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To help keep me accountable, I thought I’d share my list (I’ll write more about my other goals in a later post):

1. Finish partially completed or promised craft projects (in no particular order):

1. Brian’s cardigan
2. Hamish’s blanket
3. Matthew’s blanket
4. 8ply jacket (for me)
5. cot blanket for Emily’s baby
6. “pay it forwards” to Katy
7. “pay it forwards” to Liz
8. charcoal jacket
9. green and brown skirt
10. Celtic needlepoint
11. cot quilt
12. embroidered tunic

2. Use up my stash (fabric and yarn) until it fits into the currently available storage boxes

3. Clear out my personal archive boxes (aiming for one, not three)

4. Clear out the filing cabinet

5. Sort and organise the kids’ past artwork

6. Sort and organise our digital photos (at least up to  the end of 2008)

7. Get my full Drivers’ licence

8. Make my tribal belly dance tassel belt

9. Read my current “to read” pile

10. Make my bedroom more of  a haven and less of a dumping ground

11. Clean the oven at least twice

12. Sort out and maintain the front garden beds

13. Go to the dentist

I’ll post on my progress as it happens…

Over a year ago I wrote a post about starting my journey towards simplicity.

A year on, I have been revisiting some of the resources I uncovered back then:

• I did a quick re-work through The Passion Test – enough to realise I am on the track I want to be on by and large.
• the Miss Minimalist blog is my home page, so I am reminded of what’s important to me every time I go online ( I particularly enjoyed this Monday’s post on the difference between materialism and consumerism)
• while the other two blogs I mentioned then sadly aren’t really going concerns anymore, I have discovered a couple more I enjoy – minimalist packrat and mycreativepants

And

• 5 weeks ago today, I got S.H.E.D. back out from the library (I really must buy my own copy sometime – if only to lend to others!  Especially now my renewals have run out…)

These 5 weeks have been spent actively decluttering – my house, my brain, my life.  I find it difficult to recommend this book enough. It has been a wonderful aid for me.  Julie Morgenstein breaks the process down beautifully – both into types of clutter (physical, schedule and habits) and into a decluttering process that honours your life and your stuff.  This I have found truly inspiring.

One of the first thing she gets you to do is to come up with a theme phrase for your future life.  After some deliberation, I settled on the theme “living with passion”.  Then, the first stage of her de-clutter is to identify the treasures you have.  I have made some beautiful discoveries here that have helped reconnect me with myself and my passion.

I have been pleased to discover that my schedule clutter is minimal.  I am already in many ways living the life I want to – with jobs I love (both my office work and my dance teaching) and time for my other joys (family, friends, craft…).  However, my physical environment had not kept pace with this.  It is proving an interesting challenge changing this – definitely still in progress!  I am noticing the difference between the areas I’ve worked through and those I haven’t.  On some deep level, there has been a palpable energy shift, so that even with my eyes shut I can feel the areas where more work is required.  Usefully, this has helped me catch myself when I’ve done a ‘quick-once-over-lightly’.  I’m also really enjoying the fresh energy the process is creating.

Habit clutter is also proving interesting to deal with.  I’m going slowly here, mostly on purpose.  One big area I’ve identified is my eating habits: changing from those of a 20-something with low blood sugar issues (i.e  constant grazing) to an almost-40 with a ‘changing’ (read: ‘slowing’) metabolism isn’t happening overnight, but it is happening nevertheless.

Throughout this process I am endeavouring to stay focused on my theme (which is not always easy).  When I treasure hunt, I try to remember to keep just those things that fill me with joy and delight (rather than ‘meh’).  I have needed to call upon the help of good friends at times – particularly when it came to my fabric collection – and have felt the value and joy of doing this.  The overall effect for me is one of a growing sense of space, energy and joy – with plenty more room for my passions!

While I haven’t been part of the Project since the end of March, I have continued to maintain an inventory of what clothes I  have and what I wear.  This isn’t terribly refined – just a monthly tick box if I wear something at least once during that month.  I use an Excel spreadsheet, so I can tally both the monthly number of garments I wear and the number of months each garment has been worn.

I find it fascinating looking at the numbers and seeing how I use my wardrobe.  Here’s some of those numbers:

• my itemised wardrobe currently contains 99 items – this includes dance costumes and tights, but doesn’t yet include my scarf, hat and gloves collection
• the most number of garments I have worn in one month in the last year is 51 in October – this is partly a reflection of Spring in Wellington (extemely varied weather!) and partly because I was dancing at the Wellington Folk Festival, so wore most of my costume wardrobe over that weekend
• the least number per month (since the end of the Project) was 31 items in May
• there are just 10 items in my list that I haven’t worn in the past year – some of these are recently acquired, others are things I’ve had for a while and aren’t sure what to do with.  I may like them, but it seems like I’m not wearing them, so why are they taking up space?!
• on average and post-Project, I’ve worn 44.3 garments each month
• there are 15 garments that I’ve worn every month in the past year, and 30 that I’ve worn for more than six months of the year (but then there’s another 31 that I’ve only worn once or twice…)

The information I gather using my inventory really does help me track my usage honestly.  I no longer have to guess about my wear patterns – and there have been some surprises for me in both my ‘work horse’ garments and my ‘rarely worn’ pile.

It has also helped me further develop my wardrobe aesthetic so that it more accurately reflects what I actually wear, rather than what I think I ought to wear.  This, when combined with the other work I’ve been doing on my personal aesthetic, has made purchasing decisions both easier and more useful.

My aim is, over time, to both decrease the overall number of garments I own and wear what I do own thoroughly and often.

