Re-booting the blog::organising life

 

This past weekend I attacked my paperwork. I found payslips from 1999 (my first real, paid job, as a short-term paralegal for a big city law firm); shredded a shoebox and a tote bag full of stuff that needed shredding, and then promptly re-filled the tote bag, to the brim, with MORE paperwork that needs to be shredded. I'm almost tempted to see if the cats would prefer shredded paper to their current litter. (Don't worry, I'm not going to do that.)

Dealing with the paperwork is something I've been needing to do for AGES. And not just because it included 21 year old payslips (although that's part of it).  For a while I was really organised with my paperwork. I had yearly folders with all my statements, bills, tax paperwork etc. And then somewhere along the line I just... stopped keeping it all organised. These days, there's a lot less actual paper to deal with, and I can't just go back to the processes I used to use: but I also want to get back to having a sense of Being Organised - and not just with the paperwork.

I want to get myself, my house and my time organised - and I'm going to need some fake accountability to get it done.

Which is why I'm resurrecting this blog. As fake accountability. Or real accountability, if it turns out that anyone is actually out there reading this thing... In the meantime, I'll just write into the ether about my attempts at decluttering, coming up with routines, and things like that.

I'm hardly the first person to do this.  Heck, I just finished reading Cait Flanders' The Year of Less, which started with a shopping ban that she documented on her blog. (I can't say I recommend the book, but I might write about why in a few days' time...) But fake accountability is still accountability, and let's see how this experiment goes.

I gave myself a goal this year to declutter at least 20 items from (most) rooms in the house. I've still got two and a bit months left to reach that goal - not entirely sure I'll make it, but then again, I still think it's possible. Honestly I think the question is mostly about just knuckling down and doing it. That's one of the things I want to record here. Another is just ongoing organising/cleaning/decluttering projects and my progress: again - maybe if I write down here that my goal for tomorrow is to finally tidy up and sort the Biographies bookshelf (one of those unfinished jobs from when we moved in over five years ago... when I kind of shoved some books in the bottom two shelves and gave up) then maybe I'll actually do it. Maybe? I might even provide Before/After photos.  Maybe if I write down here that I want to do a serious clean out of my physical scrapbooking materials - see if I can sell some of them online, and commit to throwing out the rest - maybe I'll actually do that. To be quite honest - this whole thing is an experiment.  I'm curious to see where it goes (if anywhere).

I made bento!

Those of long memory will recall that for a little while I got very into making bento lunches.  Ever since I fell out of the bento habit I've been wanting to get back into it, and yesterday afternoon we had such a lovely domestic Sunday afternoon that I just got into it.  I made up a few vegetable fillers and mentally planned out the boxes for the rest of the week (mostly) for both M and I.

The result:

• rice
• leftover Crispy Chicken Strips from last night's dinner (instead of the meatballs it was going to be, when I worked out there were four chicken strips left that shared perfectly to two each.)
• broccoli
• celery and broccoli stalk kinpira (using up some mostly-dead celery
• a little rocket, fresh from our garden.
• sweet pepper and onion confit
• blanched spinach with sesame sauce (from the Just Bento cookbook) p36
• grapes

Looking at the container, tomorrow will finish up the kinpira, and probably the steamed broccoli as well, so I should probably look at doing a couple more fillers tonight or tomorrow.  Carrots and green beans are both planned, and tomorrow one of the main vegetables will be asparagus with sesame sauce - I mixed up a decent quantity of sesame sauce yesterday.

Anyway, I'm very pleased with myself with getting this done today.  Now to see if we can keep it going!

For the Indira Challenge: rocket and spinach

Some thoughts on a common organising tip... BEDiM Day 14

A lot of organising blogs and books talk about how all your problems are solved if you just get up an hour earlier.

And my question is; do none of these people have partners?

How to:... BEDiM Day 5

It's twenty past ten in the evening, and I need to be getting to bed. I've spent the day at work, then on the phone with the bank that holds our brand new mortgage organising payments, cooking dinner, going to my Monday evening madrigals group. Then coming home for dinner, cleaning up so that the last piece of furniture from my parents' house can be delivered (my piano!), and making elements of tomorrow's bento lunches.

Today's prompt was How To, and I thought about doing a How Not to Move House post, How to make Bentos, how to make tuna and broccoli crumble (tonight's dinner), and a few other ideas.

But today I've also been discovering and experimenting with a new productivity model: the bullet journal. It turned up on my Pinterest last week, and my only slight discomfort with it is that it's a pen-and-paper method. On the other hand, my new boss likes pen-and-paper, and trusts it more than digital.

So, instead of actually writing a How To post, I'm going to provide you - and me - with links about the bullet journal.  Only I might not get to actually finishing this post until tomorrow:

• Bullet Journal - the official link
• A search on John Cooper's site with all his posts about the bullet journal method

There are others, but those are the most useful links for me so far.

