I liked that day and so had already bought some before I left the store. I binned the offending pair when I got home and put on another pair that I discovered were stuffed too. Looks like there was more than one pair that had expired. You would think that after all the hassle I would have binned the rest and moved on but I didn't, to my shame, I just moved them to the back of the drawer just in case I needed them. 

Today is a new day though and feeling like having a little decluttering session, I started with that drawer. Bye bye old useless undies, hello nice spacious drawer full of new favorites. 

I guess what I've learned from this is:

•  Not to wait until things are completely worn out before looking for replacements.  
• Minimalism and frugality can be taken too far.
• Brands can change their products without warning. 
• Your morning dressing time is much shorter when you don't have to search through things you don't wear to find the things you do and
• People look at you funny when you fiddle with your underwear in public.

Week 46 of 365 Challenge Boxes Week

In boxes week I started out kicking myself for having used some of my carved wooden boxes and the wooden box shaped like a turtle, in previous week's themes but once I started looking around I realized how often I am surrounded by boxes of varying kinds. It turned out to be a productive week in more ways than one.

The first pic was taken sneakily at the supermarket. Sneakily because they don't like you taking pictures in their store. Naughty me. The supermarket I go to is a sort of food warehouse where pallets of food are stacked above the shelves with the regular food boxes on shelves below. The butchery, bakery, deli and produce areas are just like a normal supermarket.

Picture number two is of my husbands computing, workworking and modelrailway books that we removed from the bookshelf we sold. The woodwork and railway books are moving to cupboards in the workshop where he can easily access them while he's working but they won't get too dusty. It'll save him a few trips up and down the stairs with his bad knee. We're just finishing lining the workshop walls before the books can move to their new home. 

The computer books are moving nearer his computer.

Picture number 3 is of some plastic storage boxes I was checking out for using in the garage. Somewhere to keep the pool, pump and hoses safe and together before next season.

Picture 4 is of my daughter's spiral art set. It is all kept in a round cardboard box with a gear shape on the top.

Picture number 5 is of some dungeon and dragon figures I found when clearing the shelves in the spare room the other week. I'd like to get rid of them all but my daughter is keen to keep them. I guess because they are new and interesting to her. 

Picture number 6 is of some storage boxes I was looking at the other day. I love the varying shades of blue and green in the different boxes. It's a color scheme I'm keen on. A sort of beachy/natural look. The boxes themselves look great but I have no idea what I would keep in them. I'm trying to get rid of clutter not introduce color-coordinated organized hoarding. 

Picture 7 is of my mum's carved wooden box. I bought it for her birthday from the Trade Aid shop a few years back and I'd forgotten she had it until she suggested it as a subject for this week's theme.

So all in all boxes week occurred at just the right time to catch me having a clear out and looking at storage ideas.

Next week is Rust week. I'm sure there's a lot of rusty things around here somewhere.

Have a great week!

Finding Peace in the Mayhem Part 2

"The easiest way to organize your stuff is to get rid of most of it" ~ The Minimalists

Way back in October last year I posted about trying to keep my art and craft supplies under control without being "an organized hoarder". It's taken me eight months of steadily going through things, assessing and reassessing them, to finally feel like I have it all at a level I am comfortable with. 

In fact we sold the bookcase in the picture above along with another large pine bookcase and a pine sideboard this week and I love the extra space we have without them. 

The picture below is of the same wall minus the white bookcase. I've started a family photo wall there to display some of the pics that would otherwise rarely see the light of day. I still have some other photos to add but I haven't picked up frames for them yet. The small three drawer storage unit doubles as a charging station for our mobiles as well as storing place-mats, tablecloths, etc for the dining table. It's small but efficient.

The cookbooks that used to live on the white bookcase now live in a new space I created in the kitchen when I donated a few kitchen appliances and things we no longer used.

I went through all the box files and shredded a lot of the unnecessary paperwork and just kept the essentials. This took longer than I expected but I can now store the two box files that are left in a cupboard in a different room.They're still easily accessible but now live out of sight.

The photography magazines are no longer a problem. I put some into the collage box for cutting up (my daughter and her friends love the animal pictures in them) and I no longer purchase photography magazines unless there's a really, really, interesting article in them that I can't find online. I discovered that I could find a lot of really great information online and some of the magazines share their articles online too.

I still accept the home and garden magazines that mum gives me and I sometimes buy one if I see something I like. I've created a series of mood boards for our house in a hard-covered exercise book. I cut tabs down the side and made separate areas for the different rooms that I'm going to be working on. I then glue in any pictures, paint samples or articles that appeal to me for those rooms. See images below.

