hygge

16 November 2017 by Marcia Francois 5 Comments

The Year of Living Danishly – a review

I know many of you are like me in that you love a good project. Even better when someone else does a great project and writes about it, right?

Examples of this genre that I love are The Happiness Project (for a few years after, some of my clients did their own happiness projects which I coached them through, and then I could re-live the book many times over – LOVE!!!), Happier at Home and the one I want to talk about today, The Year of Living Danishly.

In a nutshell, Helen Russell’s husband gets a job in Denmark at Lego (!), they go for the year. Helen is a journalist and during this year, she freelances while doing her Living Danishly project, one focus area each month. The Danes are known to be some of the happiest people in the world so the book explores that too – each person she interviews gets asked for their happiness score on a scale of 1 – 10.

I read the book through Audible and it was fabulous – the narrator is really, really good.

There’s a lot of talk about hygge – one of my favourite topics – because the Danes do this really well.

I wrote about hygge here and here, if you’d like to have a read.

The 10 concepts she explores in the book, and why Danes are so happy are:

Trust more
Live Hygge
Use your body
Address the aesthetics
Streamline your options
Be proud
Value family
Equal respect for equal work (I’d heard some of this research before from “Overwhelmed” – Brigid Schulte, a book I gave 5 stars)
Play
Share

I don’t want to say too much more, except if you’re going to read it, I recommend the audible version if you like a good English accent. However, if you’re not sure about audible, then get the kindle copy.

Hope you enjoy reading.

Have you read this book? What did you think? Which of the 10 do you most resonate with?

PS if you know of other similar project/ memoir-type books, do leave me a comment so I can check them out.

All links are affiliate – at no extra cost to you, I get a few cents for each book purchased via this blog

Filed Under: Goals, Intentional living, Reading, Time management Tagged With: audible, Helen Russell, hygge, marcia reads, non-fiction, reading, the year of living danishly

29 May 2017 by Marcia Francois 4 Comments

Let’s talk about hygge (2)

A little over a week ago I wrote part one of this post. We spoke about what hygge is, why you should care, and which books to read and podcasts to listen to if you’ve never heard about this concept before.

Have a read here to catch up.

This week I want to finish up with how you go about creating hygge.

First off, remember creating hygge, as with everything in life and organising, is a very personal and individual approach.

How do you create hygge in your own home?

Decide which room (s) to focus on.

I definitely want my lounge and bedroom to be super cosy because these two places are where I spend most of winter. Think about small changes you can make to cosy up your space.

Use colours to impact your mood

Change blankets and pillows to warmer, more luxurious colours.

Focus on lighting and good smells

Bring out the candles but never leave them unattended, especially if you have small children.

I’ve discovered that if the fragrance is subtle, I quite like certain of these reed diffusers. See top pic 🙂

Celebrate the season

Even if you don’t enjoy the cold weather, it’s here to stay for about 3 – 4 months, so you may as well enjoy the bits you can.

Get out the heaters and electric blankets, and plenty of real blankets too.

Buy/ make some hot chocolate, make soups, creamy pastas, casseroles, and food that celebrates the cooler weather. I look forward to enjoying soup when I go eat out with friends because many restaurants have a winter menu with thick, hearty soups.

Look forward to times of snuggling up on the couch with a good book and a mug of tea.

Choose 1 – 3 small things that you can easily do to make a difference to your mindset.

Buy a tin of hot chocolate or speciality tea
Get out the flannel sheets and pillowcases.
Put more throws in the lounge for comfy TV watching or reading
Make a list of comfort recipes to try (I had 6 on my list, but have already made 1)
Last but not least, invite some friends over for pasta, or muffins with tea 🙂

A warning while you make your action steps

Don’t become overwhelmed! Keep it simple and remember, you don’t have to do a thing if you don’t want to.

Hygge is more about embracing connection and living in the moment fully, than it is about anything else.

Filed Under: Decluttering, Intentional living, My year of happy 2017, Organising, organising children's spaces, Personal Tagged With: hygge, the year of living danishly

18 May 2017 by Marcia Francois 6 Comments

Let’s talk about hygge (1)

I’ve wanted to talk about hygge for a long time, and I fully intended to put it all in this one post.

But then I started mindmapping and fleshing out what I wanted to talk about, and friends, there’s a whole lot more in my brain than a post.

So let’s say two posts 🙂

What is hygge?

I think I first heard about it probably two years ago for the first time but I heard a LOT about it over the last 6 months.

Here’s the definition from The Cozy Life by Pia Edberg.

When I read that definition, I thought, “oh! so I’ve been doing this thing without knowing what it’s called” 🙂

Seriously though, that’s basically my house goal right there.

Why should you care about hygge?

You don’t have to care, it’s true. But if you do want your home to be welcoming, warm and comfortable, it’s certainly a good place to start.

But also, especially if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s autumn now, and winter’s nearly here. It really is the perfect season to nest.

It’ll make you enjoy being in your home more. There really is nowhere else I’d rather be than at home when it’s cold. What about you?

Next time, we’re going to talk all about how to do this hygge thing, very practically, and I’ll also share some really easy things that I’ve done in my house to make it more cosy as we enter the best time of the year 🙂