There's a lot to be said for minimalism

... especially when you're moving house!

This is not going to be the longest of blogs this week because to be honest, I'm exhausted.  It's been one hell of a week.  Remember in last week's blog when I said I might be rocking in the corner after moving house?  Well, let's put it this way, on numerous occasions this week, if I'd actually had the energy to cry then I would have.

This was after we'd moved a sh*t ton of boxes and still have nowhere to sit!!

We always knew deep down that the worst case scenario might actually happen and it very much did.  Due to all the delays thanks to Covid and lockdown, our plans with the house were way behind.  Despite moving last Wednesday, we didn't have a working kitchen until Friday evening.  Alright, not too bad, I hear you say, that's just a couple of nights having a takeaway.  Nope, due to the fact that the kitchen fitter needed workspace, the removals guys literally had to pile all our stuff into one end of the lounge meaning there were boxes on top of boxes on top of more boxes and not a hope of finding anything.  The sofas were stacked on their ends so we only had a couple of deckchairs to sit on and still do I might add, although tomorrow is looking promising for a proper sit down.  I'll not bore you with the other details but basically we didn't have one solitary room in the house that was finished.  I also wore the same clothes for 3 days (in the middle of a mini heatwave!) and I haven't done my hair or make-up for a week!

Over the last few days, we've come to realise that we have way too much stuff for two people.  It's just ridiculous to be perfectly honest.  We'd already started to question the way we lived whilst in lockdown and this brought it home even more.  We have to be more responsible going forwards and not buy things just for the sake of it.  For example, additional kitchen items must not be bought unless something has broken or there's another very good reason for replacing it.  Any old items must be recycled and I'm ashamed to say that we did have to put some things in the skip because we simply had nowhere to put them.  We found food items that we'd stored in cupboards in the garage at our old house with best before dates of 2017 and older!  We'd simply bought additional products at some point and forgotten about the others.  That cannot continue to happen, which it won't in all honesty as we don't have any additional storage space in the garage.  There were other items that we'd kept simply for the sake of it, just in case, which should have gone to charity shops years ago.

This week has made us realise how ridiculously lucky we are and how we cannot continue to take things for granted.  It's been a real wake up call and although I always thought I was doing the right thing by donating old clothes to charity shops, there's a whole lot more I could have been doing too.  We've also had the great fortune of finding some amazing people who have pulled out all the stops to get us up and running as soon as possible.  Due to other problems with the kitchen, we had to have it more or less re-wired.  The kitchen fitter knew an electrician and also a tiler, who's coming to finish off the kitchen tomorrow.  We've had contact with other wonderful trades people who have helped us get through this very stressful time.  But whatever the issues, at the end of the day, we had a roof over our heads, water (most of the time!), electricity (most of the time), heating (too hot, we didn't need it but it was there) etc etc.

Maybe next week we'll also have an orangery with windows and a roof!!

I'm hoping that by then we'll be more organised but until then my peeps, take care and most of all, become a minimalist .... NOW!! 

#2020