And this is the symbology developed by Dee Martinez, which I found via John Cooper.

Decluttering 52 things in 52 weeks

Because I always join all the challenges, and because I love the Australian-based Organised Housewife, I'm joining her 2014 Declutter 52 Things in 52 Weeks challenge. It's week two five, now, but what the hey.

Step one was to set our goals. Here are mine, according to the OH's rubric, with my additions/changes in bold.

I want to feel relaxed while I’m at home, and I won't while there's all this clutter and mess and disorganisation.
I want to spend more time writing.
I want an area of the home where I can craft, (especially Project Life).
I want to organise the whole house first.  (Yes, I know this is a problem. Let's go with kitchen in the realistic version.)
My partner always loses her keys.
I want to be decluttered by 1st April 2014.
The most disorganised cupboard in my home is the tupperware cupboard OMG.
Something that I don’t need anymore, but am having trouble parting with is random stuff I collected/bought for scrapbooking, which doesn't quite work for the Project Life context.


To be honest, I'm not sure how applicable these are anymore.  We're moving house soon - hopefully in six weeks, assuming the Titles Office comes through for us - and so while decluttering and organising are still major needs, (and April 1 a nice goal) the timetable and the logistics are completely different.

That said, I'm still trying to keep up with the weekly challenges (sort of).  The first couple - at least initially - struck me as not applying to me necessarily.  At some point I need to get back to my pinboard, but it's not that bad for now.

Tasks #3 and 4, however, are entirely applicable AND useful to us right now.  I haven't done them yet (OMG the heat! Means I get very little done at the moment other than work, watch television and attempt to sleep.)  When I get to them I'll write them up and let you know how I go.

New Year, New Plans

It's been a while since I posted here, but one of my goals for 2014 is to post to each of my blogs at the very least once a month.

And since I last posted there's been a lot of changes in my house/craft/garden/organisey life.

In April - hopefully - Chez Stutters will be relocating.  We're in the process of buying a house, which is rather scary, even if I am used to the processes because of the whole used-to-be-a-lawyer thing.  We're not moving far, but the house will be bigger and give us the chance to organise differently and do a lot of things we're looking forward to. 

In the meantime, we need to declutter, sort, and pack up the house, and do a whole lot of work in our sadly neglected garden (poor garden) to get it up to a standard that won't upset our landlord when we leave.  Then we get to move into our wonderful new house and organise it.  I might even be getting a craft room!

This would be good, because, in October, almost entirely due to the influence of my friend Mel at Subversive Reader I got seriously stuck into Project Life scrapbooking.  I really love this method, which is a lot less time-consuming (the way I do it) than traditional scrapbooking, which I haven't done much of for ages.  There will be posts on this in the future, you can be guaranteed.

What I am up to Wednesday (on Friday)

My (vague) plan is to rotate WIAUTW posts between my three blogs.  Last week was the Book Blog, this week we're here at Chez Stutters, and next week it will be the Discernment Blog.

So:

Crochet-wise, I'm on R43 of 56 for the Rainbow baby blanket and it actually feels like a blanket on my lap when I'm working on it.  I worked another two or three motifs of the Croydon Square blanket on the weekend.  Think I've still got at least three of each yet to do.  And as you would have seen, I finished my first crochet project ever, a beaded star tag for my gym bag, influenced by the TV show Smash (which thanked me by having an incredibly depressing episode on Sunday.)

I have also bought wool for three more projects: Christmas decorations for the end of this year, a Christmas present for the end of the year, and my first attempt at a crocheted stole.

Today my own personal copy of Jan Eaton's Encyclopaedia of Crochet arrived in the mail, along with my copy of the Just Bento cookbook.  M and I are trying trying trying to get back into being organised and I'm hoping part of that will be the reemergence of my bento habit.

Adventures in bento lunches

(Likely to be a new series/type of posts.  By H.)

On Friday I discovered JustBento.com and Maki's Bento 101 course, which was fortunately just starting.  I also read through a substantial portion of Maki's site and absolutely loved what I found there.

By Sunday evening I was thoroughly inspired, and I cooked up four lots of vegetables to use in my bento boxes for the week.  I made:
- sweet pepper and onion confit
- carrot kinpira
- celery kinpira (scroll down to the third of the three recipes), and
- green beans in soy and sesame, a combination of a recipe my mother used to make and the carrot kinpira.

From left: carrot kinpira; pepper and onion confit; green beans; celery kinpira.
Note for those who know me well: those oranges are M's.  Not mine.  Ever.

From the way M was squeeing at the scents coming from the kitchen (and the way the carrot kinpira was disappearing) I think I'll be making bentos for M, soon, too.

Further adventures in bento...