9 Sep 2024 by Leave a Comment

Milestone birthdays and unexpected happenings

I have a whole list of things to write about (which will ensure that I easily get to my write 24 in 24 goal this year) but this week, I’m pausing my usual blog content for a personal update.

Those on my newsletter list already received this news at the end of August; if you’re on the list, you can skip this and get 5 minutes of your life back. For the rest, I’m pasting the entire newsletter here.

How things change in a month!

The last time we spoke (end of July) I had had a “suspicious mammogram”, a biopsy and a fine needle aspiration. Don’t worry – you didn’t miss reading this; I didn’t say a thing.

However, it was only on Friday 2 August that the surgeon uttered those words to me: you have breast cancer. And following that, I was dispatched for bloods, an x-ray and a scan. Follow up appointments were made for a few days later and based on all those results, they would schedule a visit with the oncologist.

I started crying and shaking and this happened intermittently the entire week following that appointment.

Spoiler – my bloods did not indicate any cancer markers and both the chest x-rays and abdominal scans were clear. In case you are also new to all this lingo, they do this metastasic mark-up to see if the cancer has spread.

Even though I was feeling off emotionally for months and that was the reason I had nothing planned for my big birthday, I still decided to take the week off (a la Covid times) and have a staycation. Well. I am so, so glad I had that week off to cry, attend to the medical appointments and see surgeons, oncologists, etc.

What world is this where I even have an oncologist?! I actually only started to calm down about all of this (waves hands around) after that oncology appointment because the oncologist was kind, compassionate and explained everything so nicely, what each data point means and so on.

I then had a week of work and then had surgery on 20 August. The pre-surgery procedure was the worst thing ever and I think I have PTSD from it (my blood pressure was, for me, sky high at 150 – 155) as I still start tearing up every time I try to explain it or think about it.

I’m still recovering but I am cleared to go back to work from Tuesday 2 Sept although he was sure to tell me that full healing only happens 6 weeks from the surgery, so no exercise, no lifting heavy things, etc.

The results indicate no cancer in the lymph nodes and that there is no cancer in my right breast either. This was a “probably benign” situation before surgery but we wanted a definite result.

My oncologist has requested that the tissue samples be sent to the US for genetic testing (to see what the % of recurrence is) and now I wait for another three weeks for my next  oncology appointment to discuss the treatment plan.

August 2018

As for that milestone birthday…I thought that turning 50 would throw me for a loop but it turns out one is very happy to turn 50 when you’ve just received a cancer diagnosis.

While resting last week, I finally did my annual birthday review. Here’s a free printable if you want to do the same. The good news is that I wrote two columns of an A4 page on what went well over the last year and only 3/4 of a column on what didn’t go well. The didn’t go well column is still terrible but it’s smaller, right?

I have also made a list of things to do for this next year with everything (seriously, everything being held loosely) but my number 1 goal is to get through the cancer treatment. That’s it; everything else is just a cherry on top. The type of cancer is hormone receptor positive so I’m off my patch and hormone blockers will start sometime this year, I guess. What does this mean for me?

Well, I have started having little hot flashes at night which is going to be interesting as I already hate the heat. Pray for me!

 

The only action for this week’s blog is…

  • if you’re 40 or older, or you have a family history, do schedule your mammogram (I have no family history, felt no lumps and had a clean mammogram 10 months earlier than this one)
  • once you make your appointment, please comment and let me know that you’ve done so. I will be thrilled!
Filed Under: Time management
2 Sep 2024 by Leave a Comment

I’m 50; 10 things I’ve learned about goals

This is part 4 of the Things I’ve learned by 50 series.

Part 1 – time

Part 2 – organising

Part 3 – social media

And now, for my favourite – the one about goals. I realised that I could write 50 things on goals and 50 things on time but let’s focus in on just 10.

  1. The principles always work if you work the principles. This sounds hella boring but it’s so true. Even when things are going down the tube (cancer diagnosis, etc.), I’ve realised that the principles still work.
  2. Write down your goals. This provides clarity, a sense of purpose and a reminder on what your goals actually are.
  3. Look at your goals regularly – daily (if you like – this is too frequent for me), weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly – and monitor your progress. At this point, you’re also allowed to evaluate if that goal is still serving you.
  4. Once-off quick goals also serve their purpose for building momentum. E.g. organise your bedside table drawer. Suddenly you feel like you can tackle the whole bedroom’s 10 spaces.
  5. Know your why. If you don’t align your goals with your own values, you won’t want to work at them.

