Tag: magazines

101 things you could let go of right now

~ Gillie ~ 6 Comments

I love lists.  Don’t you?  That immensely satisfying feeling as you cross off the things you have done.  Decluttering is perfect for list makers.  You can break up the clutter by room, by cupboard, by person, by subject area.  Oddly enough, I have done none of these things.  I have just started in one part of the house and worked my way round, over and over again.  Then I came across this blog by Joshua Becker 101 Physical That Can Be Reduced In Your Home .  Oh the joys, I am so doing this today.  I have already crossed off those things I have already reduced to the bare minimum or we don’t have.  But so much more to go.  I’m all fired up and ready to give the remaining clutter the heave ho.

Could you take this list round your home?  How much could you cross off today?

  1. Glassware
  2. Cookbooks
  3. Kitchen gadgets
  4. Kitchen appliances
  5. Pots / pans
  6. Mixing bowls
  7. Tupperware
  8. Water pitchers
  9. Magazines
  10. Newspapers
  11. Books
  12. Over-the-counter medicine
  13. Make-up
  14. Barretts / hair clips / ponytail holders
  15. Cleaning supplies
  16. Personal beauty appliances (hair dryer/curlers, electric razors)
  17. Bottles of shampoo/conditioner
  18. Photos
  19. Photography supplies
  20. Sewing supplies
  21. Craft supplies
  22. Scrap-booking supplies
  23. CD’s
  24. DVD’s
  25. Decorative items
  26. Candles
  27. Figurines
  28. Crystal
  29. Vases
  30. Audio/visual components
  31. Audio/visual cables
  32. Computer equipment
  33. MP3 players
  34. Furniture
  35. Video game systems
  36. Vdeo games
  37. Video game accessories
  38. Shirts / shorts
  39. Pants
  40. Coats
  41. Dresses
  42. Hats
  43. Clothes hangers
  44. Shoes
  45. Winter gear
  46. Jewelry
  47. Purses
  48. Coins
  49. Pillows
  50. Towels
  51. Linen sets
  52. Candle Holders
  53. Televisions
  54. Items on your bulletin board
  55. Magnets
  56. Artwork
  57. Mirrors
  58. Home office supplies
  59. Pens/pencils
  60. Old batteries
  61. Tools
  62. Hardware
  63. Rolls of duct tape
  64. Coolers
  65. Manuals
  66. Phone books
  67. Coupons
  68. Sporting good supplies
  69. Sports memorabilia
  70. Aluminum cans
  71. Glass bottles
  72. Automobile fluids
  73. Automobiles
  74. Scrap pieces of lumber
  75. Brooms
  76. Rakes
  77. Shovels
  78. Garden tools
  79. Plant containers
  80. Empty cardboard boxes
  81. Board games
  82. Puzzles
  83. Decks of cards
  84. Unused wedding gifts
  85. Baby clothes
  86. Baby supplies
  87. Old schoolbooks/papers
  88. Army men
  89. Bath toys
  90. Toy balls
  91. Toy cars/trucks
  92. Toy musical instruments
  93. Stuffed animals
  94. Plastic toys
  95. Childrens’ old school papers
  96. Suitcases
  97. Soda
  98. Alcohol
  99. Processed foods
  100. Christmas / seasonal decorations
  101. Cable channels

reverse decluttering part three

~ Gillie ~ 9 Comments

Today I tackled OPQ.  Frankly the most difficult I have encountered thus far.  Considerable lateral thinking required.

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Moving backwards in an orderly alphabetical manner the first things to go were those that quacked.  Or would do if they were real.  Our real ducks have long gone and we now only have a  handful of chickens.  They not only earn their keep but are entertaining and lovely.  These plastic wotsits have been sitting on the guest bathroom shelf for years and even the youngest houseguests have never got them down.  Time to find a new home.

P is for periodicals.  In the great craft declutter I came across piles and piles of magazines.  Lovely ones like Somerset Studio, Scrapbook Trends and Legacy.  But I have been scrapping for almost 15 years and I know my style and much as these are lovely to look at, the point is I don’t look at them.  If I want inspiration I go on the net, or go for a walk or look at my journal.  Out they go.

O is for Oblong.  I really did struggle here!  Back to the great craft declutter.  Boxes and boxes of paints, embossing powders and so forth.  I don’t use them. Somebody else can.  I did think about shoe boxes, but I have already done a major shoe clear out and there isn’t much left to go there.

