It's been about…
Remembering to leave time to scrape the windshield
Passing out sweets sent home from mass by Josephine
Goodbye hugs from our kiwi friends, now Brits, with promises to meet in the US next time
Hauling worn out stuff to the 'skip'
Reading in bed
Boys basketball
Roast in the crock pot.
thinking over the importance of a truly gentle spirit and all the implications of that for our children, our husbands, our friends
recipe here
So just when you think you are never reaching bottom, you turn a bend and there it is right beneath you.
The reward
and your's truly, all wild haired and old lady arm-ed, but hey, I was there and in the frame.
Without a doubt I will run out of time in England long before I run out of stories to tell. This was a good one. We found Clovelly late in the day and decided rather ambitiously to hike down its cobblestones to the Bristol Channel. We saw the maps and elevations. It still seemed like a must do.
Clovelly clings to the cliffsides of the bay. Wattle and daub cottages clutch the hillside with no two on the same level. In fact, you cannot find a place to stand where your two feet are level.
Because of this there is no car or bike traffic permitted in the village and historically donkeys have been used to transport people and goods up and down. Donkeys or other ingenuity…
Charles Kingsley of Water Babies fame spent part of his childhood in the village. Rumor had it a band of cannibals once hid out in the hills nearby. My beloved Turner painted the harbor. And idyllic spot for sure.
Tomorrow I will show you around the harbor.
Or…what's Dave Ramsey got to do with cleaning my room? He came to mind as we are tackling a major whole house clean and purge. If you aren't familiar with Dave Ramsey's debt snowball method he recommends that you list your bills from largest to smallest. Then you make minimum payments on all but the smallest and throw all you've got on that one til it's paid off. Then you take that monthly allotment plus the amount you were spending on that smallest debt and apply it all to the next larger bill. And so on and so on. Well it occurred to me that it can be a big morale boost to clean that way. I am hitting the rooms that are easily managed and rolling from there.
The master bedroom has always been one of my favorite rooms in this house. The bed linens are from Martha Stewart's Water Garden set we found discounted several years ago and have held up very well. Coincidentally the heavy butter yellow English drapes that were here when we arrived matched perfectly so I bought zero things for this room. Nada. The side table is actually a sewing machine table with another drape thrown over. Since I didn't actually use the sewing machine you see.
Old friends will remember we found the bed our first day in Germany from a local vendor. Some weeks later we found the matching armoire at a junk shop. That story is here. The two pieces are living happily in this old house in England now.
So, organization snowball. That's what's happening over here. Auntie Leila explains exactly how we do things so there is no need to repeat. If it's been a while since you have really deep cleaned or you don't know where to begin please go directly there. Read, be inspired. Like her, I began with the master bedroom. My husband's work clothes are in the armoire. The rest of our things are in two particle board type wardrobes in the closet behind the door. Shoes are hung in bags on the other side of the doors. All my small jewelry is kept in one of these. My necklaces are hung over a couple command hooks inside the wardrobe door. Scarves are wrapped over a hanger like this.
So there you have it. More rooms to follow because ready or not the move is happening.
Despite having been fairly conscientious throughout the holidays I have had autoimmunity rear its head this winter. Really dedicating myself to the diet protocol has brought significant relief and also some comments from the bagger at the grocery store who remarked that we buy a LOT of vegetables. Guilty as charged.
When people learn you are grain and dairy free the first question is usually what about breakfast? There are several different ways to approach this. One of the best I've heard is to stop categorizing the meals by food type. Rather you have meal 1, meal 2, meal 3 and they can be whatever you dream them up to be. Stir fry for breakfast? Why not?
Some people make paleo copycat dishes – muffins or pancakes. This meal probably falls somewhere between and was super easy. The spinach is steamed while the eggs scramble. Then layered with a bit of smoked salmon. Drizzle lemon over the whole, which I was NOT thinking would be as awesome as it was since I don't generally love fish. Fatty cold water fish, however, has lots of redeeming qualities. It's an acquired taste I am acquiring.
Other days I am juicing. This one was cucumbers, celery, pineapple, romaine, mint. I am saving juice and smoothie ideas over here if you want to play along. Paleo pins over here.
This was probably our last visit to the Norfolk coast. Brendan and I rode up with Alannah in the afternoon leaving just before sunset, which is still very early in the day here. It is a wild, windy place. The tall grass was bowing from the sea breeze and our cheeks were ruddy by the time we reached the car.
Now that the 12 drummers have drummed this move is hitting overdrive. One month. We have one month to download this life and upload a new version in the States. Hopefully a new and improved version. That is always the goal.