  1. It’s also good to have some projects to make progress on your regular habits (e.g. exercise twice a week, write every week, read a book every week)
  2. Focus on the journey, not on the outcome. James Clear talks very nicely about this piece in Atomic Habits; the gist is this: if you control the things you can do (building the regular writing habit), then you will have a book at the end of x years or y months. Saying I want to write a book is lovely but more unattainable than saying, I will write for an hour, five days a week.
  3. You will have obstacles. There is nothing wrong with you if you encounter stumbling blocks; this is all part of setting and achieving goals. Figure out how to go around/ over them.
  4. Figure out how to make your goals work for you by using your personality or your Tendency. E.g. An upholder likes a schedule. Something on the schedule will almost always get done (my Saturday morning gym routine that I never miss unless sick or out of the city) An obliger likes accountability – if the obliger meets a friend at the exercise class twice a week, she will probably always pitch up.
  5. Stop to celebrate your successes, even if small. This is where the monthly review is so valuable. It will provide motivation to keep on going.


Tell me your learnings about goals. What has worked for you; what doesn’t work for you that might work for others? Do you know your Tendency and how that has played into your goal-setting?

Filed Under: Goals, Personal Tagged With: ,
26 Aug 2024 by Leave a Comment

I’m 50; 10 things I’ve learned about social media

This is part 3 of my Things I learned by 50 series.

Part 1 – time

Part 2 – organising

Pongwe, Zanzibar

  1. Don’t go on social media on “special” days like Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc. Trust me.
  2. Be generous with liking your friends’ posts; it doesn’t cost you a thing to like someone’s post but it does mean that they see that you’ve seen their posts.
  3. In the same vein, do leave comments, not only on friends’ posts but on anyone’s posts. I try to be generous and giving with comments if I have time and I know that it certainly brightens up authors’ days (they have sent me DMs to indicate same).
  4. Contribute first and then consume. You will feel better by contributing to the conversation or beauty of a platform before simply scrolling.
  5. Give yourself a daily (healthy) limit. I have a limit which I often break but at least I know that I’m then intentionally breaking my limit. This is easy to set up if you have an iphone.
  6. If you’re zoning out on a particular platform, ask yourself, “what am I avoiding?” It could be an easy answer like “doing the laundry” but it could also be enlightening like “I’m avoiding having a difficult conversaion” or “I’m procrastinating on x piece of work because of y”.

  1. Post about things that delight you, not what looks good on your grid (unless this is truly sparking joy for you). I’d started to feel at the end of last year that I should only post certain types of content and I made a goal to post delightful things to me this year. My version of delight is probably different to yours, and that’s okay. Sometimes you might need to take a complete break for awhile if the whole thing feels draining and no longer brings you joy.
  2. Remember that you can’t see or hear tone or body language on social media; hold everything loosely and don’t read into things that may not be there.
  3. Some people are really just living their lives; they are not posting AT you, they are just posting. This can feel hard when, for example, you see groups of friends having fun and you feel disconnected and lonely, or if you see people on beautiful holidays to Europe when you can’t even take a driving holiday two hours away. See 7 above – perhaps take a break for a week and see how you feel when you come back.
  4. Always assume positive intent. Look, there are people whose sole mission in life is to stir but this is not most people. Block or mute those people if you’re not ableto handle it. Then you can assume positive intent for the rest.
  5. Bonus – Does this content spark joy? You control your algorithm. If you don’t want to see gossip and strife, stop reading those posts and engaging with them (liking/ commenting/ sharing). My one account (organisingqueen) is very carefully curated to only be about organising, time management, goals, homes and reasonable tips. If I see other things creeping in, I become hyper aware and unfollow/ mark as “irrelevant”, etc. My marcia0608 account is a mishmash of friends, travel, gorgeous photography and should be pure delight. I mute or unfollow accounts if the content feels like it’s not meeting what I want that account to be.

Which learnings can you add regarding social media? I would love to know!

All three of these photos were taken within seconds of one another with slightly different perspectives

Filed Under: Personal, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,
19 Aug 2024 by Leave a Comment

I’m 50; 10 things I’ve learned about organising

Continuing my series (but if I can’t get to 50, I’m giving myself permission to stop) on things I learned by 50.

