24 July 2023 by 1 Comment

4 insights on stockpiling toiletries from The Year of Less

 

 

I read a book called The Year of Less by Cait Flanders in August 2018. I’ve just gone to read all my highlights on Goodreads (19 of them!) and now I think I need to re-read the book 😉

But that’s not what I came here to tell you about today.

When I originally read the book, I remember one piece very vividly, the section on stockpiling toiletries.

It completely changed how I think about things now.

Many people (I daresay, 98% of you reading this post) buy extra toiletries when they’re on sale. The sales captivate us all – 3 for the price of 2, the summer/ winter sale, and so on.

In the book, she asks us to consider how long specific items take to use up and how long you really need to keep spares.

Stockpiling is not great for at least 4 reasons:

1. it wastes money

if your money is held up in “stock”, it is not available as cash (remember Accounting in high school?). I prefer to have the cash rather than bottles of shampoo, conditioner or similar. Yes, I’m aware that the prices of things have increased (especially in South Africa due to loadshedding) but I would still rather have cash in the bank than two extra speedsticks in my bathroom vanity.

2. it is clutter 

This one is fairly obvious. Stuff you have and that you need to store because you’re not using is called clutter.

3. waste of product 

if you buy 3 products, they might go old before you can actually use them (this has happened to me once with speedstick deodorants)

4. most of the world lives about 5 minutes from a store

and now… there’s online delivery too. If you run out, I promise you it will be a 5-minute detour to get what you need and for most of us, you will know beforehand that you’re going to run out in a few days.

A personal example

I use Olay day moisturising liquid (with SPF!). One bottle lasts 6 months. Given that there are often sales, it used to be tempting to buy extra but I am no longer tempted. Why? I can tell that I’ll run out within a week or two both because of the weight of the bottle and the fact that I write the date on the bottle with a permanent marker when I start using a new bottle.

But also, it just makes no sense to buy 18 months’ worth of product on a buy 3 for the price of 2 sale. What if they change the formula or make a pretty new bottle or (I don’t think this will happen but…) I want to try something new but I’m stuck using the old stuff for 18 long months.

Upholders love self-imposed rules

  • I will  keep one spare speedstick deodorant in summer because the consequences are immediate if I run out (!)
  • I do buy the 3 for 2 shampoos because 1 bottle of the brand I use lasts me just under 2 months
  • Keeping a travel toiletry bag stocked is not stockpiling because it actually saves me so much time when I travel for work or pleasure. I’m on holiday now and I will have to replenish some items (on my list!) once I get back home.

In the 17 years of writing this blog, I have still not managed to convince people to stop stockpiling toilet paper. I personally don’t get this obsession as in my house, I “budget” on about 5 days per toilet roll per bathroom, so I know how long we can go before stocking up.

My goal is not to change your mind but I do want you to consciously know that:

  • that is actual money in your cupboards
  • money you can never recoup
  • and you’re probably going to take years to go through your backstock 🙂
  • also, you don’t need to take hotel toiletries with you (I only take bottles that I deem perfect in function or form, or if the fragrances are particularly compelling)

Tell me, where are you on the stockpiling spectrum? 

I didn’t want to go there but I will say that a certain very popular Netflix show and Instagram account has made it very appealing to have lots of backstock in clear perspex containers. Why?

Filed Under: Decluttering, Money and finances, Reading Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
9 February 2022 by 1 Comment

This year’s challenge – to rest 22 in 2022

on a photowalk – these are very restful for me

I used Gretchen Rubin’s walk 20 in 2020 to simply track when during the month I got some exercise – around 12 times a month is standard for me as I have a 3 times a week habit.

Read 21 in 2021 was my most successful daily project – I chose to read 21 minutes from a non-fiction book (preferably on my shelves) and I made it. It was a great success and I cleared 32 books from my shelves and will continue until all my non-fiction is done!

I knew when Gretchen announced the rest 22 in 2022 challenge that it would be my hardest challenge yet – I am not given to rest and have battled with relaxing… always.

