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About balance

8/11/2021

In the course of the past week, one particular issue cropped up all the time. In the framework of the National Organising Week, I had lots of discussions during my zoom call extravaganza.
(see clutteraware biweekly zoom call)

Although the subject of all those daily calls was “Organising for Sustainable Living”, our conversations usually meandered back to the idea of finding a balance of sorts, between being sustainable without straining ourselves so much and not wanting to be sustainable anymore because it affects enjoyment of life too much.

Sudden awakening

25/10/2021

These last couple of weeks, Brighton – where I live – has been shaken up by a strike of the bin lorry men, with rubbish piling up around the large bins that can be found all around large parts of the city.

At first, things were not too bad, but then the bins gradually filled up and bags started to appear carefully deposited around the large bins. And then things degraded quickly.

Winter is coming!

4/10/2021

Time flies and the warm season seems to be on its way out already. Of course, there are things we’ll miss: sitting in the warm sunshine, meeting friends on the porch late in the day, that feeling that the day is endless and there is enough time to do whatever needs doing.

But then many, if not most, of us seem to partially hibernate throughout the darker period of the year. We can now look forward to the joys of warm jumpers, hot drinks around the fireplace, huddling up in front of your TV set, and eating more ‘comfort food’ than we rightfully should.

Let there be light!

20/9/2021

Summer is slowly coming to an end and what corners of your home have been illuminated by sunshine for a good part of the last months will now gradually become a little darker each day.

I myself am much aware of this as my usual zoom call on Monday morning now starts with enough light to be seen on the screen, but by the end of the call I’m shrouded in darkness with only the monitor’s blue light reflecting off my face.

Home storage containers

16/8/2021

One of the wonderful things that you can finally do once you have finished a bout of decluttering, is to put things into order and organise items into the newly available spaces.

But wait: just putting things onto those empty shelves or into large drawers won’t do! That would be a recipe for disaster as it would just start a new cycle of putting things there and slowly, but surely, have them pile up again. You need a system…

Zoning

2/8/2021

Have you ever felt that your space – be it an office, a flat or a whole house – never quite manages to look right? Or do you feel overwhelmed by the size of a tidying up or organising project? If that is you, maybe what you need is a way to get your mind aligned with the space you are looking at, and the space divided into more manageable zones?

That is exactly what ‘zoning’ is about. It goes further, though: zoning is about setting up invisible areas in your home or office that allow you to make the best use of the available space, without turning into an overly perfectionist maniac…

Online shopping

19/7/2021

We’ve all been doing some amount of online shopping for many years, but since 2020, online shopping has become a necessity for some and a pastime for others. Either way, we are less likely to walk into a shop – if those are even available in the area we live – than we are to randomly browsing the internet and choosing things we like the look of.

While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with online shopping, in some ways it exacerbates tendencies you may have already had before it became as simple as click and pay…

Procrastination, or not?

5/7/2021

The other day I found myself in a quandary, wondering if I was procrastinating or not. Sounds odd, but that’s exactly what has happened.

I was on my way back from the hardware store carrying a toilet seat and a new showerhead when it suddenly hit me: “am I only doing this because I am fed up with doing research, and wanted to put that research to the side for a while? But let’s step back a couple of weeks…

I had an issue with my bathroom for a couple of months. First of all, that showerhead had been sprinkling water all over the place and taking a shower involved a lot of jostling around to be hit by more than two or three little streams of water at the same time. I had done my best to keep it going, cleaning, descaling and taking care of it, but the rubber jets had all but disintegrated and it was looking decidedly grimy. I knew that there is a time for preserving resources, and there are time when radical steps need to be taken. A new showerhead was on the list of things to get, for sure.

Similar things were happening to the toilet seat. It had come with the rental flat and was clean and all, but over the many years I have lived here, it had degraded a little. The surface had developed scratches from cleaning, and those areas had discoloured in a distressing way: they looked as if something not very nice had gotten stuck in the cracks. Erm. Time for a replacement. My landlady had been very keen on the soft close mechanism of that toilet seat (and I totally agree), so there was not discussion whatsoever that the new one would be similar. I just had to go and get one.

And that is where things got stuck: for months, I had thought of going to the store – which, by the way, is less than 10 minutes on foot away from my home – but it just never happened. Until earlier this week! And we are back to the original story…

Okay: I’m on my way back with the new seat and shower head when my mind got stuck in a loop: “was I doing this to postpone working on a project, or had I been working on projects to put off doing this little chore”? I honestly couldn’t figure out which one it was? Of course, I get tired of the project sometimes and start doing my dishes or watering my plants: that is simply called ‘a break’. I usually go back to work within a couple of minutes and continue for hours.

As for doing DIY: I love that! I actually miss owning a house of my own that needs taking care of all the time. There is nothing more satisfying than fixing things or installing something new – quite apart from having a proper shower or sitting comfortably on the throne (and not wondering what the guests were thinking when they saw they old seat). So really no reason to procrastinate on either front.

I ended up with the realisation that I probably wasn’t procrastinating at all: I saw both elements as ‘taking care of business’, they simply were interlaced and it felt like doing one thing I love kept me from doing something else I love. Quite the opposite of procrastination, then!

If you have enjoyed reading this, you may find these other articles interesting:

Are you disorganised or cluttered?

21/6/2021

There is a common misunderstanding that clutter and disorganisation are the same thing, or at least closely related. In fact, they are two distinctly different things. They may affect each other, but the reasons and effects of both issues are totally separate things.

The terms themselves give us a clue as to what is involved: “clutter” is initially an issue with physical items, while “disorganisation” has to do with the way we deal with things, both in the physical world and in the mind.

Choosing the right tasks

7/6/2021

I often come across clients who have reached out because they feel overwhelmed by the prospect of making their homes work for them. Sometimes we have to delve deep into the reasons behind that feeling, and often the feeling has nothing to do with the stuff in that household. Maybe the partner is creating more havoc than they should, or the kids are too much to deal with, or someone interferes with their sense of calm in some manner.

But in other cases, the matter is completely unrelated to the physical items in a home, and is all about the tasks my client has chosen to take upon themselves…