Here’s the first edition… on time management (even as I wrote that first blog, I thought of so much more I could write, so maybe we’ll circle back to time again).

For today though, here are 10 of my favourite things about organising.

      1. Just start. I also feel daily like I couldn’t possibly do one more thing and then I fold a sweatshirt and before you know it, my bedroom is tidy and it took 10 minutes. Pick a teensy weensy thing (decide this thing for every room in your house so that you don’t waste time thinking).
      2. “You can do anything for 15 minutes” – Flylady. It’s excellent advice for life (I tell myself this for all medical appointments) but works well for both organising and time. If you just use 1 and 2, you’re sorted for 90% of your home jobs.
      3. “Don’t put it down; put it away” – Suzanne Moore. Yes, my friend, Suzy, had lots of wisdom and I still remember her words when I walk to the kitchen and am tempted to just dump things anywhere. Two seconds longer and the thing is put away vs addint to clutter.
      4. Ask yourself, “who can use this today?” This is my favourite hack for decluttering. Most people dilly dally about decluttering BUT when they focus on thinking about people who need that jersey/ pair of shoes/ set of mugs, it’s much easier to let go. Bonus – set up weekly or monthly systems to get the things from your house to the animal shelter/ orphanage/ homeless people on the corner.
      5. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be organised. When I first blogged about that concept many years ago, it was true. It’s still true these days despite all the organising accounts on Instagram encouraging you to buy perspex containers to organise all your things. The inside of my cupboards STILL have mismatched containers. Remember the rule: if you can find what you need in a minute or two, your space is organised.

      1. One in, one out. Better still – one in, more out. I was in a home store a few weeks ago and fell in love with some beautiful side plates BUT I realised that I love my existing ones too and I’m not ready to let them go.  This is a lovely “rule” for keeping your stuff contained to their spaces.
      2. A place for everything and everything in its place. It’s the reason it’s the number one organising tip. If you don’t have a place for everything, go around your house and decree the space’s purposes. Then you and everyone you live with knows to return things to that space.
      3. Before you buy anything, ask, “where will it go?” I go around the homeware stores and think about where that blanket/ pillow is going to go (and if I need to let go of the existing one – see 6 above). This will stop you buying lots of stuff you don’t need.
      4. Surfaces are for working and not for storage – Gretchen Rubin. I never quite thought of it like this but it’s true. I’m trying to instill this in my daughter whose desk is always full of junk so there’s only a tiny bit of space to open her school books. If the desk is clear, it’s so easy to set down your homework and get to it without first having to clear all the mugs, glasses and who knows what else.
      5. Outer order, inner calm. If your brain feels like it can’t focus on what to do first, tidy your surroundings. Even tonight as I sat down to write this post, I quickly tidied my desk so that my mind is clear to focus. Same in the kitchen – make sure your counters are clear so you can be creative with cooking or at least get it done fast 🙂

Which one of these tips most resonated with you?

Do share your own favourite organising tip (I’m definitely going to have to do a part 2)

 

Filed Under: Organising, Personal Tagged With: ,
12 Aug 2024 by Leave a Comment

I’m 50; 10 things I’ve learned about time

Last week I celebrated the milestone of turning 50.

I don’t take this lightly because two close friends died before their time during the Covid days.

I started making one of those lists I LOVE to read and then I decided to see if I had enough to post several lists of 10. I think I do because I’ve written one list on time and one on organising, so let’s see if I can stretch it to another few lists after I post about those two categories.

These are the 10 things I learned about prioritising, saving and using your time more effectively during my 50 years:

  1. Ask every day/ hour/ week/ month… what is the best use of my time right now?  This has the surprising ability to clarify your priorities and I ask this question at least once a day, and while I’m working, several times.
  2. If it’s going to take two minutes or less time to do something, just do it.
  3. Saying no is a big part of saying yes. If you struggle to say no, consider which parts you can’t say yes to because you’re saying no to the wrong things… right now.
  4. Work expands to fill the time available for it. If you want to clean your bedroom for two hours, you can do that. But if you only want to spend 20 minutes, you will get the most important things done during that time too.
  5. There’s always enough time if it’s important to you. I wrote a book about this called 31 days of enough time. If you find it important to exercise, you will make the time. If you want to connect with friends, you will figure out the how.