We are all different people and therefore, rest will mean different things to each of us. If you decide to do this project (some of you have already decided to join but remember, even if you haven’t yet decided, there’s no perfect time to start), just jump in.

Rest does not only mean sleeping. It might mean that for you, but it also might not.

As I thought about this challenge, I thought about what rest looks like for me:

  • lazy mornings in bed reading fiction (!) somehow feels very decadent
  • laying on my bed listening to an audiobook (and doing nothing else to use the time productively)
  • walking around my garden playing with my camera
  • actual napping (rare though this is)
  • going for a walk with my camera to capture things that delight my sense of sight
  • intentional watching TV (I am not a TV person but occasionally I find something I might want to watch, and that kind of watching is restful)
  • afternoon reading with a cup of tea

We’re one month in; how has my #rest22in2022 project been going?

Honestly, but not surprisingly, not as well as I expected.

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll be familiar with my weekend to-do lists. Here’s another one. These lists have had a section called “relax” on them for years. This is quite intentional because I otherwise would busy myself with work and never give myself permission to “do nothing”.

Therefore, the weekends are easy for the #rest22 project.

As for the weekdays, I have to consciously remember to choose something for that day. I had a week where I put a reminder in my phone to rest and that worked well. Why didn’t I continue? Absolutely no idea – I think it was because I finished the fiction book (Ask Again, Yes) and so I relaxed with the resting 😉

In writing this post, I realised something – rest works well on the weekend because I plan for it. I need to plan for the workday rest too. I’ll put a timer in my phone and report back to let you know how that’s working.

Have you joined the #rest22in2022 challenge?

What have you defined as rest for you?

Filed Under: Goals Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
2 February 2022 by Leave a Comment

How I’ll be setting goals in 2022

Before I tell you about the change, maybe I should tell you how I used to set goals.

I have a number of areas of my life and I’d set goals in each of these areas every month, e.g. family, friends, finances/ home, fun/ play, fitness & health, work, Organising Queen/ coaching, etc.

I think you’ve already worked out the reason I’d end up with at least 30 goals every month. Fine in a pre-pandemic world but it started feeling like it was a lot and I was adding extra pressure to my life.

For this year, that feels too much. It doesn’t feel as fun as it did a few years ago to set 36 goals a month and I LOVE GOALS.

I’m an upholder so I started asking clarifying questions, like what makes sense for me to do, and that’s when I arrived at my answer.

I decided to set goals with my word of the year (delight) and my work word (balance), and then another top two things on my mind for that month. For January, this was home (I mentioned before that we’ve had a few changes) and health (getting back to basics with eating and establishing my exercise routines).

With this pared-down version, I ended up with 20 goals for January and I will get to almost all of them.

I now feel more accomplished (we all need motivation) and inspired, and much more focussed!

A note on the mind map – I love starting any planning with a mind map because it gets me out of my head to just “free flow” and when I’m clear on how I want to move forward, if I want, I can then make a list. These days I just leave my mind map as my goals list.

How are you setting goals for 2022? Have you set goals for February yet?

If you feel like you want to aim for a little something, why don’t you consider using just one or two areas of your life to start.

PS I’m available for four tendencies coaching if you want to understand how to make your tendency work for you this year, both to reach your goals or just to improve your work or personal life. Contact me now.

Filed Under: Goals Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
13 October 2021 by 5 Comments

Are you using your Tendency?

If you follow me on Instagram, especially on my bookstagram account, marciareadsalot, you’ll know that I’m doing a project called #read21in2021, Gretchen Rubin’s 2021 habits project.

The idea is simple – you read every day for 21 minutes. The execution is not always that simple though.

Let’s talk through the Tendencies on a high level and see how each tendency might approach a project like this:

Rebel
If the Rebel decides that they identify as a reader, and they want to read more, they will change the project to suit them. My son told me it sounded fine but he would read for 25 minutes a day, not 21 minutes. He didn’t even keep it up for a week at first but he reads nothing for a week or two… and then he’ll read one book every day for weeks on end. Swings, roundabouts 🙂

Questioner
This person will need to understand why they’d want to do something like this project. If they can’t see anything they’d like to change about their reading life or why they might want to do such a project, they wouldn’t even start.

