Around Here

It's the last day of 2018 and another New Year is about to begin.  In 2017 I worked on my health by exercising and eating well and in 2018 I undid what I achieved as I just didn't have the right head space.  2019 my big focus will be to reset this and do it all over again to get my health in check.  I love chocolate and it's my go to for any occasion.  Bored, happy, sad, cranky, any occasion really, so I need to give up the store bought stuff and just make my own healthy version to have over the weekends and not every day.  On the 1st October 2017 I gave up diet coke for good and haven't had any since.  As I don't drink alcohol and drink lots of water during the day [I also gave up diet cordial at the beginning of 2017] so having a cold diet coke was something different for me and I loved it too.  On the weekends my daughter and I would walk to the shop and back to get the paper which took about 50 minutes so I'll have to get back to that as well.  We loved our girl time and getting out for our morning walk.

In 2019 I will be focusing on decluttering again and my garage is the biggest place I have to start.  Last week the kids did a spring clean in their rooms by washing their walls down with sugar soap, getting rid of clothes that don't fit and any toys or books they no longer want was donated to charity.  They also cleaned their blinds which were full of dust so that required sugar soap water as well.  They did this over a few days so 1-2 hours a day on a job and they got through it and listened to their favourite music while they worked.  They are both used to the 3 bucket system - sell, donate and throw away as we have been using this system for a few years now so they don't find decluttering difficult.  I get the final say on the buckets at the end to make sure what is getting thrown away is really for the bin.

My sister is moving house so I have spent three 8-10 hour days with her packing and decluttering and cracking the whip....the charity shops will be overflowing with what we donated.  Beautiful pottery and painted plates, bowls cups etc. that we loved years ago but now we just use white dinner ware etc. and they are too good to throw away so you hang onto them in the garage for years until the time comes like now ie a move that you really need to get serious.  Lots of stuff heading to the charity shop and a dump run and the rest is being moved.  Every time you move you under estimate how much stuff you have and how long it will take to pack everything so I was glad to help her out because when I moved 7.5 years ago she was there helping me.  Admittedly I had two small kids on my own and had to pack an entire 2 story house and a shed up however she has been in her unit for 8 years so has lots of stuff too.  

We had a lovely Christmas Day lunch with 12 people and we got the table tennis table out of the garage and put that in the back yard and also played bocce.  It's fun to have a few activities around when you have a lot of people.  The weather was lovely and not too hot like some Christmas Days. We had cold ham, prawns, Asian Noodle Salad and my Shell Pasta Salad [did anyone try the recipe for Christmas?]  My sister made Home plum pudding and custard and our Christmas Slices that myself and 2 of my sisters make each year.  I got a JBL portable speaker so we had that in the backyard playing Christmas music and everyone left about 6.30 pm. I packed up the extra camping tables, put the linen table cloths in the laundry, put the extended table back to normal, vacuumed and put the dishwasher on and was in bed by 7.30 pm watching TV after a long day.

So for 2019 my focus will be eating better and getting back to a healthy weight and decluttering the house.  The way I like to think about decluttering is to pretend I'm moving house....would I want to pack this and cart it to a new house.  How can I downsize my belonging.  If it takes me one year to do this, then one day [when I win lotto and move to acreage] packing will be easier.  Moving house is stressful and decluttering and packing takes a long time.  It's better to get stuff out of your house now when there is time and no pressure so that one day in the the event of a move....it's easier.  Besides that I know we have too much stuff and things we don't use or need.  About 3 years ago I sold heaps of stuff on FB buy and sell and it was running hot and I paid lots of my bills with the money.  These days it's a little harder to sell stuff since everything is so much cheaper with places like Kmart where you can buy a beautiful new cushion for $8 vs my $39 cushions from Myers.  The more you can get rid of stuff the better you feel.  Doing it when you have time is really the best time.

Here's some recent photos for you to enjoy.  Happy New Year to you and your families and thank you for popping in and reading my blog posts and leaving your lovely comments.  See you next year.