September and back to school

I woke up a few days ago and could feel that distinctive September chill to the air. There is  real anticipation I get even still to the start of September - years of going through school conditions you to it a bit. It makes me want to buy new pencils and wear grey skirts and white shirts, eat bread and butter pudding and school dinners, and live to a routine. I like the boost of motivation to work hard and focus and learn.

I'm going to try and harness this feeling for the next few weeks to help me make an extra push at things I have been self learning for a long time, maybe do a bit more coding and focus on some more academic and challenging things I have been putting off. Maybe check out some books at the library and go on some runs.

KonMari Inspiration

I posted yesterday about the start of my Konmari process. I love a good before and after and I got a bit obsessed at looking at other people's before and afters with Konmari. Here are the most inspiring ones I found online:

Rae from 'Say it ain't so' has such great style - I liked seeing how through the process it shined out even more as she went through her home.

part one - intro and clothes, books, paper.

Look at her amazing before and after on her closet!

   I liked this guy's video and he had some interesting things to say about the method:

I also loved the video series by Alexa Weber Morales because she showed the entire process, which a lot of people don't, and did a lot of before and afters and commentaries. In her house, again, you really see her true style shine through a lot better once she has tidied.  

This lady has a lovely video where she shows herself clearing out her jewellery cabinet - her pieces she decides to keep really shine when she puts them back together.

Konmari and the life changing magic of tidying up - Clothes

My de-cluttered clothes cupboard - the shelves were previously stuffed to the top with clothes.

Over the last couple of months I have been doing the Konmari method of de-cluttering. I read Marie Kondo's book 'The life changing magic of tidying up' and it gave me a totally different mindset about the the things I own, and my house. I have always hated clutter and have been quite minimalist in my possessions, but recently I have found I have accumulated more than my house and cupboards could fit.

The whole premise of the book is to focus on only keeping the things you truly love, and to get rid of everything else. It is a refreshing and positive approach, and I found that when I paired back my stuff to only the things I loved it gave me a lot more happiness and contentment with what I had. Often I feel we go chasing more possessions because we feel dissatisfied with what we own.

It makes me really happy to open my cupboard or look at my wardrobe and see all the things I love together - I can pick out anything and be happy to wear it, whereas before I would have to sift through the things I didn't like to find something I wanted to wear. I also found (not just with the clothes, but with everything) that when you kept the things you loved only, they tended to go together better - your true style shines out more clearly and is not obscured by things you don't like.

My wardrobe where I put my more formal wear that needs to be hung. Now containing only things I love.

With her method you de-clutter category by category, not room by room, and the first category you start on is clothes, because it is the easiest. She says you need to get all the clothes from the whole house into the same place to start so you can see just how much you have and if there are any repetitions and duplicates. Then you need to pick up each item in turn and ask yourself 'does this bring me joy?'

Some things will surprise you when you realise they don't - I had a beautiful new dress which I never wear and I realised it really doesn't bring me joy - it fits kind of weirdly and the fabric is really thick wool even though it is a mini dress so it is too cold for winter but too hot for summer. And also you will find some things that you assumed wouldn't bring you joy, do - like an old sweater or shirt.

These days I am pretty good at knowing what suits me, so I didn't have a crazy amount of clothes to give to the charity shop. But in fact I had a lot of clothes that I had once liked and worn a lot, which had become faded and worn and I still had in my wardrobe. These were all basic items like long sleeved plain T-shirts for layering in the autumn and winter and plain jeans, but I purged these to the cupboard under the sink for cleaning rags and they actually came in handy when I was Konmari-ing the rest of the house, because I cleaned out lots of areas and cupboards etc. as I went. I got rid of about one carrier bag of clothes to the charity shop and put about three carrier bags (three!) under the sink for rags. So much for me being the minimalist I thought I was - no wonder my clothes cupboard was full to brimming.

She says once you have completely and properly tidied an area it will pretty much stay tidy, all you need to do is put things back where they go. The key is to get rid of all the excess belongings which are cluttering up the space and not bringing joy, and once you have de cluttered give everything a proper permanent home with everything of the same type all in the same place.

With clothes she says you should fold them so you can see at one glance all that you have - so stack them vertically on their ends in a drawer instead of one on top of the other.

Since I have been doing this for a while now and have done other categories since, I can definitely say this was the easiest and quickest to do. I went through the clothes in my cupboard in about 20 minutes tops, and while I tried on a few things from my wardrobe to double check I was sure, the wardrobe took about 20 minutes as well. It was such a dramatic change once I put everything back folded neatly in her method - My wardrobe looked amazing and was filled with only the things I loved an that made me happy. Plus all the space and organisation was beautiful. I now love looking at my cupboard and my wardrobe with its matching hangars and all my fancy clothes - I feel it looks really pretty and put together.  

I treated myself to matching wooden hangars once I had de cluttered (which were actually surprisingly cheap) and
ditched all the miss matched plastic ones.