Obliger
The Obliger will stick with the project if they do it with someone and hold each other accountable, or if they buddy read specific books with a friend. If left to their own devices, they might battle with justifying the “me time” for reading.

Upholder
Upholders love a project. Since this project comes with 365 little boxes to cross off, even better. Once an upholder decides how they would approach this project, they would figure out the best time of day and get to it.

I’m an upholder. Upholders also need to constantly check in with themselves that they’re still enjoying things and that they’re not blindly following along.  

This year I’m reading non-fiction from my physical (mostly) and Kindle shelves.

Do you know why this is working for me?

I change the type of books – dense, action-oriented, memoir, Christian non-fiction, etc. – and never read two of the same type of non-fiction one after the other.

I also read for exactly 21 minutes and not a minute longer (I set a timer! isn’t this very upholder-ish?!) unless a few extra minutes will result in a finished book. This means I never get bored and the task doesn’t feel overwhelming.

 I swop around between physical and Kindle. If I look through my physical bookshelf and I’m not in the mood for anything on that shelf, I check my Kindle. Sometimes I even check Scribd – there may be a book I own which is in an audio format that I might prefer.

 In the 9 months I’ve been doing this project, I’ve already read 22 (of 113 total) books. I hope to make it 30 by the end of this year, and continue into next year to finally finish all the non-fiction on my actual, physical bookshelf.

Did you spy this book on the shelf above? 😉

This is a post bout a reading project but it’s really about any project or habit.

If you want to get anything done or create a habit, it’s important to eliminate your own stumbling blocks and figure out what might get your project/ habit moving again.

I do offer laser coaching Four Tendencies sessions so if you’re interested, email me and let’s get you set up. 

Meanwhile, do tell me how you’re using your Tendency in your reading life. I love to talk books and reading, and I love to hear from you!

Filed Under: Four Tendencies, Reading Tagged With: , , , , , ,
13 February 2019 by 2 Comments

{living intentionally} Intentional friendship update, one year later


At our last book club lunch last year, one of the members said, “we all just want to connect with another human being”. So true.

For years I almost didn’t want to admit to myself that I actually wanted to have friendships because it seemed like no-one else was talking this way and it felt…too vulnerable.

But I’ve gotten over that and now I freely admit that I want, and need, good friendships.

I also used to bemoan the fact that the organising/ logistics to get together seemed to lie with me, but I’m also over that, due to two things:

  1. D told me I need only do what I’m comfortable doing. This might seem like an obvious thing to some of you but I’m an enneagram 1 (we feel like it’s our job in the world to fix anything that is broken) and an upholder (friendship is important to me therefore I need to put systems in my life to support that) so it has always felt like I was responsible for everything.
  2. I actually largely prefer to organise things because I feel in control of things more 😉

Last year I wrote about what I was doing to create intentional friendships in my life as an upholder, and how each of the other Four Tendencies types would do this too. You can read that post here.

To comment from an upholder perspective again, we work best with the strategies of scheduling, monitoring, clarity and pairing.

Clarity – I am clear on my comfort levels and how much I want to try to pursue/ “open the door” before calling it quits and letting things just flow. I’m also clear about what a life-giving friendship means to me.

Scheduling – this strategy has worked so beautifully over the last year. Our book club meets on the last Saturday of every month, and I have 5 standing friend dates every month. Of course this doesn’t work with everyone every month but it sort of evens out so that I have good 1:1 connection time with about 5 – 6 friends, because I also have some other friends who I have again scheduled once every 2 – 3 months. I realise this sounds terribly unspontaneous, but as Gretchen Rubin says, “something that can happen anytime often happens at no time”. Here’s where I “go with the flow”  – I let cancellations and such happen, and somehow at the end of the month, I find I’ve still had my 5 – 6 friend connections. It’s weird and wonderful all at the same time.

