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The Great Declutter, part 2: The Game Plan

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Over the northern summer I spent my eagerly anticipated month in Australia, relaxing on a much needed holiday break while also consciously thinking about the things I own, how to declutter in a meaningful way and how to spend my time in a way that balanced relaxation with family and friend time, spontaneity and community. I was so proud of the result. I returned to work feeling truly at peace with myself, for the first time in a long while. 

The primary goal for the Melbourne leg of my trip was decluttering. That is the heaviest burden of most first-stage minimalists, right? Of course you want to know how that went!  Continue reading →

The Great Declutter, part 1: The Real Cost, November 2015

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What a powerful bridge I just crossed.

This journey can only be described as an elongated thought process, and so the following post will read as such. 

It’s my day off again. Weighed down by things to do, I came up with a list of short tasks to achieve this morning to help me start to feel like I’m getting a lot of work done. After that I thought, you know, while I’m here I have some other things on my mind that I want to list: easily discarded things from my storage. So I opened up my smartphone notes page and jotted them down. Then it occurred to me to scroll back through my smartphone photos to the last pictures of my storage (which I do each visit), to see if there’s anything else I can see I need to add. What followed was a half hour of liberation.

Continue reading →

Taking Stock

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In the Middle East, life can be a double edged sword. On the one hand, you live a charmed expat life earning good money, travelling, learning about other cultures and speaking more than one language. On the other hand, you could be gone in an instant at the whim of your employer. By instant I mean – out of the country within 24 hours. I have known a few people over the years to receive such quick exits; when I left my last Middle East position I had one week’s notice, but was given no free time to pack up and had to lie about my departure time so I could get dropped at a hotel early, where I packed everything I’d stuffed into shopping bags that day into suitcases better suited for my flight home.

To this day the weight of that knowledge firmly rests in the back of my mind, although my carefully chosen employers are not that fickle and I like that most of their staff are long-term permanent residents. Still, it’s one thing knowing you arrived with a couple of suitcases, it’s another to look around your apartment at the life you have made and home you’ve built, and try to determine how much you have and what you would take with you if you ever faced the situation. Continue reading →

Finding Closure in Mortality and Nostalgia

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nan-pop-2Four weeks ago my beloved grandmother died. Nana was 95 and tired, nothing more, just wanting to be reunited with my equally beloved grandfather on the other side after five years apart. Married for 65 years, theirs was a marriage unparalleled in today’s society, a true eternal love. Today marks their 70 year anniversary; so this post seems a fitting tribute. Two days before she died, Pop visited me in a dream to hang out while he waited for Nan. After a while, since she didn’t come, he hugged me goodbye, a transcendental embrace that left me feeling fulfilled even after I woke. With a busy job like mine, I quickly moved on with my day and thought nothing more of the dream until two days later when I got the crushing news she had passed. I was back in Australia for the funeral a week later.

I wouldn’t be alone to argue that 2016 seems to be a year of death and mortality. Several of my friends have lost loved ones this year – parents and grandparents and siblings – and even more than one. There has also been a number of beloved public figures and celebrities leave this world this year. Over the summer there even seemed to be more terrorist acts claiming lives than in previous years. One notable death that stood out to me earlier this year, that got me thinking about a blog post on the topic, was the passing of a dear childhood father figure and close family friend. That I couldn’t go home to share the family grief and honour his memory was very difficult and upsetting.

Yet these two meaningful deaths, for me, haven’t been sad because of the person dying. Both were deaths I knew were approaching with plenty of time to accept it. No, deep thought on the matter has revealed that these deaths have saddened my inner child. Their passings have closed a lid on my past.

Continue reading →

Silver Linings

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Summer last year my dreams came true. Work took me on the holiday of a lifetime, a holiday I had wished for since my days living in Monaco well over a decade ago. Back then I used to walk around the port admiring the beautiful yachts and super yachts, dreaming that one day I might step aboard the largest of them all. It had a helicopter pad. It was double the size of almost any other there. It was grand. Majestic. One day this dream manifested into reality. The job I was seeking featured regular trips including full summers on their super yacht. Helipad, grandeur, bigger than even the one I had longed for. I got the job. And last summer, I stepped into my dream. Continue reading →

Back to Basics

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Life in the Middle East really tests your values as much as any isolated post can. For a city girl who appreciates the accessibility to sustainable measures like recycling and purchasing natural products, I have noticed just how strong my value of, and appreciation for, Mother Earth really is. When isolation and selective imports prevent you from sticking with your tried and true household cleaning preferences, what can you do except adapt?

Here I start my occasional tapping into some of the other steps of minimalism – leading a simpler life and reaping its benefits, as well as appreciating it.  Continue reading →

Cutting the Credit Cord

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Recently I have taken a moment of pause, appreciating the steps I have been taking to rid my life of unnecessary things. Steps like a commitment to saving money. Because just four months into my new job, I cleared all of my monthly bills (my day to day living expenses are covered through my job). I paid off a year on my storage unit. Ok, it’s not gone entirely but at least rent is covered for a while. I also paid off both of my credit cards. Hooray! Kudos to me. How lovely is that feeling to know that when I’m too busy scrambling to work out what day it is, I don’t need to work out what the date is as well to see if I’m early or late to pay bills. Unwanted bills at that. Continue reading →

Adieu to the Agony Aunt

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The word ‘magazine’ conjures up a love/hate relationship for me, more on the side of emotional torment and felled trees and propaganda these days, rather than the love and dedication I once showed my favourite publications. Magazines have been marketed toward women for a long time. In Australia, the Australian Women’s Weekly is an 80 year old bible for mature women everywhere. Other magazines didn’t come along until much, much later. In my house growing up there was always the AWW and the two tabloids, New Idea and Woman’s Day. As a major novel reader, glossy magazines were like lunchtime fodder to me, and I would flip through them regularly. I’m not sure when the music magazines like Smash Hits and then TV Hits began appearing, maybe at age 9 or 10, but suffice to say, there were a lot of magazines around me. Probably partly because my friend’s dad owned the newsagency we stopped at every day after school.

Building a mountain

My earliest memories of reading magazines involved things like horoscopes, regular columns and song lyrics. I definitely collected wall posters from their centrefolds. Those along with the song lyrics comprise part of the earliest evidence of my ‘snippets’ from magazines. Unfortunately, over a space of around three decades, a mountain of magazine paper grew in my storage, for no reasons other than memory collecting, references to information and inspiration. When a pile of papers takes that long to build, eradicating them becomes a long, drawn-out journey. Hence the love/hate relationship. Continue reading →

Stuck on Movies

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Like last week’s programs and newspaper pile, another inherited collecting habit from my parents, and indeed a common habit of many, is movies. I have like most people, a biggish DVD collection and, due to my move overseas when they were still in vogue, a biggish collection of video cassettes too. After going through university with other impoverished but tech-savvy, much younger students and living a year in a hostel among travelling backpackers, I also have acquired an additional 400 odd movies for my hard drive too. Combined, I have amassed a huge amount of films. Don’t even get me started on the TV show collection! Continue reading →

Confronting my Collections: programs and newspapers

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Earlier this year as I looked at different blogs by hoarders and minimalists, I stumbled across Sandy of Hoarder Comes Clean, a lady to whom I relate rather well. She’s a hoarder like me trying to sort and minimise a lifetime’s worth of stuff. Two particular posts of hers stood out – her disposal of some 200-300 theatre programs (read here and here). This is what blogging is all about, I thought with glee – reading the personal stories of people I can identify with as having the same collections in common. Continue reading →