Creating space, creating a habit

I've been decluttering my craftroom.  I still have a little more to go, including a box of stuff on the floor that I can't seem to find places for, and some things to take to school. I'm giving away some fabric and I've sorted through my scrapbooking things. But I still have a room packed full of things.

During last year I found this little 2-seater sofa at an op shop, and it changed everything about the room. But until now I had no time to really make it all work. 

Originally, I had these cute vintage velvet wingchairs in my craftroom. I loved the look of these chairs, they were a bargain, were in good condition and had just the vintage vibe I wanted. 

This is how I had the sitting area of my craft room set up originally

(on the other side of the room is my desk and most of my craft supplies) 

... and then I rearranged when we inherited this lovely leadlight cabinet.

But the trouble was that the chairs only looked cute. They didn't feel so great. When I sat on them I felt both constricted by the arms and wobbly on the seat cushion. My great plans of sitting daily to read the bible and pray on these chairs came to nothing. We sat on them on Friday nights for date night, and the rest of them time they just held piles of stuff, and I wondered why I didn't sit on them more. 

Then came the sofa.

Not vintage. Not the best colour. But comfortable.

A real game-changer.

And now I get to my new habit:

Each night I light this little candle

I open my little pencil case (a gift from a Korean student) and take out a pen.

(I keep the matches in there, also)

I open my bible

And my day-to-a-page diary (Aldi)

and I get reading and writing and praying.

You see, when I was younger I read my bible everyday, but as I got older, I found it hard to make the time.  This year I've discovered a few other things about me:

A lighted candle helps to remind me to stay and read and think, not to jump up and do something else. It makes the time a bit special (and smells amazing, the nicest vanilla candle I ever met ;)

A diary with pretty pages, smooth paper and the perfect sized page and just one page seems doable, compared to my old burnout style of writing pages and pages in a journal one day and not touching it again for months.

It helps to have a colourful bible and pencil case that coordinate, because I'm just that kind of girl.

A reading plan from my minister for our church to read Matthew 14-28 in the month of January has really helped. Especially when I recoloured it and made it pretty to match my diary ;)

I have a couple, but just a couple, of other reading and resource books in the pile for when I have extra time.  I plan to re-read the Jesus Storybook Bible again soon, I just love it, and it's not only for kids.

The other thing I've done is moved some suitcases which were piled up in the centre of the room. They were handy for storage and putting things on when I'm sitting at my desk, but not worth it in the end because of the cramped feeling they gave me. I also had a nest of tables in here, which felt rickety and not quite right. Now I manage with the little table attached to the standard lamp. And in case you're worried, I still have the olive velvet wingchairs, one in the craftroom next to the sofa, and one in the living room. And I still have some furniture from this room and elsewhere that I need to find space for, hmmm.

I'm so pleased that I was able to use this holiday time to manage the space and feel of this room, and to finally use it to accomplish one of my original aims of this room - to have a quiet space to sit and read and pray each day.

January

January.

Some breathing space.

Time to read

and read

and read.

A few outings.

This was Cooper's first time at a beach.

He loved it.

We normally have a picnic sometime after New Year.

On the 5th we headed to Lavender Bay, somewhere we hadn't been before,

and to Wendy Whiteley's garden

where we dodged sprinklers

and discovered treasures.

 It was great to be by the harbour again, even if just for a short time.

And we finally got to take that family portrait I'd been wanting for a few months.

Even if it was just a selfie.

I've been decluttering like mad, and trying to incorporate/give up/sell furniture rejected by Laura, she has all new black Ikea furniture in her room now, gifts from her 18th birthday. I've almost reached the stage where I feel that every cupboard, shelf and surface has been checked for items to declutter. I like to think this is the first sweep with more sweeps to come, but I know that's unlikely once school and uni begin again. But perhaps with spaces slightly less cluttered I can cull an item or two from time to time as I can gradually loosen my hold on things.

Emily turned 20 on the 7th, and we celebrated with all sorts of vegan treats

 (well, ok some of our treats weren't vegan but hers all were) and I replicated a delicious vegan pumpkin pie we had on Christmas Eve, yum.

She is all about bootcamp and smoothie bowls these days, so I made her the perfect card.

Steve and I celebrated our wedding anniversary with a visit to the city, where we had Thr1ve burgers (I had a gingerbread smoothie), then headed to the art gallery to see the Dutch Masters exhibition, which was amazing. So hard to conceive that these paintings were about 350 years old and painted on the other side of the world. I've just read Remembering Rembrandt which was great timing. 

(If only it wasn't so tiring standing looking at paintings with other people around ...)

Amazing.

Not this one, of course, because I'm not 350 years old.

And I bought the cutest sundress at Dangerfield. That evening we went out for dinner and saw a movie, The Post. We really needed some time out without girls or dog, just enjoying ourselves, it was great.

The next day I took myself out and dropped off a load of decluttering and bought a plant.

Because the New Me can keep plants alive.

Maybe.

And the New Me doesn't eat sugar and junk food anymore, as of 12th January. Christmas munching is well and truly over, although some of the treats remain. I'm keeping them for little daily rewards for sticking to a meat/fruit/veg diet each day, I really need to do it, enough is enough.