This has made it so much easier for me to pin down a style that I like and I don't have to wade through stacks of magazines trying to find an idea I liked a few weeks ago. The rest of the magazines go into the collage box.

As for the art supplies that were all on the shelves. I've really pared back on them. I only kept the paints, pens and pencils etc that I used regularly and I gave my daughter the felt tip pens and some gel pens that I didn't use much if at all. My daughter and her friends color in their adult coloring books with them.

Most of my art supplies now fit in a secret compartment I had my hubby build into my desk. (see pic below) Clockwise from the top we have my back up external drive for my photos, my phone charger cord, 3 pencil cases all inside 1 yellow one. I use these when I'm going away somewhere and want to take art supplies with me. I can build 3 different kits for travel. The yellow pencil case holds my small watercolor kit, brushes, watercolor pencils and a pencil for sketching. The tartan case (not visible) holds my sketching stuff and normal colored pencils. The blue case (not visible) holds my gel pens and whatever else appeals to me for working in my journals. Under the pencil cases is some bluetack, then comes my watercolor paints, below that is a small tin with business cards in it, below that is my gel pens, next to that are some markers and pens I sketch with, then a cluttered box of miscellaneous office supplies, some envelopes and supermarket sellers cards on top, then above we have my mini camera flash and a box of mints, above that is a box of memory cards, my headphones, a charger cable for my Sony Walkman and some usb drives, then we're back to the hard drive. In the centre are 3 lettering stencils that my daughter uses for school projects and a couple of bookmarks, also my compass set. 

When my desk top is down you wouldn't even know that compartment was there. (see pic below) On my desk top lives the phone, a pencil cup and pad for messages etc. My camera lives here mostly and in the right hand corner I have my colored pencils, paintbrushes and watercolor pencils. I also usually keep my work diary here but I had it in my bag when this pic was taken. My tablet doesn't usually live here but it was charging at the time of the photo. I also have a small statue of Guanyin near my pencils. (not sure if you can see it in the photo) Also not shown in these photos are my acrylic paints, art paper and journals storage. They're still a work in progress and I'll show you that some other time. 

I have also pared down all my art books. I cheated a little in this though. I gave them all to my mother-in-law. She has a large studio and a large collection of art books that she regularly lends out to friends and family. I figured if they lived there they would be used and appreciated more than if they lived on my shelf gathering dust in between occasional uses. I also make frequent use of our local library which saves me having to purchase art books.

So as you can see I've really had a good clean out of my art supplies, books, magazines, and old bills and have a much cleaner and clearer space to work in. I could probably still pare down the stuff in the miscellaneous office supply box but it's not bothering me and I do use what's in there.

Simplifying my blog

Less is more ~ Robert Browning

I've decided to try and streamline the look of my blog by removing the 'about me' and 'favorite blogs' tabs and creating a blog post with that information instead. This information will be easily accessible through small links at the side of my blog page. 

I feel this will make my blog easier to navigate for you and allow me to add and remove favorite bloggers easier while being able to write a little bit about why I like this particular blog or blogger, which I'm currently unable to do. Simplifying the look is a good reason too.

This may take me a little while so I apologize in advance for any disruption this may cause.

My Favorite Apps

My laptop desktop is always clear and uncluttered, usually with an inspirational quote of some sort on it.

This is a post I've been wanting to write for a while and today is the day. 

 I thought I'd share with you a couple of apps that I really love. They've really changed the way I work, in good ways and I thought I would share them here so you can maybe benefit from them too. I have no affiliation to any of these sites or apps and am not making any money from recommending them to you. 

Now that's all out of the way, my first favorite app is Feedly.  

Feedly is a marvelous tool for keeping all of your favorite blogs, websites, podcasts, Youtube channels and RSS feeds altogether and it has totally changed the way I work. There are probably other apps out there that do a similar job but this is one I saw mentioned in a favorite blog once a few years ago and after giving it a try I really liked it so have never felt the need to try something else.

This app has allowed me to keep all of my favorite friends blogs, photography, art, tiny house, Buddhist, and minimalism blogs together in one place. Where before I used to have bookmarks all over my Chrome toolbar I now have just one. 

The app allows you to customize the layout, so I have different categories set up on the left hand side with the various blogs listed inside. On the right hand side you can have the view set up as title only, magazine or cards. I like mine set to card view. See above. They show as three cards across each with a picture and a short snippet of the blog post. I find this most helpful when I declutter my feeds. 

