New sparks of joy

I wrote earlier this year about my KonMari inspired decluttering. While I generally focus on what I'm getting rid of (470 books! Umpteen CDs and DVDs! 2 bags of clothes! Etc), I thought the new year was a good time to reflect on things I'm keeping.  The main criteria for keeping or discarding most items is whether or not they "spark joy". 
Now, let's be honest. I've kept things that don't entirely make the cut. Clothes that are ok but I can't cull till I replace or I will own no jeans, swimwear or coats.  Items which bring me joy as part of a system (my crochet tools as a whole bring me joy) but not themselves (my stitch markers are cheap green and pink plastic ones I got free with a magazine and they do not bring particular joy). But there are some things that really make me smile every time I use them, and in honour of New Year's Day I thought I'd make a list of things which have entered my life in the last two years that definitely spark joy.

La crueset tea for one set

Just lovely.

A Christmas present from last year, I adore using this.  It gets used for leisurely tea. It feels lovely in my hands and as a bonus looks awesome with my new kitchen's colours.

My new laundry

I never thought I'd wax lyrical about a laundry.

There are many things I love about the post renovation house, but I get a little burst of pleasure every time I go into my laundry. Tiles. TWO SINKS. Two. My huge IKEA Pax wardrobe as linen cupboard. Did I mention my two sinks?

My snap press

Mid nappy making

There is something incredibly satisfying about using this. Not just because the snaps look amazing and professional, but in the actual physical process too.

My tea necklace

Tea accessorises all outfits, correct?

There's a story behind this. Last year for a geek Christmas exchange I had a target who is a massive Star Trek, and Picard in particular, fan. I contacted the wonderful Cassie at Femmecraft and we brainstormed two designs, finally deciding on a general Trek focused "To boldly go" custom design (now available as a regular option). This design was the other, but we decided not to go ahead with it for a few reasons. Then in November this year I saw her at a market and she'd made it anyway and I could not resist. I'd been considering buying a Femmecraft necklace for myself and knowing that my custom order inquiry sparked this design's existence makes it extra special. 

My new watering can

It looks at home in my fledgling garden

When I was given this for Christmas this year, I pronounced it the Rolls Royce of watering cans. It is amazing.  Beautifully balanced, stunning colour, vintage looks, and a generous rose. Perhaps too early to make this an addition to the joy list, but I don't think so.

Everything in this outfit

The shirt is from Redbubble, the shoes I honestly can't recall (purchased while "baby/sleep deprived brain was still a thing)  and my talented sister made the green skirt. This photo was taken at the Powerhouse museum cafe on a day that Sydney got to a stupidly hot 45 degrees, actually to show evidence that I was wearing the skirt.

As a result of the decluttering, and thinking about what sparks joy, I'm feeling remarkably privileged and lucky, recognising the lovely things I own. This seems like the best time of year to reflect on making the most of what we have that gives us joy. So what makes your list? 

What does my ideal life look like now?

Been reading and trying to implement the charming The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.  A group of us are all obsessed at the moment. Her philosophy is that all the slow, constant decluttering or tidying techniques don't work for enough people. It needs to be a fairly quick and thorough process so you can see visible results quickly and get your space as you'd like it. There are two parts - discarding, and then storing what you keep. Her main criteria for keeping something is whether it gives you a spark of joy.  There is more to it than that, but something has resonated with me at this point in time. 


One of the things I've been pondering a lot out of the book and the process is my vision of my ideal lifestyle as it concerns my physical space and the possessions within. It has led me to realise a lot of ideal life plans were formed when I was young and single and haven't been deeply examined since. 
So here are my new thoughts on the matte:
 I want to wake up in a house that doesn't stress me out because of the clutter. I want to be able to see, appreciate and show off the beautiful things I own and I want to be without furniture and other things I didn't choose and don't particularly like. I want to be able to spend my time playing with N. and know he has a safe environment to explore- and know that when he tears everything apart it will be easy to put it all back where it belongs. I want to be able to to have guests come over at a moment's notice and not feel ashamed of the place.  I want us to have lazy Sunday brunch on the deck, looking over colourful flowers and nice smelling herbs. I want to have a dedicated creating space where I can leave the sewing machine out. I want to have birthday parties for N. that spill out of the house into the garden and make stupidly elaborate cakes for him. I want his memories of his childhood home to be of warmth and happiness and colour and space not mess and clutter and his mum complaining or stressing about it.
That's my manifesto, I guess, for the new house and guidelines to keep in mind when I'm deciding what to keep and new things to buy. 