  1. Plan your week and plan your day before it even starts. This ensures that you hit the ground running, even if only in your mind. A plan doesn’t have to be a 10-item list; it can be 3 things too.
  2. Get enough sleep and your productivity will increase. This is the first thing I work on with all coaching clients – sleep. If you think it doesn’t matter, try getting a 7 – 8 hour block of time for about 4 – 5 days at a stretch and see how energetic you feel and how productive you are. Book your coaching session!
  3. Eat your frogs first but don’t put more than 3 – 5 frogs on your list every day. I like only 3 during a work day (and these days, one of them is to show up fully present, prepared and engaged!) and 3 – 5 on weekends.
  4. Before you add a commitment to your schedule, ask yourself if it sparks joy. Sometimes attending a meeting at school in itself does not spark joy but the outcome – knowing what’s going on and being connected with your child – does.
  5. Done is better than perfect. That first done level is at about 80%. Did you know that it will take as much time to do that last 20% as the first 80%? If you have the time and you’ve finished the first 80% quicker than you planned, by all means, do a bit extra, but it’s helpful to understand the metrics upfront.

 

Which are your favourite time tips?

Did one of these tips particularly resonate with you?

(I live to hear from you like old-school blogging so make my day and comment)

Filed Under: Personal, Time management Tagged With: , ,
29 Jul 2024 by Leave a Comment

6 months in (actually 7!) – my 24 in 2024 list

At last count I was at about 54,5% in. I’ve just done an update and am now at 56,5% with two abandoned items.

Also, how do you count things you’ve actively and intentionally abandoned?

I’ve intentionally abandoned two items:

  1. the Happiness Project Revisited – I wrote about this earlier this year. Nutshell version – due to immense postal failures, and being more than two months’ behind everyone else, I cancelled and withdrew from the project.
  2. Do Book Club weekend away or not, and decide once and for all. I have decided once and for all that this item is off my list forever. What freedom in that choice. (this one falls in the same category but I get a complete for it because I decided)
  3. Do something to celebrate my 50th birthday. Surprisingly, this was an easy decision for me. I’m usually the type to have a lunch/ party so I felt some pressure and at one accountability session with Beth, she said, “it’s your birthday, so just do what you want. You don’t need to do a big birthday party.” It feels so obvious but perhaps I needed the permission to listen to what made sense this year. I am a bit miffed that Ireland has very recently changed its visa laws because South African passport holders now need visas to go to Ireland 🙁

Back to the list!

Unsurprisingly, things that have gone well were once-off items that I could schedule or plan for, and then execute.

Also unsurprisingly, things that I’ve built habits and routines around, like decluttering, writing weekly, exercising and playing with my photography are also going well, but those I only move forward 0,08 every month, to reach a full 1 at the end of December.

The two items where I have made absolutely zero progress are:

  1. losing 5 kg (I think I’ve dipped under my start weight by 0,6kg and then gained again)
  2. doing a no-spend month (need to get clear on parameters – does it count if I’ve done a no-spend online shopping month?! I need to check if I qualify for that, at least). I have done two no-spend book months and a no-spend online shopping one. Do you know what actually helped me? By taking stock of what I already owned and first considering where those things would go, the exact same tactics I use with in-store shopping?

 How is your 24 in 2024 list going?

Bought but not read it although I read the first in the series (The Last Party) and I loved it! Bonus – these are set in the Wales/ England area which is stunningly beautiful.

P.S. For fun, where can South Africans go with easy-peasy visa requirements? Countries that require an at-airport application or something you do and pay for online with a super-quick turnaround. The whole schlep of visa applications is the exact opposite of holiday fun in my head.

Filed Under: Goals Tagged With: , ,
22 Jul 2024 by Leave a Comment

What if you had a chance to reset the year?

First published in my newsletter on 30 June 2024

I have big plans for tomorrow morning – to wake up at or just before sunset, make a cup of tea and a rusk, and do a few reflection exercises.

Honestly, I feel sad, lonely and like nothing is working out but I’m still going to sit with myself and do a proper reflection over the next few days. I also have a milestone birthday coming up which is always a good time to take stock and change course.

Join me on one or more!

1. Mid-year review

  • What has worked?
  • What could be better?
  • What have I learned about myself?
  • What needs to change?
  • What delighted me or energised me?
  • How am I living my values?