Which I'm actually well overdue to do now. 

As with anywhere else clutter can accumulate here if you don't keep an eye on things and with the kids being home for the school holidays I just haven't had an opportunity to do so yet. On top of that I've added 4 new bloggers in the last couple of days that sound interesting but have added a lot of unread older posts to the list most of which I probably won't read. So 900+ posts is way, way, way more than I usually have listed there.

I find that the secret to keeping it all under control and down to a healthy limit is to go through each section monthly/bi-monthly (depending on the need) and check out whose blogs I've stopped reading and then remove them from the list. I haven't done this with the themes/subjects for a few months and I know that I have a lot of photography themes/subjects I'm no longer interested in and as much as I love tiny houses, I only read the posts that catch my eye. So most of those posts will disappear quickly too.

I love that I can read posts from Feedly on my phone when waiting at the doctors and I especially love to curl up with Feedly on my tablet on a cold and rainy day. When I'm really in the mood to read blogs I hate it when I quickly run out of posts to read so I try to keep my limit to no more than 100 unread posts total at any one time. This is spread over all topics and gives me some variety. 

This brings me to my other favorite app, Evernote. 

I first found Evernote when I was going through the Google Play Store looking for a note taking app. I downloaded a couple that just didn't work for me before I spotted Evernote mentioned in the 'similar apps' section at the bottom of one of the pages. I downloaded it and haven't looked back. 

Evernote is set up as a series of notebooks (see above) where you can keep any webpages, notes, PDF files, copies of bills, photographs etc. You get a 60 mb upload limit each month on the free version which I'm using at the moment. In the near future I'm looking at upgrading to Evernote Plus. It costs $29.99 a year and has a 1 gig upload limit per month.  There is also Evernote Premium which costs $59.99 a year and has a 10 gig monthly upload limit but that is geared more towards business users and not so useful to me at the moment. See the picture below for more details on the differences between the three versions.

 Evernote has also helped to streamline my Chrome toolbar. Now any web pages that I need to refer back to are 'clipped' to Evernote where I can access them easily later from my laptop, tablet or phone.  I can type in my own notes. Make shopping lists. I can save copies of bills to Evernote so I can keep the paper clutter to a minimum. I keep Blog posts from Feedly that really speak to me 'clipped into a notebook in Evernote. The two apps really compliment each other well.

Both of these apps have helped me to cut down on paper clutter and keep my computer desktop clear and my Chrome bookmarks down to a minimal level. My Feedly is usually easily kept under control with a bit of regular editing as I read. You just happened to catch me on a really bad day today ;) 

Anyway, I'm off to edit Feedly now while the kids are still busy.

Have a great week :)

Week 35 of 365 Challenge Kitchen Utensil Week

This was a good week in more ways than one. Looking through my kitchen cupboards and drawers for items to photograph helped me to further decide which items didn't get used and so I had a mini declutter at the same time. 

I also finally, got rid of the boxes of things for donation. There were 7 boxes in all and it's amazing how much more space I have now that I'm no longer tripping over them. It's great that I no longer have to keep moving them around because they were in the way all the time. 

In future I won't wait so long before I donate the boxes of things, I'll fill one box and then donate it before starting on another. I'm going to rearrange my office a bit so I can keep the donation box there, near the door to go out. That should solve a lot of the problems storing those 7 boxes caused.

I could have sold it all in a garage sale but really, the time and effort involved in pricing it and setting everything up would have been a real pain. Donating it was very easy. The ladies at our local Hospice shop were lovely too and the Hospice makes some money out of it so it's wins all round.

I've got 3 items in my new collection box already so it's definitely an ongoing process. I still have a large bag of clothing to donate but that's going into one of the clothing collection bins closer to home. The Child Cancer Fund collects good quality used clothing to sell as part of their fundraising.

Well that was my week. Next week's theme is Abstract.

Have a great week :)

Uncovering the 'Fantasy' Me - To Make Space For The 'Real' Me

"I need to use my stuff - and if I don't, it's a sign that I'm not really the person that I think I am."

from The Simple Dollar - The Challenge Of Getting Rid Of Stuff by Trent Hamm

I read the quote above recently and it got me thinking about what items I've been holding onto over the years and why that might be. Up until now I thought most of my clutter consisted of 

1. Tools and things I might need in the future
2. Unwanted gifts I don't know how to part with without hurting people's feelings
3. Paper, paper everywhere. From schools, bills, receipts, junk mail, it goes on and on
4. Hobbies and crafts supplies
5. Sentimental items
6. Furniture that doesn't suit our needs anymore
7. Clothing that doesn't fit or might fit later or is worn out

Just stuff that's collected over the years by itself that I haven't sorted out. 

