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Head & Heart – 12 July 2017

July 12, 2017 By Clare Leave a Comment

Progress shots from the 30 Day Minimalism Game

Last week my big baby turned 4 so we’ve been enjoying ongoing festivities as we celebrate with family and friends. Each birthday feels like a massive milestone for me as a parent and a real opportunity for reflecting on how our lives have changed and what I’ve learned. Motherhood has transformed me in many many many ways – some which I’m very aware of, and some that I’m sure I’m yet to realise!

Just over 4 years ago I attended antenatal classes with a wonderful group of women and their partners. Their friendship and support has been so essential to me as I’ve navigated my way through the uncertainty and challenges of parenthood, and there has honestly not been a week that’s gone by in the last 4 years when I haven’t felt enormous gratitude for having them in my life. I love that Ella has such wonderful ‘aunties’ who have watched her grow up and genuinely care for her, and it’s such a delight for me to do the same for a great bunch of gorgeous kids.


Last week also marked 50 days since our little man arrived. What a ride! He isn’t so keen on napping during the day (but is doing well overnight (and a billion times better than his big sister did) so I definitely won’t complain!) so I’m doing lots of baby-wearing again. When it’s too cold/dark to venture out we’re doing lots of dancing around the house. Thank goodness for Spotify’s Disco Forever playlist. Dancing seems to put him to sleep and calms me down too. Right now we’re bopping to the Have a Great Day playlist. If dancing to Bill Withers’ Lovely Day doesn’t brighten your day a little, I’m not sure what will!
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Head and Heart, Journal Tagged With: birthday, books, gifts, girls, minimalism, parenting, podcasts, poetry, sleep

Head & Heart – 8 December 2016

December 8, 2016 By Clare 1 Comment

It’s been over 3 months between Head & Heart posts! The short story (excuse?) is that work and life got on top of me, and I was questioning/doubting the impact that some of the regular habits/practices (including these posts) were having on my life. There’s been a fair bit of change over the last 3 months – including resigning from my job to take a break, revaluate priorities, and recalibrate a little – and I’m certainly not going to even attempt to catch up on 3 months worth of thinking/learning/reading/listening in this post!

As well as determining that writing (and later re-reading) these posts is in fact a valuable practice for me, it turns out that there a few people who actually read these posts and find them useful or interesting, so it’s definitely something that I intend to get back to doing more regularly.


Pausing for a moment to ponder why I give spending time in front of screens such priority in my life, when this is what actually makes my body, spirit and mind come alive.
Pausing for a moment to ponder why I give spending time in front of screens such priority in my life, when this is what actually makes my body, spirit and mind come alive.

Related to the above comment about resigning and recalibrating, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reading about burnout. Articles/resources that particularly resonated with me included:

  • Burnout Prevention and Recovery – this page had a useful table explaining the differences between stress and burnout that generated an a-ha moment for me
  • The Strange Psychology of Stress and Burnout 
  • The Five Myths that Perpetuate Burnout Across Non-Profits

Since I last posted, I’ve finished a few books (and started and abandoned quite a few more):

  • Deep Work*
  • Unconditional Parenting* (like most parenting books, this one caused me some initial ‘oh my god, I’m doing it all wrong’ anxiety, but with some time to let the thoughts settle I’ve taken some strategies/approaches from the book that I think will work for us, and am ok about leaving the rest! One of the things that I’m consciously trying to do is give E more opportunities to exercise control (trying to say ‘no’ less – especially where it doesn’t really matter) and really listen to her without rushing or interrupting.
  • All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood* (for a summary of some of the key insights from the book, check out Jennifer Senior’s TED talk)
  • Designing Your Life*

Some posts that I thought were worth bookmarking/sharing:

  • Why I Am Not A Maker– My professional work has largely focused on facilitating and supporting others’ ‘making’, so I found this post relevant and reassuring
  • Why I’m Done Asking My Husband To Help Me Out – This is an older post that I was reminded of thanks to Timehop. It’s a good one for demonstrating the subtle but powerful impact that language has on expectations and behaviour.
  • How Exercise Shapes You Far Beyond the Gym
  • In praise of ‘scruffy hospitality’
  • Why the Problem with Learning is Unlearning

I’m super late to the party (in fact I think the party is well and truly over), but I finally watched Making a Murderer. It’s a bit of a joke in my family about how I can’t handle mistaken identity/wrongful conviction movies – I find them so distressing that I feel physically uncomfortable (watching The Fugitive practically causes a panic attack!) – so I wasn’t sure how I’d cope with this. I’ve read some of the criticism online about the potential bias of the filmmakers in selecting what to show in the documentary, but regardless, I do think it raises really important issues around the level of unquestioned trust and confidence society places in law enforcement agencies, and the significant disadvantage that poor and less educated people have when it comes to navigating the legal system. Alec Baldwin’s Here’s The Thing interview with defence lawyer Dean Strang is worth a listen for anyone who watched the series.


As for podcasts, Longform and Hidden Brain (a recent discovery) episodes have featured heavily on my playlist. I also enjoyed Carly Findlay’s interview on the Osher Gunsberg podcast. Carly is awesome and I’ve been lucky enough to work with her on a couple of She Leads events, and I think it was actually through Carly’s blog that I first discovered Osher’s podcast.


This post, ‘How getting rid of ‘stuff’ saved my motherhood’, has re-inspired me to cull our own stuff, maintain a more organised, simple home and be more conscious about what we keep and let in to our space. It’s probably a subject for a separate, longer post but since E came into our lives we’ve experienced new demands/constraints on our finances, time and space – which has forced us to be more intentional about how we use our resources in all of these areas. I’ve still got a long way to go, but so far I’ve used some of my current period of unemployment to cull and tidy a few of our main living spaces/storage areas and I feel lighter and less overwhelmed as a result. Now the challenge is to maintain relatively organised spaces and avoid letting clutter back in. Rather than get caught in this cycle of tidying up / mess / tidying up / mess etc I’m trying to take more of a design thinking approach and really study why and how our spaces get cluttered and messy and try to put in place solutions to resolve these (rather than just dealing with the symptoms).

Toys and trinkets that E collects feel like a big source of the clutter in our home, so Christmas (as well as birthdays) can often see a new influx of stuff into our home thanks to extremely generous family! The Minimalists recent podcast episode on giftgiving had some useful ideas for a more intentional approach to giftgiving.


Head & Heart are approximately fortnightly posts about what I’ve been reading, watching and thinking about – things I thought were interesting, and that you might find interesting too.

* These are Amazon Affiliate links.

Filed Under: Head and Heart, Journal Tagged With: books, minimalism, podcasts

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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