2. Word of the year review

I have never changed my word mid-year before but I might do so this year.

A few questions for your word of the year review:

  • How is my word guiding me?
  • Am I living out my word?
  • Is my word helping me make decisions in line with my values?
  • Do I need to change my word? Why?
  • How will this new word support my current circumstances?

3. 24 in 2024

I wrote about my decluttering efforts which are some of the items on my 24 in 2024 list.
Here’s my Q1 update.

I am 42% through my list as at the end May and I want to take a whole bunch of things off that I have no intention of pursuing. More in the next couple of weeks.

4. Work/ Career review

The company I work for happens to have a financial year-end of June and I’ve just finished performance discussions (and had mine) so this is the perfect time to reflect on the past year.

  • To what extent did I achieve what I set out to do?
  • Am I still making a difference?
  • What is working? (with exception reports and the like, it’s important to stop and notice if anything is working)
  • What do I need to change?
  • What do I need to finally accept? (hybrid LOL)

5. Financial review

Just because I’m on a money kick…. (are you listening to The Broke Generation podcast yet? It’s money + psychology)

  • Did I set any financial goals this year? (get out your list)
  • Am I where I thought I would be with these financial goals?
  • What is going well? (did you automate savings or transfers into an investment account?)
  • What is not going great? Why?
  • Do you need to stop and reset your goals?

Please note – these are all OPTIONS. I certainly do not mean for you to feel overwhelmed by reading this list.

What to do

  1. Pick one or two on the list.
  2. Make a cup of tea or coffee
  3. Block out 30 minutes
  4. Get writing

(Bonus – think about the prompts while you’re having your shower or bath, or even making that cup of tea – and then get writing when you sit down)

Filed Under: Goals Tagged With: , , ,
15 Jul 2024 by Leave a Comment

Meals, meal ideas and meal planning

When I first wrote down this blog prompt, it was summer/ autumn and we definitely had warm weather.

Now, blessedly, it is winter and I actually am somewhat inspired by meals again.

This is my favourite meal when we go to Clarens – the local golf club restaurant makes these delicious meat pies. Yum!

A few questions for you to consider before we start chatting:

  1. Do you meal plan? Why or why not? If yes, which frequency do you use?
  2. How do you get ideas? Or do you have a system?

On meal planning

  1. I still meal plan and I will say that some weeks are easier than others. I love cold weather and cold weather, comfort foods so I am always more inspired in winter.
  2. I also still have a “eat from the freezer” week once every four to six weeks. It is very useful for finishers like me as occasionally, it is really satisfying to have absolutely nothing in there because you’ve eaten all the food. It also fuels my creativity when I have to use up random ingredients in the freezer and pantry.
  3. I have always been a weekly menu planner but very occasionally, like in the freezer week, I might make a menu for 10 days to use up things.
  4. I have a friend who makes a monthly menu plan and then shops monthly too. That is hugely impressive but I am 100% sure the teens in my house will scupper those plans by eating food since it is there.
  5. How I do meal planning – part 1 and part 2. These were the two most popular posts on my blog in 2017 😉

Another benefit for the hybrid worker – time and money

Plan so that you have leftovers to take to the office. I spoke to a new colleague in our team recently who said that she and her fiance consciously cook with leftovers in mind so that they’re not tempted to buy food. They are also saving for their wedding and I think that it is so clever and disciplined of them.

Ideas for meal planning

  1. Plan around the proteins or the carbohydrates. I still plan around the carbs for my nights and I write some ideas down for Dion’s two nights too. It doesn’t always work as we even recently had two pasta nights in a row. Apparently I’m the only one who is bothered by this!
  2. I follow a few instagram accounts where the people make meals that are relatively easy to throw together. When I find one I like, I take a screenshot and here’s the trick – I make it in the next two weeks. Beyond that time, I can’t actually get motivated to try it. I imagine this is the same for people who try organising tips and tricks. I find that the Australian content creators cook similarly to South Africans.
  3. I still have my calendar list for ideas. For those reading this for the first time, I printed out two calendar sheets years ago – one for winter and one for summer. I then wrote all the meals everyone in my family will eat (maybe not happily, but they will all eat it). When I’m stumped for ideas, I look at these two sheets to get ideas

The argument for spontaneity

I have to address the matter of spontaneity which is the biggest objection I hear from people.