I certainly never thought that I might purposely be keeping clutter for my fantasy identity. I didn't even realize I had a fantasy identity, but as it turns out, I do and obviously have had for a lot of years judging by the amount of things I kept for it.

For example in 2011 I made a list of goals I thought I might like to accomplish and one of those was "to become more self-sufficient and grow most of my own food." A worthy goal you might say. 

At the time I planted fruit trees in my back garden and planted pots of vegetables and herbs on my front deck. The trees did okay but I have black thumbs and the pot plants died, well, all apart from the parsley which the dog ate. Who knew dogs like parsley? 

Anyway, gardening didn't take well then and after watching the cat pee all over the spinach that put me off growing vegetables again but I still thought of myself as becoming a self-sufficient home gardener someday and I kept a lot of plant books to feed that fantasy. 

Another fantasy linked with the gardening one is that one day we'd own our own lifestyle block with chickens and maybe a couple of cows or sheep. Generating our own power and with our own water source. I'd kept home farming magazines and books for this one. The thing is, after my husband ended up in hospital for a week with bad cellulitis in his leg from a spider bite, I realized that I don't want to live out in the country with no public transport to get to the hospital (I don't drive) and far away from family and friends. I like being able to walk to places in town, I like being close to family and friends. I get hay fever every year and it's exacerbated by the grass seed in the fields. I know that I'm always sneezing worse when I'm in the country, talk about a fantasy life! I don't eat meat so what do I need the sheep and cows for? I do like chickens and I could keep a few here in town but really, I know that I'm not really that interested and probably never will. So why keep books on animal husbandry and permaculture?

The same goes for my landscape design books. I took a course to help me plan out our previous garden. I don't regret it for a minute and will use the skills I learned to plan the landscaping of our new entertainment area and garden but I don't need lots of books on the subject. I'm not going to make a career out of this so if I need to know something I can either google it or borrow a book from the library. 

The same goes for scrap-booking. Fantasy me says I'm going to make this page and that page. I've collected paper and stamps and other things for this over the years but when I sit down to do it, meh. I have no real interest in this at all. Only fantasy me does. 

I'm sure there are other areas in my life that are also affected by fantasy me like the cake decorator me that hates baking but has the cake making/decorating equipment and the fantasy sewing me that owns a half share in a sewing machine but has never used it. Why? Because it doesn't really interest me. I'm not sure I can even really remember when it did. 

I'm never going to be a self-sufficient farmer type, landscape designing, scrap-booking, sewing and cake baking/decorating mum but that's okay. The real me has lots of real things going on. It's taken me a long time to find and acknowledge fantasy me but I think that once I remove all of her clutter I'll be able to clearly see what the real me enjoys doing in life and I might even have the space and time to find new things to try.

Decluttering my wardrobe

Recently I've been reading blogs by Courtney Carver over at  Be More With Less

specifically articles about Project 333 and creating capsule wardrobes. 

Now, I'm not any kind of fashionista and generally cruise through life in jeans and a tee shirt, but I felt that my wardrobe needed looking at. To me it seemed over full and uninteresting. 

The idea behind project 333 is that you dress with 33 items or less for 3 months. Creating seasonal wardrobes with mix and match clothes and storing the rest somewhere else. They don't include underwear, sleepwear or sports clothing in your 33 items. They also don't include wedding rings or other sentimental jewelry that you never take off, but all other clothing, accessories, footwear and jewelry are included in the 33 items.

The idea appealed but I wasn't looking forward to going through all of my clothes and sorting things out. I also thought that 33 items of clothing didn't sound like enough. 

Boy was I surprised when I went through my entire wardrobe and counted all my clothes and shoes. 

Not including underwear and socks, I had a total of 42 items of clothing including my shoes! 

This was for all seasons! 

It turns out that my husband's clothes were encroaching on my side of the wardrobe and I thought all the squish in there was caused by me.

Well, once the shock wore off I sorted everything out and created a list of what I have.

• 3x pairs of jeans 
• 2x pairs of shorts
• 2x 3/4 pants
• 10x tee shirts mostly blue, my fav color
• 2x long sleeve tees
• 5x sweatshirts
• 3x polar fleece tops
• 1x winter padded jacket
• 1x rain jacket
• 3x pjs
• 5x shoes
• 2x old cargo pants for painting the house
• 2x old shirts for painting the house
• 1x old polar fleece for painting

A total of 42 items!