Another obvious side effect, apart from the fact that your space looks tidier, is that if you only keep the clothes you love, you only wear the clothes you love, resulting in feeling a lot better about how you dress and what you wear. I feel a lot smarter and more comfortable and put together since Konmaring and I had also previously been wearing a few unflattering items because I liked the type of style they were, but they weren't really bringing me joy because they made me feel awkward. 

Best thing I've found on the internet in a long time

www.cameronsworld.net. Everything is animated - it is truly wonderful.

You're welcome

Link storm - Music and Illustration

• I have recently found The 405 - a good music news site, and have been listening to Com Truise, an electro instrumental group who's music sounds like it was straight out of the 80's.

• Wonderful animal illustrations from Paul Farrell - me and Jon have a few on our walls from when we discovered him at one of the Bristol art trails. I particularly want his 'C' is for Cricket print.

• Another awesome Bristol illustrator -  Ellie Cryer.

She has a Society 6 page with t-shirts, mugs and phone cases etc.

• Drawing every day group on reddit - I firmly believe your level of drawing skill is directly linked to how much practice you get. This is a good place to get drawing subject matter prompts and where people post their responses to the daily challenges and discuss them. Nothing too heavy. And hey, if you get really good at drawing and you still want to participate in drawing to a theme groups, you could enter the different t-shirt design challenges from threadless. 

This Week - picking and cooking wild fruit

This week we had some old friends to stay and took them out round the fields near our house blackberry picking.Whilst going along the river we stumbled across a wild plum tree and added some of those to our stash, and then came across some enormous sloes which are good for making sloe gin. It was a pretty productive couple of hours!

Being that I had already made them a pie from some of the cherries in my freezer, that we had picked from those fields previously (six pounds in total of corkers) I would say we are doing pretty well from the surrounding land.

We also saw an apple tree in the woods absolutely laden with apples which should be ripe in a month or two. We are finding that it pays to take a note of any fruit trees you stumble upon and try and keep an eye on them until they ripen - if you are not sure what kind of time of year different fruits are ready for picking google always has the answer. You also need to go and get them when they are ripe because they don't stay good for too long.

Google is also obviously good for identifying fruits when you are not sure if you have found something.Make sure you are 100% on anything you are foraging because you don't want to risk poisoning or belly aches. We are pretty sure there is a quince tree near us which we might go and explore. Other things we could take advantage of around us are elderflowers/elderberries which you can make various drinks from.

Once you have brought your spoils home you want to cover them in salty water and let them soak for a while - bugs don't like this solution and will come out of the fruits - and then rinse them well in clean water. We then usually put them in freezer bags and into the freezer to use at our leisure - depending on what it is we have brought home (some things freeze better than others).

I usually cook with what we forage - I feel the heat kills off any potential baddies ( I am scrupulous in the fruit we bring home, but like to be careful) - and also as wild fruit is less sweet than cultivated fruit you can add in sugar and spices to make it really tasty.

Some things we have made from our foragings have been:

 • A deep filled cinnamon apple pie - the wild apples we found cooked down to a mushy texture which is good for this type of pie. I used a copious amount of cinnamon and buttery short crust pastry.
• A cherry liquor tart - I slowly simmered the cherries with not too much sugar and a fairly generous amount of spiced rum. This was good served warm with pouring cream.
• Vanilla pod liquor stewed plums over good quality vanilla ice cream. I did this with the plums we brought home yesterday.
• Nettle tea, chamomile tea, fresh mint tea, lime flower tea.
• Beech leaf gin which has a delicate botanical flavour, and sloe gin which is fruity and syrupy.

We have also found chestnuts and hazelnuts, although they were tiny and dry.

Organisation Links

Some links to help organise different areas of your life :

Via The Minimalists

 1. unclutterer.com  - This is a good cover all bases site which has been going a long time and which has a lot of resources.

 2. zen to done - A different take on the popular 'Getting things done' system you often see mentioned on the web.

 3. The Minimalists - Focusing on simplifying your life and mindsets.

 4. A place for everything - A really enjoyable video on fun storage ideas.

 5. How to stay focused when you get bored of working towards your goals - Lets do this!

 6. college info geek - We all should stay life long students - there is so much to learn about the world. This site has a lot of good study and self organisation tips which are helpful to everyone, not just people in school.

 7. Is anyone else completely overwhelmed?  and the follow up 13 tips for fighting internet overwhelm - Something to think about. I feel like the internet is full of these kind of articles and it is kind of chicken and egg - we spend all our time on the internet reading about how we spend all our time on the internet. That being said, I thought these were interesting articles and worth a share, and the follow up article has some good pointers on how to deal with it. I guess its all about your personality - I don't use the internet for social media - I have a facebook I check about once a fortnight if I remember. I find it really shallow and like to see and speak to people in real life. But I am all over it for info and discovery, always researching and looking things up. Different strokes, hey?

Bath Adventure

Me and Jon had a mini holiday in Bath recently and I thought I would share some photos - we saw a lot of hot home wares and some beautiful shops and buildings. We also enjoyed some great meals out and watched the sun go down in the pool on the roof of the spa. It has beautiful views across Bath and the surrounding countryside.