It’s odd, I have got rid of so much stuff.  But most of what is left does not belong to me.  The Boss has been great about decluttering outside but his wardrobe now exceeds mine and I don’t seem to be able to persuade him to move in there.  I think I might just do it for him and see what happens.  Watch this space.

simple

~ Gillie ~ 12 Comments

At the beginning of this journey I was like most new converts an evangelist and an extremist.  There are some who would say I still am (most notably the teenagers who are, I suspect, stockpiling plastic as I type).  How ever I have clearly mellowed for yesterday I did something that I would never have done back in June.

I bought a magazine.  To be fair I did um and ah for a while, I did go off and do some other shopping before I finally handed over cash for a disposable item.  I finally justified it by reminding myself that all our magazines go to the local dentist or doctor.  Their waiting room reading matter is prehistoric or ghastly rags written by a spirocheate on a bad day and attempting to be a poor copy of a 1960s edition of Readers’ Digest.

So I bought this.

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A bit of a contradiction in terms no?  A magazine about Simple Things.  But I have read the entire magazine.  There was no article in which I wasn’t interested.  I have book marked some recipes and some events, I even saw a photograph of the first flat I ever owned (94 Landor Road, London SW9 just in case you are interested 🙂 ) in a wonderful article about The Edible Bus Stop,  it is amazing (the story not my flat) go and read it and maybe even plant one yourself.   As a final added bonus it feels good, the cover is just a little heavier than most magazines, the photographs and the LO just a little less in your face.  The only thing that grated was the standard bit at the beginning of every lifestyle magazine, two double page spreads on “beautiful things for your home”.  Wouldn’t it be lovely if  instead there was a double page spread of “beautiful things you probably already  have in your home”.

So in that vein, here are some of the simple things around my house that make me happy, make me smile and make me glad to be who I am.

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The first cup of tea of the day.  I drink a lot of tea, I like it strong and black.  I am not a very nice person until I have had at least one cup.  The teenagers go so fed up of me asking for cups of tea when I was working upstairs that they bought me my own kettle and tea caddy for the bedroom.

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Fresh roses from my garden.  Their perfume is heady and goes beautifully with my first cup of tea.  One of my greatest thrills is to be able to fill the house with flowers and foliage from the garden.  You just have to be inventive, it doesn’t have to look like a bouquet.  In winter I bring in armfuls of redberried holly, winter jasmine, bare branches, anything that catches my eye.

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Clementime curd.  I made this yesterday after repeated requests from the Dancer.  The recipe comes from the amazing Karen at Widehaugh House. It is sublime and is a family favourite but never lasts long.  It is best eaten with a teaspoon out of the jar 🙂  The result of any curd is a bucketload of egg whites.  We are a bit bored with meringue and I am the only person who likes Angel Food Cake so I made  Nami Nami’s Egg White Cake instead.  Next time I will reduce the sugar content, but it was good to use up the ingredients in something I knew would be eaten.

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My favourite bookcase, or rather the bookcase with my favourite books.  Foraging, gardening, the Desert Fathers, meditation, living off the grid.

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Freshly made bed.  I cannot understand, particularly in these days of duvets (though I can still make a pretty mean hospital corner thanks to 11 years at boarding school) why so many people don’t make the bed.  I can’t bear getting into an unmade bed and will make it before I get in if I have to!

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Open windows.  I can’t wait for the icy winds to pass so that I can throw open the windows and the doors.  Sadly I am alone in this.  The Boss doesn’t really notice and the teenagers must have some kind of cold blooded reptilian DNA as they close windows and doors as fast as I can open them.  I am winning 🙂

 
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The Floor of Singer 2’s bedroom.  You will notice that there is nothing on it.  Singer 2 is the one child who has my tidy gene.  It makes me as happy to see her room as it terrifies me to see those of Singer 1 and the Dancer.

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Finally my Inuit bear.  My father spent many years in Toronto and Montreal and collected a lot of Inuit Art, both carvings and prints.  I have much of that collection, but this bear is  my favourite.  She has been with me since I was at university, travelling from London to Yorkshire, back to London to Scotland and finally to Durham.  I don’t know if she is the first thing I would grab in a fire, but she is pretty close to the top of the list.

 

 

 

finding out the hard way

~ Gillie ~ 11 Comments

I haven’t bought a newspaper and I have looked at the possibility of subscribing on my kindle.  I can’t see a problem with that apart from one thing.  The Crossword.  This is a major feature of my newspaper reading habit.  I love crosswords.  I don’t want a book of them I don’t want to do them online.  I like to do what I can and then the next day look at the answers and try to work out how the heck they got from “Fighting observed in the capital”  to Warsaw.  That was an easy one.  How about.  “Cat heard in seaside playground”.  Answer Lynx.  Lynx (cat) sounds like (heard) links (seaside golf course).

