Hubbie and I finished the baby wardrobe today! I give him full credit for the manual lifting and screwing and putting together of the entire unit, and he calls me his project manager, as I read the instructions and try to work out what goes next, handing over the materials and keeping it all moving along. 😁
I felt really tired after we finished that, and just sat for the longest time… but knowing the wardrobe was up there, just waiting for me, I had to like, go in the room and potter around, moving this, moving that, sorting this, sorting that…
Here is the wardrobe complete, and then to the right is the wardrobe after I’ve been dabbling in the room.
I actually love this organisation part of it, I get such a buzz from putting things in their rightful place! I still have a lot to do, but knowing I’ve started and am on my way gives me such joy. 🤩💖🤰😁
Well, she’s not so little anymore, but she’s still shorter than me.
For now. 😏
She loves going to the library. She actually loves the local bookshop more, but I remind her we don’t need to buy all the books, we can borrow some, you know, and then return them for more. 🤣
When we go to shopping centres, she is as fascinated with books as much as I am. She recently bought a book while out one day shopping, and read it in 3 days!
Days later, she got me to put the rest of the series on hold at our local library.
Today she found one of those books at her school library.
She’s reading it on the couch now. 🥰
She runs reading programs for her toys. She sits at the edge of her bed and reads aloud to them, her room closed, us adults shut off from her reading haven.
But I can hear her. I love it.
She is developing piles of books around the house, just like me. Her books, her local library books, and her school library books.
And then there are the school readers. 🤦♀️
I tell her “be careful! Don’t mix them up!”
She is ORGANISED. She won’t forget what came from where.
She knows life is too short as well. Whereas I need to know the ending, I need the closure, she will start reading something, and if she doesn’t like it, just leaves it.
I know, the horror!
But actually, I think she’s smarter than me. She knows that her time is more worthy than that.
I never intended baby girl to read like me. All I wanted was for her to appreciate stories and books, and to have fun with anything that she thought was interesting.
But she genuinely seems to enjoy it. And sadly for me, she is actually getting to read more than I am these days…
In the past I would have been pretty upset to have plans changed and cancelled on me.
But in recent years I’ve learnt not to expect too much and to roll with the flow when it comes to life.
So when the hairdresser called during school drop-off this morning to say that my long overdue (3 months, thanks covid) regrowth, foil and cut was cancelled because a hairdresser had gone into early labour…
I didn’t get too upset. Sad, yes, that my hair was gonna look crap for another week.
But then I moved on.
After pondering and stuffing around for a while at home about what to do, I realised this stretch of time was the perfect opportunity for a lengthy and important job.
Cleaning out the wardrobe.
It’s probably something I should have done in lockdown, right, and yet of course I had no motivation to do it then. Call me crazy, but I have more motivation now, out of lockdown, to do these cleansing and sorting and decluttering tasks, than I did during lockdown with all that time (hmmm, kind of) on our hands.
Anyway, I put the music on, and took out all of my clothes from the wardrobe.
You see, people think you can just sift through and take them out… nuh uh uh!
That is cheating!
You see, there’s a psychology to it. You must take it ALL out, because only then when it’s out do you ask yourself honestly, ‘am I willing to put that back in?’
It took 2 hours of thinking, maybe piles, no piles, and then a whole lot of fashion parades where I worked out what went in what pile…
Let’s just say not fitting into clothes is a sure-fire way to get rid of them. 😂
I have a contact nearby who is a collector for a charity, and I can’t wait to pass them on so I can rid myself of what I don’t need, but also give some perfectly great items of clothing to those that will benefit from it.
I have to admit though… I chucked out a heap, and yet the wardrobe is still full. 🤦♀️
You see, it was kinda bursting before, but now it’s just FULL. 🤣
I have a whole collection of stuff I suddenly inherited (i.e. it was ceremoniously dumped here after my parents suddenly sold their house – or you could say I just failed to take it with me since I moved out of there 11 years ago 😬) that I’ve been slowly going through and checking out, for the past week or so.
There is a throw pile. Old bags, lots of school paperwork, dozens of plastic coin change bags (remember those?)
There is a donate pile. Think a glass chess set that I bought my Dad for a birthday, I think, which he never used… why did that end up with me again?
There is a maybe pile. Like these glass/photograph coasters, or that dancing sunflower with the saxophone that used to work on battery, but is struggling now…
There is a ‘whoops this isn’t mine better check with sis/parents’ pile. VHS tapes, some kind of charger?
