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Farewell Beads

March 18, 2015 By Clare Leave a Comment

BeadsThis morning I held these beads in my hand, reflected on our time together, silently thanked them, and placed them gently in the bin.

I bought these beads at a night market in Broome on our first visit there in 2009. I loved them and wore them so much. They went with everything, were a bit different without being too ‘out there’, and I loved their wooden, natural feel and that they connected me to a time and place that I had such fond memories of. Pretty much everyone I know would have seen me wearing these beads at some point over the last 5 years!

But for the last few months, these beads have been sitting on my bedside table. Unworn and in need of repair. The clasp is broken and my clumsy attempts to reattach it were only short lived. The leather is worn and has broken in several spots – necessitating the addition of several knots to hold it together. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Journal Tagged With: kon mari, minimalism, the life-changing magic of tidying up

The Wannabe Minimalist

February 28, 2015 By Clare Leave a Comment

Image credit: Sean MacEntee

I’m convinced. I need less stuff. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up has, as the title claims, changed my life.

I’ve read posts and books before on organisation and ‘speed cleaning’ and living simply, but this book was different. I think it’s largely because the author, Marie Kondo, is kind of crazy, in a totally endearing way. Her passion for tidying is so deep and real, you can’t help but be swept along by it. She’s Japanese and the book was presumably originally written in Japanese so there are somethings that I’m putting down to cultural differences/translation that kind of give the book, and her method, a bizarre, but comfortable, quirkiness. Although she explains that tidying is simply two physical actions – discarding and deciding where to store something – she also focuses heavily on the emotional and spiritual experience of tidying and living an uncluttered life.

My two key takeaways were firstly, decluttering starts with discarding. ‘Organising’ doesn’t actually solve the problem and and in fact ’storage solutions’ actually encourage hoarding. Before you start doing any kind of organising, rearranging etc, you first need to discard. It makes so much sense now but I admit I was one of those people who just thought I needed to get more ‘organised’ and would be easily lured by crates and containers and fancy storage shops.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Journal Tagged With: books, kon mari, marie kondo, minimalism, the life-changing magic of tidying up, tidying, wannabe minimalist

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