Apart from the crossword issue the online sub is quite good for me because I am an anal newspaper reader.  One page out of line and I have to put the whole thing on the floor and realign and straighten and decrease all the pages.  When the Boss reads the paper he leaves it like this.

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It gives me palpitations and has been the cause of many a marital discord.

Magazines are a bit harder.  The Boss bought me a subscription for Country Living, I get a copy of The Garden with my RHS membership and I often buy copies of Mslexia and  Pretty Nostalgic, not to mention various other less artful or intellectual publications 🙂  I don’t have an iPad (as a writer I really need a proper keyboard and decent sized screen) and I can’t read them on my phone and I don’t want to read them , even if I can, in black and white on my kindle.  So my options are (a) buy the magazine and recycle to the Doctors’ surgery (I can’t compost glossy paper); (b) read it at the library if they have it; (c) buy an iPad or (d) don’t read magazines.

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At the moment none of them particularly appeal.  I would quite like an iPad but I don’t need one and to spend money I don’t have on something just so I can read magazines seems quite ridiculous and certainly not ecologically sound.

Books are far easier.  I have a kindle and I am quite happy reading on it.  Some books do not, in my experience, work well on kindles.  Cookery books for one.  I am an adventurous and happy cook.  I have an extensive (I really do mean quite extensive, but compared to my mother’s paltry) collection of books and they do all get used.  I plan menus each week in advance and pull out 2-4 books for each week’s menus.  Many of my books are out of print (the lovely Robert Carrier Taste of Morocco for example)

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and wouldn’t be available on kindle.  There is no point replacing what I already have with digital copies.  I have already polluted the earth and used up trees buying the books, it would be a double waste to ditch them and buy online copies.  So books I already have and want to keep (ie not the 400 going to Borderline) stay.

What of future purchases?  Novels etc. online definitely, or charity shops, or swaps or library.  No purchases of new novels.  But then what about gifts?  What about the book you read over and over and over and has your notes in the margins.  This isn’t as straightforward as it seems.

Thus far my posts seem to be endless questions.  Going low, or even zero waste is not any easy option.  There is more to it than recycling and composting and boy am I finding out the hard way.

the written word

~ Gillie ~ 11 Comments

papersSo I felt good after the pantry clear out.  It is more spacious, I can see what we have and there should be no more duplicate purchases.  But it’s not just that is it?  It’s not just what I buy but how I buy it.

Bea Johnson uses Whole Foods which is all well and good if you (a) have one or something similar near you and (b) if you are happy to shop in a supermarket.  Neither of those are the case for me.  It is true that one of the advantages of shopping at the butcher, fishmonger, greengrocer and direct from the producer is that there is going to be less packaging as well as less food miles and a greater knowledge of the provenance of the food itself.  But packaging there is, and sometimes quite a lot.

Then what about the dry goods and toiletries?  I can buy in bulk from Suma   but refilling of existing containers is impossible if you are buying mail order.  I believe one of the local farm shops allows refilling of bottles of washing liquid etc.  But I live in the countryside and if I have to drive some distance to four or five different locations to do my shopping my carbon footprint is growing from fuel use as fast as it is shrinking from waste reduction.

I feel I almost need to create a criteria triangle with the most important at the bottom.  In no particular order they are, I think:

  • local
  • ethical
  • low/zero packaging
  • low/zero additive
  • purchased as close to source as possible and not from supermarket

We have just finished putting the paper edition of The Durham Local Food Directory  together.  Ignoring for a moment the apparent irony of having a paper directory as well as an online one (there is a good reason and we did think long and hard but that is for another post).  It has not passed me by that it is somewhat ironic for one of the founder members of Durham Local Food to be in a quandry.  But the point is that it is about more than food it’s about clothes, books, furnishing, garden equipment, paint, loo roll, cutlery it’s about every single thing that comes over my threshold.

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It seemed at first rather overwhelming, then it became exciting.  A challege.  Just how much of a difference can I make.  The risk is that I will try to do it all at once.  That is my usual MO and tends to lead to failure and abdonment.  I need to take one area at a time.  I am tempted to start with food, but I am already fairly food aware.  I need to tackle something that I have overlooked in the past.  Something close to my heart, something that will make me sit up and rethink.  I will start with reading matter.

  • books
  • magazines
  • newspapers
  • flyers
  • business cards
  • print outs for Messy Church/Sunday School
  • advertising
  • office paperwork
  • cards and letters
  • photograph albums (I write in mine so I think that counts)
  • journals

We read quite a lot.  Much more than I realised.  I don’t want to stop reading but can I change the way I do it?  Task for this week.  The written word.

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How do I consume the written word? Can I do so in a less wasteful manner?