Moving house – Page 2

21 Nov 2016 by Marcia Francois 8 Comments

How I made my kitchen a happy space on a very small budget

Remember I mentioned that I wasn’t very inspired by my kitchen?

I LOVE the size, and that there’s plenty of counter space and storage even with no cabinets on the top in most of the kitchen. I even counted and I’m sure we could have 6 people comfortably working on different things in the same kitchen.

The point is that the bones are good; it just needed some updating.

Now updating usually comes in the form of a renovation which I am not a lover of for two reasons: 1) extreme mess and lack of control…… and 2) renovations cost a lot of money. Apparently a good rule of thumb is 1/10th of the house’s price which is super crazy. But that’s my opinion.

So then I happened upon a green kitchen on Instagram and I was like OHHHHHH, I LOVE THAT.

I love green very much.

Dion had some reservations that it would be too green (is there such a thing?!) but trusted me.

I was busy picking out the exact green when I saw a navy blue kitchen and I thought OOOOH now that’s lovely.

I showed him and he was much more into the navy.

I just wanted COLOUR and non-boringness so I was game to try the blue.

You see, I love The Nester’s advice. She said once, “if you hate something anyway, there’s no harm in taking a risk”. So true.

We ended up painting the walls and ceilings white and the cupboards are now NCS S 6030-R90B Seaside Breeze.

Best of all, we all LOVE our new kitchen. And the very best news is it cost just a fraction of a true renovation.

Other small things we did…

replaced the mixer
put up shelves

And the minute we’ve saved enough money, we’ll redo the flooring. In fact, if you have flooring people you’d recommend, please tell me in the comments. I only have two quotes which are both far too expensive.

Some more photos of my navy kitchen:

Have you ever painted your kitchen cupboards?

What colour would you do yours?

PS The blue kitchen pics were taken in midday sun so the light was very bright. The kitchen looks a bit darker at night.

Filed Under: Intentional living, Money and finances, Moving house, Personal Tagged With: blue kitchen, the nester

18 Aug 2016 by Marcia Francois 4 Comments

A space to create

When we moved into this new house, I had pages of drawings in my bullet journal on where we would place all furniture.

I planned a craft space downstairs and just a desk in the study.

But soon I realised that I didn’t even have a place to wrap a gift since the laptop is permanently on the desk.

I moved my favourite green table upstairs and voila! I was in business.

I moved my green table into the study and I’ve been so inspired to make things pretty again. It’s amazing how the right environment fuels creativity. . . Where do you need to create some space for your own creativity? . #makingthingspretty #Ilovestationery #bakerstwine #staedtler

A photo posted by Marcia Francois (@organisingqueen) on Jul 28, 2016 at 12:19am PDT

I was so inspired to get creative again.

I think I wrapped/ assembled about 5 gifts in less than 30 minutes simply because I once again had a space to create.

This is not just about creating.

It could be space for reading, space to try out new recipes, space to do your budget and financial planning, space to set up a command centre, space to plan your week…

Where in your life do you need to create space for what you need?

Filed Under: Intentional living, Moving house, Organising, Planning, Workplace Wednesday Tagged With: space to create

4 Aug 2016 by Marcia Francois 6 Comments

July review and August goals

July was interesting 🙂

It felt a lot worse than it actually was.

But actually, when I stopped and did a proper review writing it all down, I realised that I actually got a lot done.

This is the point of doing a monthly goals review – to stop and notice the things you did do, instead of only the things you didn’t.

Just a few highlights:

we had a wonderful family holiday in Ballito – lots of good food, walks, times of connection and reading
we moved house (!) – I think if we did nothing else this is AWESOME 🙂
I met up with 5 different friends, all one-on-one
I read 8 books, none of them audible books. I bought 3 books on Tuesday morning because this month is a normal working month, not one where I take 2.5 weeks holiday.
I got my hair done. My appointment was moved out due to the holiday and move, and you know how you can’t WAIT to get your hair sorted again? Yes, that was me 🙂
My tax was done!

A few goals for August:

Sell old house (please pray – the pray without ceasing praying – for God to send people who will love that house and who can afford it)
Organise handyman to put up shelves and get all our photo frames up
Write the paying off the house post – this may be more than 1 post, depending on how much I have to say.
Participate in #AugustBreak2016 on Instagram. I think this is my third year and I love it. I enjoy the prompts, the community and it’s a good time of year for me as I’m feeling reflective (it’s my birthday on Saturday!) and the weather is still cool enough to wander around getting nice photos.
Organise July photos and select photos from Ballito holiday for printing.
Write for 20 minutes a day.

Over to you.

What are you going to read, what are you going to listen to and what will you do to keep yourself sane this month?

And a very happy birthday to Terisha who started out as a reader and has now become a friend!

Filed Under: Goals, Intentional living, Moving house, Planning Tagged With: goal-setting, goals, monthly review

19 Jul 2016 by Marcia Francois 7 Comments

This moving house business

I’m going to be honest here – for the first 5 days of moving house, I was not okay at all.

I suppose I thought that because I’m organised, things would move along swiftly and in an efficient manner. When they didn’t, it kind of threw me for a loop.

Let’s go back a little bit to late 2005 when we moved into the previous house…

I was much more of a hoarder then
The prior house had TONS of storage space
and still we moved out and were unpacked in two days

This time I’d Konmari’d, I’m now the Organising Queen (HA!) and 11 days after the move, there are still 6 of D’s boxes unpacked. Granted, the fact that they’re not mine doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

We moved on a Friday.

On Saturday morning I was up at 6 am (unheard of!); on Sunday morning I was up at 3 am. No, I wasn’t keen to get up and started with the day; it was my busy brain thinking of everything I had to do.

After the 3am wake-up, I realised I just have to work like a slave because I’m quite fond of my sleep and can’t afford to have it interrupted on a daily basis. Happy to say I’ve slept well since.

I know there are others reading who are like me – your environment has to be in order for you to be able to breathe….

So what made me feel better?

Getting the kitchen sorted first because the kids keep asking for food…
Knowing that most of my things were in place – clothes, toiletries, technology (cables, chargers, etc.) – and sadly, once the internet was working on Sunday, I felt connected again and happy!
I went to the hairdresser and chatted to her, and guess what she told me? I’m being too hard on myself. She reminded me that she and two teenage kids moved into a new house last year. It took her a full week to unpack all the boxes, and a month to get everything in place like she wanted. So to expect things to be in order within 5 days was a tad unrealistic.
And then Jess Lively. She did a podcast recently and she said something like this (I may be mis-quoting a bit) – you haven’t lost the ability to create a beautiful home. Wow. Because everything has felt out of place, with photo frames all over, definitely not intentional and deliberate.

To that last point, everything in our old home had a place and felt right. While things are unpacked, we are not at that place yet. So I needed that reminder that I created a beautiful home once or twice before, and I will do so again… in time.