I am happy to take my time over this process because it is a process!  I find that if I jump in and force decisions, they rarely work as well as when I let things percolate and flow – something that is also true of life beyond the wardrobe, but more on that sometime soon…

I have no idea why Microsoft picked such a hard to read font as its default ‘normal’ (for all I know it may be mysteriously linked to the conspiracy of the agapanthus and snails…) and I have even less idea why people sometimes actually choose to use it.

It is horrible to look at, hard to read and users run the risk of appearing to be small-minded and/or over-officious (as well as older than they may actually be).

If you want your emails to look professional and official, use Arial like all the real professionals and officials.  11pt is fine.  12pt may look like you’re shouting.

If you want  the clean look of Arial, but with a hint of difference, Trebuchet or Calibri are nice fonts.  Verdana works well in tables and spreadsheets.

If you must have a serifed font to satisfy your classical urges, Bookman Old Style is quite lovely and classic, and has the bonus of being easy to read (it has white space in its rounded letters, unlike TNR).

Please, please, please, if you must use Comic Sans, save it for party invites or jokes (for goodness sake don’t use it in anything professional – unless perhaps you’re a children’s entertainer).

There’s a wonderful range of fonts out there, folks.  Let’s use them  – but wisely!

Here endeth the rant.

(sorry, way too many grumpy TNR emails at work today)

A quote from a fabulous blog full of poems and thought food – thanks, planaquarium…

Wondering what to write,

Thoughts fly through my head

Too fast to capture.

Oh, to have wings to fly

Or feet fleet enough

To catch them…

Instead I sit

And dream.

This photo was taken from my house last full moon.

Scenes like this take my breath away – and help me remember there’s so much more to this world than just my little everyday life.

No wonder people through the ages have believed in magic…

… if we just take time to look and breathe, our world is imbued with wonder.

What is important?

Now I know a bit about what is important to me.  In fact, I’m picking regular readers could write this list for me (in no particular order):

• my family
• belly dance
• creativity
• living simply
• textile crafts/making stuff
• feminism
• reading
• the world we live in
• nature

And this is all very fine and well, but I do have to question how much of this list is important to more than just me.  And while there may be many people who share some or all of my interests/passions/obsessions, I feel that my list is really just the surface level of something deeper: WHY is this stuff important to me?  Digging below the surface hasn’t been all easy, but it has helped me realise the real question I wanted/needed to answer (Note: it is more straightforward finding the answers once you’ve got the right question!)  And that question is:

What is important?

While it may look the same as the question above, it both is and isn’t the same.  Let me explain: ‘Important’ comes at different levels – personal, local, global and probably heaps more.  For awhile I’ve been asking this question at a personal level.  The time has come for me to consider it at other levels, which essentially boils down to this question:

What is truly important for living responsibly and fully as part of this world?

Now answers to this may vary from person to person, especially in the surface results.  But I am looking for core answers/values to underpin my surface.  I haven’t got all my answers yet, and I would be very interested to hear your ideas and musings on this.  I do have a few ideas already (and I intend to explore these each in greater depth in future posts), including:

• compassion
• connection
• curiosity
• recognising ‘enough’
• justice
• passion

What do you think?

Is there anything you would add to this list?  Or leave off?

Please lets talk about this. Let’s discuss, agree, disagree and discuss some more . Then we can then DO this – live our lives meaningfully, repsonsibly and fully.

Comments, please

Malalai Joya has been actively politically involved in post-invasion Afghanistan and has dared to speak out against the ongoing corruption and human rights (especially women’s rights) abuses that characterise modern Afghani politics – all of which got her expelled from the Afghani parliament and leaves her life in danger (she has changed her surname to protect her extended family).

Her memoir is a remarkable read that strongly suggests the news stories we in the West hear about the reconstruction of Afghanistan (all due to Western armies, of course) are largely missing the point: the warloads are still in control of Afghanistan (with a little help from the US) and there is little hope of democracy and a modern state while foreign forces insist on ‘assisting’.  She has this to say about the usefulness of foreign aid:

Today, foreign ‘aid’ only disappears into corrupt officials’ pockets or is in fact used for programmes that legitmise the NATO war.  About this aid, our people can only say, ‘Don’t show me the plam tree, show me the dates.’  Only bitter fruit has grown in recent years.  (p193)

She also speaks to Westerners’ focus on the burqa as the main issue facing Afghani women: “without security or a justice system that protects women from rape, without employment, food and basic services, the issue of the burqa is secondary” (p 205).  I think it is very easy for those of us living in the comfort and security of the West to fixate on highly visible issues, like dress, while we miss seeing the povery, desperation and injustice that are the real issues, because in so many ways they are beyond our experience and thus beyond our comprehension.  We are fortunate indeed to be able to be concerned about appearances!

I have long been fascinated by Afghanistan – and not just because my favourite rugs and jewellery come from there! Afghanistan sits at the crossroads of the world (or at least between the Far East and the Middle East) and its modern history has been dominated by foreign interference.  After reading Ms Joya’s book, I find myself wondering what Afghanistan might have looked like today if the rest of the world had not tromped through it and but had left well alone.  My pick is along with rather more democracy and less opium, we might have had a proud people able to stand tall on the world stage, instead of having to still constantly worry about their sons getting blown up by landmines and their daughters being raped by corrupt men.

Please read her book – it is not a comfortable read, but it is most definitely a worthwhile one.  And then, follow her advice about what we in the West can do to help (excerpts from pp262-265):

• stayed informed about the reality of Afghanistan today – e.g. through news sources like RAWA
• get involved with groups that are working honestly to support woman and men in Afgansitan, and give financial support
• monitor, criticise and work to improve your own government’s foreign policy

And most importantly:

Take part in the political process and organise for social justice.

*A transcript of an interview with Ms Joya in October 2009 can be found here.