Now I haven't included jewelry here up til now as I don't wear any apart from sleeper earrings that I never take off. I do own a watch but never wear it. I also have a Pounamu (Greenstone) pendant necklace that I wear sometimes when we go out but otherwise I have no interest in jewelry. I sold my engagement ring years ago when things were tight. I stopped wearing my wedding ring when it got damaged at work about 20 odd years ago and it doesn't fit now post kids, anyway. I hurt my finger (not seriously, luckily) when the ring got caught but that put me off wearing rings and I haven't worn one since. If I include all this that totals 45 items. 

Now you might be thinking that my hubby is a lucky man but what I don't spend in clothes, shoes and jewelry I could easily spend on bags and camera equipment.  I have my eye on a nice macro lens right now lol.

Anyway this exercise was good for me. It's made me realize that some of the clothes I was hanging onto weren't getting worn because they had worn out and for some reason I hadn't binned them. I also discovered where the holes are in my current wardrobe. Eg, I don't go out anywhere fancy but I don't really have anything to wear if I did want to. My warm winter jacket has seen better days since I bought it 15ish years ago so I'll start looking for it's replacement as we're coming into Autumn here now.

It's also made me realize that hubby's side of the wardrobe really needs looked at too. He's got a dirty job at the moment and he works with sharp metal so has been wearing layers of tee shirts to protect himself, hence why so many shirts and things. Recently he has also started working a bit more back in the office so that also explains the mixture of clothing he has. I'm hoping to put in a wardrobe system when we start redecorating our bedroom and hopefully then he'll be able to sort his clothes a bit better. Rough work clothes in one area and clean office clothes in another maybe.

Anyway, project 333 is totally worth a look, if only to help you see the gaps in your existing wardrobe.

Have a great week :)

Finding peace in the mayhem

Lately I've been following Joshua and Ryan the minimalists on their Instagram 31 day autumn clean out here and I've really been enjoying reading their tips on minimalism.

On day 13 two sentences really stand out for me 

 "The easiest way to organize your stuff is to get rid of most of it."

"Ultimately, organizing is nothing more than well planned hoarding."

I have to say here that I'm guilty of organizing and reorganizing my art and craft supplies and other areas of our home. In the past year I purged art supplies before we moved and then again a couple of months ago but it seems that it needs to be done again and much as I'd love to purge everything and have nothing to organize and continually tidy, I do love my hobbies and they come with a certain amount of stuff. Sometimes determining which stuff should be kept and which stuff isn't really needed is difficult.

As you can see in the picture above, I try to keep the clutter down as much as possible and create peaceful pauses in between the mayhem on the other shelves but somehow the shelves become overfull and the peaceful shelf starts to look like a great place to put the over-spill. (I should mention here that there are another two levels of shelves below this that are full of box files and paints. I couldn't fit them in the picture because of the dining table but the table doesn't disguise the mess in the shelves above) 

Part of the problem could be that I'm storing my cookbooks in one of the shelves now when I used to have them stored in the kitchen at our last house. Unfortunately I have nowhere to do that in the kitchen here, yet. 

Another part of the problem is having no spare shelves to put new art supplies when they come into the house. The 'one in one out' approach doesn't really work if, like me you buy a new tube of paint or art pad etc before your old one runs out so that it's there ready when you need it.  

Magazines are also becoming a bit of a problem on my shelves. I only buy 2 Photography magazines, one is monthly and the other bi-monthly, but I keep them for a while and Mum reads them too before they get cut up and used for collages and school projects. I started pulling out useful Photoshop tutorials and keeping those in clear file folders but as you can see on the top shelf on the left, I've collected far more files than I intended to so they too have become another area that needs to be sorted through. They've even displaced some of my photography books now. 

The magazines in the top right shelf are house and garden themed and were given to me by Mum when she had finished with them. We're currently doing up our house so these are a great source of ideas for now. Eventually they'll join the other magazines in the box for cutting up.

Add to all of this the seemingly continuous flow of paperwork coming from my children's schools and the steady stream of bills and other assorted junk mail that comes across my desk and it seems increasingly hard to find peace in the mayhem.

So, somehow I have to find the middle path between total clear-out and organized hoarding before I run out of space to work :D

I'll let you know how that works out. Have a great week :)