You can be spontaneous and you can meal plan.

If you want to be spontaneous on a random Tuesday, go for it. The benefit of having the meal plan is that you know you can pull together a meal because you have those ingredients in your pantry or freezer. I almost never completely stick to my plan 5 days a week unless I’m on holidays. And then, I make a plan so that I use up all the food we’ve bought and there is little wastage.

Do you meal plan? If yes, how frequently? Where do you get ideas? Do you keep the same menu year in and year out?

Filed Under: Menu Planning Tagged With: , , , ,
8 Jul 2024 by 2 Comments

My 5 favourite travel tips

I’ve just returned from our annual beach trip so I’m fresh from thinking about things that worked and things that could use a tune-up.

I thought I’d share some of my top travel tips:

1. Know your travel style and live with the consequences

I used to be a traveller who liked lots of options and also imagined that my life while on holiday was far more exciting than it usually is, which is plenty of relaxing. As such, I had a bag with just books, and about two bags full of clothes. I’d end up with half the things unworn (but wrinkled!) so they needed ironing anyway.

Then we went to England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland in 2008 and the thought of lugging around suitcases on The Tube and through Heathrow terrified me and I determined to travel with one small backpack and a small suitcase… for 21 days. I did it! What is even more impressive to me now is that it was during autumn (basically a South African winter) so I had jackets, jerseys and long pants and tops. And somehow, I made it work.

That was my turning point and since then I always travel with just one bag. I can even do a short work trip with just my rolling laptop bag (for toiletries and a change of clothes) and a big tote bag.

The consequences are that I travel with very few options and some items have to do double duty and… it is all fine. A client once told me (in the pre-days, when we travelled to meetings in other cities once a month) that she had two dresses for those travels and so far nobody had said anything to her about it because probably no-one paid that close attention to her outfits.

If you’re a heavy traveller, enjoy all your options but do know you’ll be lugging around a lot of stuff you probably don’t need. On that note…

2. Plan your eating out and staying in days for lunch and supper

One of the things I despise is the eternal question, “what’s for supper?” I cannot stand it at home and also on holiday. I therefore like to plan my eating out times. For work travel, it is easier because I’m mostly only considering myself (or friends, if I plan to see friends in the evenings).

For personal travel though, we are all happier when we have a rough idea of the meals we want to cook/ assemble and the amount of lunches/ suppers we want to eat out. This might not be a thing in your family but we used to end up with one day left and have 4 places to still try. So now we plan and it’s much nicer that way.

We actually found a new place this time in Ballito and we liked it so much, we went back for a second night. On that second night (a Friday), we also discovered they do live music (80s) on Fridays so next time we will definitely be visiting on a Friday and staying a long time (I love live music over supper!).

3. Travel light and wash some laundry if necessary

I do recommend that you travel as light as you can and rather wash some laundry if necessary.

I like holidays of 7 days so I travel with my Eco egg and do a load at around day 3 – 4. This is probably not necessary but I also don’t like knowing I have dirty laundry (and work) waiting for me once I get home. It’s much easier to throw on a load in between watching Wimbledon or going for a walk on the beach.

Fun fact – one of my team at work said to me that I probably travel with lots of stuff because I have my own desk and I have one drawer full of food, another full of stationery and the credenza with a spare pashmina, deodorant, hand cream, kettle, etc. I like to be prepared! I told her that I don’t and could be ready to leave for anywhere in 30 minutes because of my lists and my packed toiletry bag.

4. Packing lists are your friend

This will come as no surprise but I love a packing list. I have a packing list for me for…

  1. work travel
  2. personal travel to Ballito (beach), Clarens, Drakensburg and PE (my home town)

I also have packing lists for the kids for summer and winter travel.

My own packing lists include sections for clothes, toiletries, tech, stationery and if we’re driving, kitchen stuff.

Here’s the trick: update the list the minute you realise you want to make a change. With my Use up 24 in 2024, I forgot to replenish my face wash so I had to buy a bar of soap (no biggie). We were in the Drakensberg once and even though it was the heart of summer, those mountains get very cold at night so now I know to travel with long pyjamas, not “Jhb summer pjs”.

I also have a list of goals for any time I travel and I check it every couple of days; otherwise I forget because I’m in holiday mode. My list includes things like 1) read 4 books 2) see friends X and Y 3) Try Rivers Church 4) go for a beach walk every day.