Monitoring – I still keep my friend spreadsheet and diligently update it at the end of every month, and then add friends to next month’s goals to keep it all ticking over. Try it, even if you don’t use an actual spreadsheet. You could have a list in your bullet journal with a date next to each friend’s name.

Pairing – I really only use pairing in a couple of instances. When I see clients in Pretoria, I always contact a Pretoria friend to see if she’s available to have lunch after my meeting. And I have a client in a part of Joburg whose offices are near another friend’s workplace. I always just reach out and ask if she’s available. What’s the worse that can happen? They’re busy but at least you’ve asked and they know you’ve reached out.

If you’d like to understand better how to harness your tendency with regards to your friendships, please join me for my next workshop, coach with me or take Gretchen’s deep dive course?

How are your friendships going? Are you happy with them?

The thing that delighted me most last year was this: I met a friend for lunch and she said, “let’s eat quickly. I know you like to walk and take pictures so I’ve planned a walk for us.” Well, that was just magnificent!

Filed Under: 31 days of enough time, Four Tendencies, Goals, Intentional living, Personal, Planning, Time management, Work with Marcia Tagged With: , , , ,
7 December 2017 by 7 Comments

{Four Tendencies} Worth it even if just for this one insight

The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People's Lives Better, Too) by [Rubin, Gretchen]

I’ve been eagerly awaiting Gretchen Rubin’s new book for months and months. Basically, I talk about the Four Tendencies to all my friends, colleagues and clients who are into these things.

And really, I bought and pre-ordered because I’m a fan, but also to understand those around me better. Since I’m an upholder, I thought I knew everything there was to know about being one.

But not!

First, an upholder is someone who readily meets both inner and outer expectations. They have no problems meeting work deadlines/ friend expectations (outer expectations) but they also have no trouble setting and achieving their own goals (inner expectations).

Right, this is me to a T.

 

I learned a ton from buying the book but today I want to talk about upholder tightening.

 

She had mentioned upholder tightening before on the Happier podcast but really delved into it in the book. In a nutshell, it means that upholders decide on their own expectations and get to it (no problem so far) and then, even if the thing no longer serves them, they keep on doing it even if there no longer is a reason to continue doing it.

I had some aha moments while reading that section and now, two months later, I can see this playing out in so many parts of my life.

I even told Dion (a fellow upholder) about upholder tightening and he told me how he definitely sees it in me when I keep flogging a dead horse 🙂

So where have I noticed this in my life?

At the start of this year, I decided to do my year of happy where I focussed on a specific theme for the month, and I’d blog the goals at the start and the feedback at the end.

The intention was to do this with other people joining in. Not one person did, so really at that point, I should have just said, “oh well, no-one’s interested, let’s move on”. But I didn’t.

I was happy enough to carry on for a few months, still hoping others would join in, but then it really got very boring for me.

But I pushed through every single month.

Upholder tightening!

On the bright side, the minute I read about it and recognised it in myself, I stopped.

The awareness gave me the permission to stop.

And so I did.

Isn’t that amazing?

I realise this is more amazing for me than for anyone else but of course I see it happening all over in my life.

Now I’m questioning (I lean towards Questioner) all the things that I decided I should do, that no longer feel right but I haven’t stopped doing yet.

I changed one other thing too.

But watch this space – one of my new goals is to evaluate basically everything in my life (aren’t I fun?!) and see if any of that upholder tightening shows up, and then stop it if it’s no longer serving me.

Are you an upholder? We’re the 2nd smallest group after Rebels.

If yes, where have you noticed upholder tightening show up in your life?

Otherwise, have you read the book yet? Do you intend to? What’s your tendency?

PS Better than Before is currently on sale. Pick up your copy here.

 



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Filed Under: Four Tendencies, Goals, Intentional living, My year of happy 2017, Personal, Reading Tagged With: , ,
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