There has been a lot of thought put into what that new life should look like. Every new place, every new experience prompts us to reevaluate. What in our lives should stay, what should go, what worked, what didn't. Right now we are in that stage of trying on new lives to see what fits. Still have no clue honestly. We have considered vintage homes in gentrified neighborhoods, small rural spreads, suburbs. We look, we talk, we think.
While I am in this introspective place I am reading through Holly Pierlot's Mother's Rule. I am late to this party for sure but it has been an affirming read. I love that her life changes happened about when mine began to. (late 30s. What? You didn't think Moms were just born organized right? Not I!) I love the whole premise that the outer framework – the home, the routines – are there to support inner order and peace. It is all echoing Becky Higgin's two maxims: Cultivate a good life and The purpose of the task is to strengthen the relationship.
It is more motivating to work towards order when you are clear that the purpose is to provide margin, to create space to think, to enable us to live our vocation with fewer hindrances. Similar thoughts such as these have been strewn across my path lately. January is awesome. A fresh start. I.am.pumped!
Sculpting a life requires a fair amount of carving away extra rubble. That's where I'm at this month. Digging away intensely. I have done some little jobs – got a new bag and purged the old one. Peter Walsh says that women should empty their purses at days end like men empty their pockets. It works. : )
We tackled the tupperware cabinet one morning after it spilled out yet again. There isn't much left. I hope to get pyrex on the other end. Meantime, Mary Kay Clark's advice to use ziplock bags works fine.
We sorted the games. Ditched a whole bunch with missing parts and pieces. Kieran was inspired to finish our new puzzle after this.
We got through my husband's closet. Mine was done last fall but is getting a second purge. Many of my clothes came with me from the States…..5 yrs ago. And many were thrifted then. I have read through the 40 hanger advice. Also the guideline to pick up each item you have and ask yourself if you were in the store would you put it in the cart? If not, let it go. I think the closet will be pretty sparse when that happens but slowly I am getting grown up clothes. That you know, fit.
Next step was the cellar. It's scary. Literally. Have I shown you this?? This house is over 200 years old. The cellar is like the set of every horror movie you ever saw and you know the bad stuff always starts down there. It's a classic single bare bulb swinging from the ceiling kind of gem and it housed a ton of now slightly damp cardboard boxes from the Germany move where the movers combined Christmas ornaments and baby clothes and kitchen tools. Some of it just stayed that way amidst all the travel we have done. The boys and I have spent the last couple days pulling out boxes, purging and neatly boxing and labeling the keepers. Go us.
This has been an ongoing project since we first packed up the farm 5 yrs ago. I read this article with interest. The premise is that we can and should use the guidelines to stage a house for sale to stage lives we want to live in ourselves. This whole idea has been returning to me since my fascination with home selling shows years ago. So this is the vision for the coming months.
There will be many trips to the garbage drop. I hope it happens sooner vs later. Honestly the storage boxes suck me in and tear at my heart. The baby clothes, the letter jacket….. It was sheer determination pushing me through last night and just when I thought I was holding it all together I spotted the diaper pins that fell out of an old box. Do people even use these now? I think cloth diapers now come all elasticized. These are dinosaurs, like me. They drove me to tears.
A lifetime ago and a world so different. And for the record I do not pretend to be a minimalist. There are a lot of treasures collected, but the collections are being continually curated. Some things I am not ready to part with. So I am not. Transatlantic moves are not the time to push yourself further than you know you're ready to go.
Anyway, here we go again. Starting over again. New place. New Life. New us.
In case anyone else gets inspired by organization stories there will probably be updates as we go. Measuring progress helps.
(another in a series of random, non-chronological tale telling)
The ragged flag flying alone before those old shutters caught my eye while we sat and ate our lunch purchased from a small shop in Rome. Our feet were killing us. Ok me, mostly. I noticed it wasn't just me though. A lady was walking holding her sandals, wincing as she went. If I hadn't been so freaked about the germs and sharp objects that amass after millions of feet walk over pavement I might have been tempted.
Shortly before our break we had been walking down this street lined with vendors hawking their goods. In a split second a crowd came running at us like a scene from a zombie apocolypse movie. They darted around the corner before they reached us. There had been a scare that inspectors were coming around to check for licenses. It's nothing short of amazing how quickly those tablecloths can be gathered up…. and laid back out again as though nothing occurred.
And really nothing did. Nothing out of the ordinary. In moments all was calm. People went on shopping. We went on eating. And a wedding carried on at the end of the street.
Life in old Rome.
Made a large batch of chicken sausage patties for the freezer the other day. They turned out quite well. The Penzey's seasoning was not in the recipe but it was a great touch.
Starry Sky Journal 