Then there is the KEEP pile.
OMG, the keep pile. Loads and loads and loads and loads of PAPER STUFF.
Of course.
Old diaries. School work. Reports. Assignments. I have so much, and I still have one big bag of folders to go through.
What kinds of memories have I found?
All my work payslips pre-2007. ALL OF THEM.
All my high school reports.
The letter my Jeans West Work Experience manager wrote back to my teacher when I was in year 10… “she learnt to apply herself in the time given, but she was a bit shy.”
Ha ha, so me.
Uni assignments, oooh, I’ve loved these. I have a script for a 5 minute film called Doggy Day that I wrote and planned myself. I have an interview I did on my Dad on his life and immigration to Australia which I got good marks for. An article about the RSPCA that I should have sought further help on to get publication, judging by my uni teacher’s comment in the notes. Damn, should have chased that one up.
And so many textual analyses of books and film, oh my goodness.
High school diaries and notes with Hubbie’s name written over them. 😍💖
Psychology, Philosophy, and Ancient History handouts.
My old work pass.
I opened one of my old diaries at whim, to see what day I’d end up on. One entry had me in 1999, 16 years old, where I had met with one of my oldest friends at our local milkbar and we’d ended up walking to the house of our primary school friend who we didn’t see much anymore.
I wrote how we had sat in her bedroom, it had been a bit weird at first but then we’d relaxed and it had turned into the good ol’ days and all the memories we shared.
My 16 year-old self wrote how it was weird, a bit sad, that someone we used to be so close to about five years earlier, we didn’t see much of at all anymore, and our conversations had turned to pleasantries and reminiscing of the past, rather than the stuff you typically share with your closest friends – “Did you hear what happened to her?” “Did you hear about the party last Friday?” – type thing.
And I observed in this diary, and wondered, if the friends I had then in high school, whether we would be like that one day, exchanging pleasantries and talking about the past as the only thing we could hold onto.
In 6 years time, would we be a bit awkward like that too?
I smiled. SmikG NOW smiled.
I smiled as I read, wanting to jump into the pages of my old diary and grab 16 year-old SmikG, grabbing her by the shoulders to shake her excitedly and tell her –
“Guess what? You stay friends with them ALL! A couple of them drop off, sure, but you’ll come to realise they weren’t real friends anyway!
Your true friends are still friends… not 6 years later, but even 21 years later!”
And 16 year-old me, would undoubtedly have gone –
“😲😲😲”
And asked immediately –
“Who aren’t I friends with anymore?”
And this SmikG would have shook her head with a cluck cluck cluck and said.
“Dear girl… I think you already know.”
💖💖
I’ve had so much fun going back in time, and it’s made me realise how much I’ve changed, but also, how much I am still exactly the same.
Still passionate about the written word, still writing stories, still experimenting in different forms, and still wondering about the future and life in general…
I wonder what SmikG 10 years from now would say to me now…
Today was her first one. Saturday and Sunday follow, and are a given, sure. But then she also has Monday, and of course Tuesday, our Melbourne Cup Day, off.
5 DAYS.
I think the school decided this early in term 3, and also gave us parents warning too, in case we wanted to take some extra time off, “post-Covid” to plan a family getaway…
Little did ANYONE know that we’d only get to some kind of post-Covid normal (not even normal completely, not yet) this week.
And when the rules of 25km distance are still firmly in place, and accommodation is STILL off the cards, well…
Holiday, schomoliday.
I had to work today. Because, life.
I went to check on baby girl during the day, to see what was keeping her SO quiet in her bedroom…
And I found her sitting on the floor, with two big piles of books, consisting of activity books, colouring-in books, papers, all kinds of paper-crafty related things, that had been combined in this big box near her bed.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“I’m making a keep and throw pile.”
Oh! I gasped, hand coming to my chest.
This is what we do every so often. We go through papers, toys, bits and pieces that she’s been hoarding, and we decide what must be kept, and what has to be thrown.
I was shocked. She had gone of her own accord, to do her own form of organising, when I hadn’t even asked her?
She was definitely my baby girl!
“Oh! I’m so proud of you honey!”
And I went back to work, thinking finally…
Finally, it’s sunk in.
What has been your proud parent “they’re a chip off the block” moment?
It wasn’t even planned. (Seriously, none of my days are anymore).
