Simplifying Life

Charis

Inspired by all these posts, I have been trying to cook a gigantic batch of bolognese for freezing in small portions. As I read, I nip out and give it a stir now and again. Last time it decided to fight back with a big 'Glop!' and spattered bolognese lava all over my pale green jumper. Undaunted I reached for my home made laundry spot treatment (watered down biological liquid fabric wash, in a recycled hand soap dispenser). A quick dab with a damp jeycloth and there is not a blotch left. Eat yer heart out Cill*t B*ng! I keep the bottle by the sink and a quick squirt into any saucepan with cooked on food gets it clean with minimum effort after a short warm water soak. I've labelled the bottle so no one uses it on their hands and put a bit of sellotape over the label as it gets rather wet.
I've also been decluttering since Boxing Day and have a pile of things that will be hard to shift. It does rather make me wonder why I was so sure I needed them in the first place :rotfl:
Charis

apple_mint

Hardup_Hester wrote: »

Hi Applemint
I'd have no use for the items on downsizer, I'm 56 & waaaay past all that. I have however made some shopping bags from old clothes, I find skirt & trousere work best.
Hester

50 next month and still need them

Thank you for the advice - I have several skirts I can't get back into! On our weekly shop we have two boxes in the boot - to take the recyling into the recycling bank and packing the shopping into them when we get back home. I just need something to keep in the boot of the car for those extra trips I occasionally make mid week (so that I can continue to refuse the plastic bags).

alyth

I've been following this thread with great interest, as a year ago my partner and I decided to simplify our life, in fact it started 5 years ago when we left London and all the associated socialising, etc to move to Scotland. A year ago we moved from an 11 bed house to a 6 bed house, so you can imagine how much stuff we had. I read a very interesting little book called A Simple Life, can't remember who it was by but I was really inspired by it, and over the course of the last year have tried to carry out as much simplying in our lives as I can.

I no longer keep hoards of food, I buy weekly and don't have canned food, pasta or things like that (this is easier for us as there's only 2 of us). I have just finished today posting off the last of the ebay stuff and I've made hundreds, combined with amazon. I freecycled masses of stuff. I totally gutted my wardrobe and now have everything I need, which is predominantly black, and only every buy very good quality items either on ebay or in a charity shop. Over Christmas I gutted our filing system and it's now re-done and threw out all the instuctions manuals for things we didn't have any more. We don't buy things, to be honest we both hate shops so only go food shopping anyway. I never buy magazines, as I hope I'm at that stage in my life where I don't want to get excited by what Posh has done this week.

But simplifying life should be done mentally as well as physically. As I say this is easier for us as we only have each other, but we buy very few presents for people, we don't go out very often, as we both found that if you're out with friends it's easy to be swayed into thinking "oh well, if he's got a new car maybe I should have one too". I especially tend to find pleasure in the small things, like walking the dog, doing my studying, knitting, etc. My partner is away this week, and I've had a gentle evening just pottering about the house, and I can honestly say we have no junk or crap in the house any more. I've found it relatively easy to get into the simplicity mindset, I don't have piles of stuff anymore, but it has taken a year to do this!

Our indulgences are books, we have a library in the house we have so many books, but again we can both spend hours in the Oxfam bookshop, or will track down books on Amazon. We both work pretty hard so feel we can indulge ourselves on books!

It gives you a sense of freedom once you've done it - I'm an extremely disciplined person and I no longer have piles of ironing, bills to pay, I file on a weekly basis, tax returns are no longer late, and it really does make life easier. I've literally finished this weekend in simplifying my life, and I spent the afternoon in our local town having a wander round the shops as I haven't done this for months, and honestly couldn't find anything I HAD to buy, nor did I really see anything I wanted to treat myself to. I couldn't bear to waste my money on something that was just going to clutter up the house or have no use - I didn't even buy any books!

apple_mint

Alyth - you are where my OH and I are planning to be .. we are probably 75% there. Thank you for the inspirational post.

alyth

aw thank you apple_mint, I was worried when I posted that I was going to come across as smug, and that wasn't the plan at all - I've picked up some fantastic tips from reading through the threads, and I have done at great length. It does take time, but I'd gotten to the stage where I was sick of drowning in paperwork, not knowing when a car was due for its MOT, that kind of thing, and I literally came across this little book in a charity shop one day, read it and it truly was my lightbulb moment! It can be done, I've chucked out or ebayed things that meant something to me, but now I can walk around my house and know that things have a purpose, not fret that I haven't paid the electricity bill, or that I've run out of dogfood!

Can I also tell you of a brilliant website I found - www.simplesavings.com.au - Australian, and you only get an email about once a month, but I've found it to be a real boost to me. The thing I fail in is that I don't meal plan (cant due to partner being out of the country so much) but, for example, he's away for a week, so tomorrow I will make soup for myself, I've stocked up at the supermarket (the biggest failing for me is not being able to cook so we live on ready meals during the week) but I can get round that.