The recipe backlog

In addition to a modest cookbook collection, I've spent years buying cooking magazines and tearing out recipes that appeal to me. I enjoy cooking and experimenting with ingredients but our actual meal planning tends to get stuck in a rut. As part of my being a stay at home mum experience, I've decided to shake that up and clear some of those torn out pages at the same time.

Every week, I'm trying two new recipes from those pages, one savoury and one sweet. Recipes that are either not that good, or more trouble than they are worth, are discarded into the recycling; successful recipes also end up in the recycling but get written up in my recipe book first. The only pages I'm keeping are the 'to tweak' recipes - ones that were ok but I suspect can be made better and into regulars on our meal line-up.

So far we've had a very successful one-pot mustard chicken, a tweakable chorizo, chicken and potato gratin (my husband wants more chorizo, I want a bit less thyme, so we'll try those changes and see), possibly more trouble than they are worth chocolate cherry strudel (filo pastry!) and jaffa friands (6 egg whites!), some rather uninspiring lamb, pumpkin & couscous salad, and one or two others that were clearly so 'meh' that I've already forgotten the details.

Decluttering the house by two magazine pages a week might not sound like a lot, but I'm enjoying the chance to actually try these recipes that I've saved over the years and start to whittle away at the recipe backlog. I've also vowed not to buy any more cooking magazines for at least 6 months.

In parallel to this, I'm working on ways to make our meal planning a better experience. At the moment I'm considering 'meal packages' - a set of three meals that have some ingredients in common to lessen waste - and 'prompt cards' - writing index cards with recipes by major ingredient (so chicken recipes, bean recipes, etc) so we can say 'well, we have chicken in the freezer; this week we should do one of the chicken recipes' and just grab the card and have a look.

I'm too afraid to start looking online for meal planning techniques because I just know there will be a flood of ideas and I'll get overwhelmed!

Making Room for Mustard Seed

The arrival of a new baby, even when eagerly planned and anticipated, has a sobering reality when one actually looks around one's crowded one-bedroom unit and thinks "where is all the baby stuff going to FIT?".  Our baby, who has been nicknamed Mustard Seed since the beginning of this pregnancy, is not going to have an excessive amount of material possessions - I hope; I'll blog later about how I'm planning to encourage ethical gifting and, inspired by my sister, discourage new plastic toys - but the little things add up. We've received some second-hand clothes and muslin wraps, a rocking sleepy-chair for day; we need to fit in a bassinet or cot, probably find a way to put a chest of drawers in for the clothes.

There are two main components to making more room - the first is a major plan to renovate our current unit and the soon-to-be-vacant unit behind us into one lovely family home which will be ours for the rest of our lives. I'm not going to blog about this much, except when it impacts the rest of my life; at the moment we are talking with my mother-in-law, who owns both flats, about the legal side, and starting to gather estimates from builders on what the renovation itself would involve and cost.

The more achievable plan is decluttering. Oh, the decluttering. I'm going through everything, slowly but surely trying to whittle down possessions I don't want or need. Occasionally I think 'wait, even if I do get rid of X, is another four inches of space on top of a kitchen cupboard actually going to make any more room?' - but then I remind myself that if the renovation is as severe as I think it will be, all of our stuff will need to be in storage or in temporary rental, so the real question is 'do I want this enough to pay to move or store it?'. Often the answer is no.

I'm decluttering in the bedroom at the moment. Clothes are mostly done, which I'm feeling good about. I'm about to start hobby/craft stuff, which is a bit more painful. I'm trying to be realistic yet balance future needs. It is one thing to say that I'll never go back to painting miniatures or making terrain, but... I've said that before. And maybe in 6 years time I'll have a little boy who wants to paint monsters...

As a result of all this sorting, actual crafting is taking a back seat. I'm making some star-stitch booties from a pattern in a library book that was going very well and now I've hit a point where the pattern doesn't seen to actually work out. Blerg.