It all kinda flowed. From de cluttering baby girls toys, to attacking closets, emptying old boxes, organising files, and cleaning out drawers…
I did one after another after another. And considering how grey the day was, and how flat I felt at the start… I felt pretty damn productive and awesome after the day’s work.
There’s nothing quite like clearing and organising your external state, to help fix your internal one. Don’t tell me the two aren’t connected – they are.
I was looking up books of interest at the local library a while ago, and when I came across a particular title I thought “I must have it.”
I put it on reserve and was happy to finally go in and pick it up today.
Although it says it’s about de-cluttering (and it is) it’s managing clutter based on the principles of feng shui, a topic I’ve been looking into a lot lately.
While baby girl was at school, and Hubbie was beside me watching basketball, I got through about 80 pages of it… sure it’s a small book, but I think I’m making up in my lack of fiction reading by overdosing on non-fiction (that and the subject matter is so intriguing to me).
There’s a lot of psychological issues tied up in accumulating items, being unable to throw things away, and allowing dirt to build up in your home, as well as not tending to things that need repair in the house, all things I’m discovering as I turn page by page.
I’m going to have most of the book read by the end of the week I’m sure, and along with it I’ll have a sure-fire plan to organise and throw out heaps of unnecessary stuff in our house. Watch this space!
And just, not-so-quietly… how great are libraries? Like, you borrow something, enjoy it, and then return it for somebody else to gain satisfaction from…
There are so many of you that will roll your eyes here… and I DON’T CARE.
Because today was the first day of implementation, and already things are working.
I’ve worked out how to succeed.
How to get ahead in life.
How to make your dreams come true.
And all you need, is…
A DIARY.
(Along with a hefty dose of passion, determination, and resilience, but eh).
I needed a place to organise my writing goals and thoughts. I realised it was all in my head, and my 58 to-do lists were not quite doing their job. Sure they reminded me of what I had to do, but they weren’t really making me accountable and tracking what I did each day.
Insert, the DIARY.
I bought the above ‘buffalo diary’ from Typo a couple weeks back. It displays a week per two-page spread, and my plan is to look at my week ahead from my fridge monthly planner (planners EVERYWHERE), see what days I’m not travelling or with appointments, and then slot in times through the week in my DIARY to do writing-related things and work on freelancing.
It is soooo simple. Things like this are the necessary first step to making things happen… it is so clear to me now. Today I opened the week to see what was on today’s page, and guess what?
I actually worked on what was listed for today.
A bloody miracle. No procrastination either.
And another little motivator for me (other than my eventual success and world-wide stardom?)
Stickers.
Each time I complete the task subscribed to me that day, I’m going to put a little star next to my diary entry…
Like in school. Tee hee hee. Maybe a gold one too. To match the front cover lettering. 🌟
So this might seem like a boring one to some, but I was rapt to catch up on a lot of photo stuff today.
I am now up-to-date on all my photos (up to the beginning of Feb 2020), meaning they have been uploaded to a digital cloud, downloaded onto my computer, and then backed-up to an external hard drive.
I have to do this you see, this long and lengthy chain of photo organisation, because I have so much.
So many photos.
And I refuse to pay cloud services extra beyond their whatever amount of free GB they give me… so as I approach the storage maximum and start getting warnings, I start –
Download. Back up. Delete.
REPEAT.
I delete the ones I have backed up, and make room on the cloud for more photos to be uploaded.
You may think I sound so super organised, but trust me, months before I got my new phone last year, I was in a 2 month frenzy to upload approximately 8000 photos from mine and Hubbie’s phones.
And it took so long because both our phones were crashing in the upload process. It wasn’t automatic like now. Now I don’t do anything and my phone just magically sends anything I’ve taken into that virtually, almost limitless place in the sky… 😉
My plan is to do all of this at the end of each month. Then I won’t have a massive backlog of 1000s of photos and phones crashing and me stressing I am going to lose precious photos.
I can’t lose photos!
My only problem now is… developing.
Do you still develop photos, so you have them in print? Do you prefer to keep them in digital copy, like on disc or USB to trawl through when you feel? Or are photo books more your thing?
I am genuinely curious, because although I may be up-to-date with the whole upload/download/back-up/delete thing, I can honestly tell you that I am 4 years behind in the OTHER process.
2016. That is where I am up to in developing. I am ‘old school,’ and like to see and feel the photos, but can’t help thinking of my Mum’s words when I think of the lifetime of photos I have and will continue to accumulate… “You need a separate house for all of that!”
carcrashgratitude 