I've also enjoyed some good viewing - Home Fires, Hidden Figures, Death Comes to Pemberley and more; and plenty of internet surfing, largely on minimalist themes and now moving onto education. 

And, of course, these holidays have been all about the dog. He's 8 months old now.

Now Steve's back at work I'm responsible for the morning walk, which happens with mixed success.

Sometimes tears.

But mostly with some good solid walking in large chunks, interspersed with Cooper plonking himself on the grass and sitting happily, while I go through all sorts of antics to get him up and going again.

Thankfully after that he sleeps most of the day, except for a play sometime in the afternoon and a good run around with Steve in the evening. At night, Steve and I take him for a good long walk and he gets through the night with just a bit of barking at passersby and possums.

So things have really progressed from those scary months early on when we felt we were being attacked by little sharp teeth all day long. 

Here he is having a cuddle with Laura this afternoon.

It's been good to look back at photos now that we're half way through January, and see that I haven't been sitting and/or decluttering all holidays, like I thought I had been. We've actually had a few nice outings. It feels like luxury to be at home with the freedom to do whatever I want, after two years straight of working full-time and studying. Last summer I had the constant pressure to study and write assignments, and I might do the same next summer, but I needed this summer to stop and breathe and take stock, and remember who I am, and who we are, and where we live.

There have been some really hard things this month, also, but they have been balanced out by rest, relaxation, hope, projects at home, and these good family times to remember. 

I want to hold on to these good things.

Thoughts on returning to full-time work

See what a restful image I post for this topic.

Regular readers will know that this year I returned to teaching after many years at home. Oh, I never really stopped teaching, whether it was teaching piano, teaching my girls, giving group recorder lessons, teaching stamping, leading a church group,  and more recently working as a casual teacher ... I've always being teaching someone something, but it certainly wasn't full-time. 

For the majority of the last 18 years, I've had a lot of freedom to my days. I had 9 years when my girls were both at school 5 full days a week, although more recently they have had half-days some days. In the early school years I over-committed, but over time I managed to carve away at my extra commitments until the last few years I was free most days, unless the phone rang and I was off teaching at one school or another.

So what did I do all day? Um ... a lot ... and not a lot.

I baked, and I rearranged. I shopped and I decluttered. I painted when we renovated, and when we didn't. I made cards and crocheted and blogged. I spent too much time look at other peoples' lives on the internet, but only if they had pretty or inspiring blogs. I put time into leading a bible study group, and valued those friendships and the knowledge I gained. I put necessary time into regaining my health through changing diets and going to appointments. Sometimes in recent years I helped my mother-in-law, as she moved house and became less independent. Sometimes I saw my extended family. All good things.

And of course I managed the things that needed managing for my family - the shopping, the gifts, the organising, the notes, the calendar, the music lessons. Housework even  sometimes happened.

And then, with a phone call, it all stopped. 

Stay tuned for what happened next.

And check this out! I'm thrilled to have received a shout out from The Big Smoke.

19 for Lunch

In recent months I've been very focused on decluttering this house of ours. 

I printed out the charts from Rachel's 2015 in 2015 Challenge in January, and so far I've ticked off 1300 items that have left the house! Some of those were from our "outbuildings" - our workshop and garden shed, but the bulk of them were items from indoors. There have been numerous trips to the op shop, the kerb, and the bin, and I've sold some things on ebay and the local facebook buy, sell and trade group. With each item ticked off, I know I'm making space to do all sorts of things more easily.

There's still a lot more stuff that I could let go of, and hopefully I will in future, but for now I've reached a level where it's possible to keep the living room tidy - at last!

Our living room is an open living space, encompassing kitchen, dining, living, laundry overflow (piles of laundry, not water!) and access to the backdoor/bathroom/stairs. In wet weather you might find clothes hanging on clotheshorses, too. Until this week, Emily has done all her homework and study at the dining table. It's a busy room with a lot going on. 

On Saturday, I cleared out every single thing that wasn't a piece of furniture, and put it in the study or craftroom. Since I've decluttered so much, there wasn't much to pick up, and the other rooms had more space to store things temporarily.  We rearranged the furniture (did I mention we had 4 sofas in the living room? That story for another post) and added some trestle tables and chairs.

Voila! Seating for 19 people!

We celebrated Mum's birthday with most of our extended family, and I managed to seat them all! No "kids table", no picnic on the floor, no dinners on laps. no kids disappearing upstairs. All those things are fine, but this time I wanted all of us together for once, for a sit-down lunch and a game afterwards. We all squeezed in and ate baked potatoes with toppings, then some paleo desserts and birthday cake. Then we tested our wits with  a Family Feud style game and gave presents. 

I had planned to fold up the tables after lunch and sit on the sofas, but that seemed too complicated when the time came, so we stayed at the tables. 

]The only problem was before dinner, it was a bit crowded, standing around for drinks. I had hoped people might use this corner of the room where we "stored" two of the sofas, but, no. Oh well.

After our visitors left, I organised some more stuff, so there wasn't much at all to put back in the living room - a basket of crochet yarns, a basket of library books ... and Emily has started studying upstairs so the dining table is staying clear. When I crashed with a cold for two days from Sunday afternoon, I could sit and enjoy our new serene and open space. All so worth it!