My lists are all paper-based and in an A5 flipfile… but I scanned the ones for the kids and store those electronically. It was also so easy to just Whatsapp it to them and say “here you go – your packing list”. What a change from having little children!

5. Keep a packed toiletry bag

I think that this is my true spark of genius. I have doubles of everything – toothbrush, toothpaste, facecloth, sponge, etc. When I return from a trip, I dry out everything and check what I need to replenish. This may take a day of that toiletry bag being out on my bathroom vanity but when I pack it away, I am ready for the next trip.

I do have a small bag (a little bigger than a make-up bag) with a checklist inside – medication, speedstick, moisturiser, BB cream, eye pencil, lip liner, nail clippers, nail polish. This is “morning of” packing because I don’t want my stuff getting old inside my toiletry bag while it waits for me to go on a trip. E.g. we returned from Clarens on 2 Jan and left for Ballito on 28 June, nearly 6 months later. I prefer to use up my stuff and just pack the latest items that morning.

Bonus!

Packing cubes

Packing cubes are my new favourite things. I love that I can use the cubes for categories – pyjamas & underwear, warm weather clothes, cold weather clothes, beach wear, or whichever categories you like. When I went on a work trip in November last year, I tagged a weekend onto my client meetings so I had a cube for weekend stuff, one for day 1 of work, and one for day 2 of work. So easy to just grab one cube; the rest of your suitcase stays neat because you only need to access that cube.

Here’s the best: I just pack the cubes onto the shelves, hang what I need, place shoes and I’m unpacked in about 3 minutes.

I do the same in reverse and packing is super quick.

 

Hope these tips helped!

Tell me, do you naturally travel heavier or lighter? Do you have packing lists? Do you keep them digitally or printed out?

 

Filed Under: Intentional living, Organising Tagged With: , ,
24 Jun 2024 by 2 Comments

Declutter update on my projects – 6 months in

stationery

I did my last declutter update at the end of March. Read more here.

Another 3 months have passed and while, I’ll give you an update, I also want to add some thoughts about my feelings on this project.

General decluttering:

I have just finished batch 8 of 24 items – that’s 192 items that left my home. We’re on a net lighter item number because some of the things that left were lovely big things like a bed, a car seat and two booster seats, as well as all the other bits, mainly clothes, etc.

Use up 24 in 2024

I have finished this project and continued on. I particularly want to use up all the little sample sizes of things like Advent calendar goodies, many half-used lipsticks, etc.

Stationery

13 items used up or donated, and I’ve given 7 gifts made up of several stationery items. If I donate another 4 stationery items, I’ve reached my full goal and we’re only half way through the year.

What I’m learning:

General decluttering

This is already a well-established habit and I probably don’t have to focus on it for it to continue being a fixture in my life.

I have good systems – my one in, one out rule works very well to keep things under control, and I love limitations of space as a trigger to get rid of stuff.

Use up 24 in 2024

I really had no idea I had so many speedsticks, soaps and body lotions around. I mean, I’ve been using them up and still I have lots. I want to persist with this one because it’s good to force myself to finish up things and not just buy something on sale. Also, when I truly need something, it feels like a real treat. E.g. I have about 2cm of body wash left and I bought a new bottle last week when I picked up my prescription. Every morning I sniff it and I cannot wait to start using it. It’s the small things 😉 I also find immeasurable joy in the new lipstick I bought.

Stationery

I actually have too much to use up myself so I’ve been making gifts for others (if they’re into stationery – surprisingly, not a lot of people get such delight from stationery as I do).

More importantly, I’m using my stuff. No more keeping the nice notebooks for “one day”; I am using them now, even if only for boring work notes!

In summary

I will continue with the beauty, body and bath stuff (just so I don’t break loose and go wild) but also occasionally treat myself. The goal here is to not hoard or stockpile but still enjoy a lovely lip or nail colour. And hopefully use up all those darn speedsticks and body lotions. I actually found myself thinking yesterday, “wait, do I actually have to go BUY face wash?” (yes, once the one in the shower is used up, I will check my stash just to make sure)

And I have to remind myself that I do not need any more notebooks or gorgeous pens.

My domestics’ children will be getting a lot of their pens and pencils from me at the end of the year.

How are you doing with your decluttering projects?

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