As I say it's easier for me as I only have myself for half the year, but I find stupid things like "I'll just do this for 13 minutes" (the timing's important!) then once you've done whatever the task is for that length of time, try another 13 mins - it's worked for me for the ironing, and I used to send that out to be done - now I'm strangely proud of my line of freshly pressed shirts!

rosieben

Tooties and Mary – my household journal is a work in progress, but so far I have

1. my cleaning routines which I worked out according to the ‘cleaning like your granny did’ thread, i.e. task allocated to its day, week, month as necessary – it would just be so nice to get a few more done :rotfl:
   
2. my store cupboard inventories – a spreadsheet with use by dates so I know when to replace what
   
3. my medicine cabinet invnetory – a spreadsheet with use by dates so I know when to replace what; this works really well; even my super organised dd was impressed with this
   
4. ‘shopping lists’ for craft projects - I keep an ongoing list so I know what sort of things to look for in charity shops or beg from family and friends – currently awaiting a delivery of wine bottle corks to make stamps for paper crafts from a friend of ds (who swears she doesn’t drink;) )
   
5. 2008 year planner(also 2007 for early part of year, 2009 for later) – just freebies off the net. I use the outlook calender on pc for my daily diary though I may try again with a paper one.
   
6. Regularly used phone numbers, library, dr, pharmacy etc
   
7. my budget and savings plans. I do my actual weekly spending tally in a cash ledger but when this is full I may design myself some sheets and incorporate them into the household journal
   
8. notes of things I want to incorporate into my daily schedule – currently working on reducing water usage after reading a very inspiring post on OS somewhere
   
9. packing list for when I visited my dd and her family in london. They have emigrated now but I still keep the list in case I get invited anywhere else!! I used the flylady list as a starting point
   
10. I may be moving house this year so I write down a few thoughts as they come to me – things I want to take, things I dont

Also have
- a PC Journal - all my log ins, passwords, my website info, digital scrapbooking information, copyright info for graphics I use (I used to post my layouts on a few scrapping sites and you have to be precise about giving credit to designers), and ideas for scrapbooking and other digital projects (mostly using photos)
- a Craft Projects Notebook, OS stuff like patchwork, rag rugs and others using my fabric stash, recyucling clothes and fabric, making my own inks; I’m adding to this one quite a lot.

Sorry this is such a long post

SavingFairy

Hi all,

I've been reading through this thread (& getting diverted with the various blogs & links) and have thoroughly enjoyed it, great to know there are so many like minded people out there. :-)

I discovered MSE a few years ago but never got around to looking at the forums properly, gosh I was missing out! My OH is now a complete convert too to the ways of MSE too.

Anyway, this thread is really appealing to me as I've been trying to gradually simplify life, I guess since finding MSE really, thanks Martin! Last year I did quite well by finally doing-up & selling my old house (which had been rented out to a tenant who never paid on time, long story), totally sorting through clothes so I now pretty much operate a 1-in, 1-out system, amongst other things...

Since reading this thread it has inspired & motivated me to do so much more... for instance I've worked out I spent approx £3 a day on bought lunches at work, so really want to try to sort that - already practising with batches of homemade soup & using the breadmaker my OH got me for Xmas (so many helpful recipes on here!) - so plan to take those to work instead.

I think I'm pretty good at saving money but could do so much better. Long term dream is to lower working hours to part-time, so instead of frittering some of my money which I'm sure I do now, I plan to concentrate on saving as much as I can so the future dream can be achieved even earlier.

Anyway, that's enough waffling for me, just wanted to say hello & offer some encouragement to people in the same boat.
Cheers

rosieben

Apple_mint – thanks for the lnk, I’ve alrady made some of these, useful to have another pattern though.

Alyth – what an interesting post, like Apple_mint said, I think you are somewhere near what I’m aiming for.

I had a problem when I started to declutter – how do I justify the piles of fabric, empty containers (shoe boxes lol) etc? I’ve realised since, of course, that these things come under the heading of ‘useful’ and so I relaxed about it. I’ve decluttered loads of books, and a few more to go but I'm not going to feel guilty about keeping ones that I enjoy and use. I love Amazon sellers, I’ve had some brilliant 1p books :j

webtalk

rosieben wrote: »

Tooties and Mary – my household journal is a work in progress, but so far I have

1. my cleaning routines which I worked out according to the ‘cleaning like your granny did’ thread, i.e. task allocated to its day, week, month as necessary – it would just be so nice to get a few more done :rotfl:

Rosieben, could you point me to this thread you're talking about? :T

Edit: I've just found it: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=217952&highlight=granny

rosieben

webtalk, sorry only just seen your post, yes thats the thread!