Lagom Lifestyle

Our Live LAGOM workshops hosted by Ikea have now come to an end, however I don't think that is the end of our LAGOM journey - as I think we are really adopting a LAGOM lifestyle.
I think when we started I hoped that I/we would make some huge changes to our environmental impact, however what has actually happened was that we had not only managed to maintain the areas that we had already been working on (cloth nappies etc.) during what turned out to be an incredibly difficult and stressful time in our personal lives, but also introducing small but ultimately lasting changes that improve the impact of our everyday lives.

Batteries - I no longer buy single use AAA/AA batteries and wherever possible have avoided purchasing anything that requires other battery types.

Cotton Buds - We have moved to no longer purchasing cotton buds that have plastic stems.

Clothes - I have greatly reduced the clothing that I am purchasing and in fact made it 6 months without purchasing any clothing for myself and only a select capsule wardrobe for my toddler.

Plants - Although I haven't been able to get my vegetable patch up and running this year, I have exchanged all of my fake houseplants with real ones - it is a start!

There are still some areas that I will be focusing on in the coming months, namely snacks and snacking. I have managed to reduce the number of individually packaged snacks that my son eats, but I could continue to reduce this further. As a family we are (slowly) moving towards eating fewer packaged and processed foods as a whole, so hopefully we will find more opportunities to reduce our packaging waste in the future.

Thank you so much to Ikea for running the workshops, I had great fun and learnt so much.

Slow Progress, but Progress None The Less

The LiveLAGOM project is a few months in and surprisingly enough things have not been going 100% to plan and 'life' has been getting in the way.

There are some small changes that we have introduced that have had a big impact however:

- Changing all of our lightbulbs to LED has even meant that we were able to pass on some 'task' lighting floor lamps (that were also used as gymnastic equipment by our toddler B, so I was not sorry to say goodbye to them...).

- We have not bought any single use AA/AAA batteries since starting the project and instead have been slowly replacing all of the batteries with reusables as each item runs out.

The area that I have really been focused on however has been decluttering.

Here are some embarrassing 'before LiveLAGOM' photographs - I am sad to say that this was already well into my decluttering, it had just halted a little. One day I may be brave enough to include the real before photos, but today is not that day!

And here are a couple of the same spaces today - I am not going to say that these are the 'After' photos, as I don't think that I have finished, but hopefully you can see some obvious differences.

You can see that we have even added some curtains to our dining room door, which has made a huge difference to help keeping the heat in downstairs.

The biggest revelation however has been the craft room as we have not only had a huge clear out, but have also thought about why the room was never used and how to change that.
- M's collection of train books have now been transferred into some floor to ceiling Billy bookcases.
- Our 5x5 Kallax was then moved to a new loving home.
- The small computer desk has also found a new home and has been replaced with a kitchen worktop attached to a set of Alex desk drawers and Rast drawers that contain the majority of our craft/office related items. It has two of the new Flysta units to hold the rest of my fabric and sewing related items and we even removed one of the shelf supports so that our printer fits in.

I don't think it is just a coincidence that I have been inspired to actually use this previously unloved space and have managed to make a dungaree dress, jumper and purse so far this year!

Living a LAGOM Life

The word 'Lagom' is a Swedish term for 'just enough', IKEA have had a 3 year program of the same name to encourage their staff and customers to become more sustainable and I have been lucky enough to be chosen to take part in 2018.

The participants have been challenged to work towards a sustainable new year's resolution of our choice and Ikea are very kindly working with us to provide £100 of their products to help us succeed.

I have chosen the resolution to reduce our families waste.

I am planning to do this by tackling a few different areas of our home:

Reusable Batteries - LADDA
(I was shocked when I took a quick inventory of how many items that we have use batteries). This also prevents me having to have safe storage for both new and used batteries to keep them out of my son's reach.

Food Waste
My plans for tackling this are three-fold (and two were specific goals in my 101 in 1001)
Meal Planning and better preparation
So I chose two more glass storage containers - FÖRTROLIG to add to the ones I already have, but this time small ones perfect for meal preparation and pre-chopping vegetables ready just to add to any dishes.
Growing our own, so a beautiful watering can BITTERGURKA to sit on our kitchen windowsill, a kitchen rail system SUNNERSTA to add to the side of our kitchen cabinet to grow some herbs and salad leaves for easy access. I was really lucky to come across some large grey stacking pots JORDGUBBE that have sadly been discontinued, but I chose 4 to go on our patio to grow some larger vegetables.

Unfortunately the container that I had chosen that would work best for our compostables (ÖNSKLIG - it is actually a nappy bucket, but is the perfect size and I can clip it onto a kitchen drawer while chopping/peeling lots of vegetables)was out of stock at the time of my personal shop, as were the containers that I wanted to get for my collection of weird and wonderful flours now that I am moving more towards a Paleo style diet. However that meant that I was able to purchase a rug for my front room HODDE. Although this rug does not look particularly cuddly or cosy, it actually makes a big difference to the feel of our living room and as it can be used inside/outside it is very hard-wearing and perfect for life with a toddler (I love that I can just sweep it off at the same time as the laminate flooring).

I am feeling really motivated and the batteries and food containers were put to immediate use. I will post some photos of all of my items around our home over the coming weeks.

What would your households new year's resolution be? 

101 goals in 1001 days

Earlier this year I made the decision that I had to make some changes in my life. I had started doing some bullet journaling a couple of years ago and while looking through some ideas for layouts I learnt about 'Day Zero Project' after lots of consideration I decided to challenge myself to 101 goals in 1001 days.

I decided to start this challenge exactly 1001 days before my 35th birthday. I will list my goals here and will come back and edit this post to create links to any future blog posts about them.

1. Take vitamin tablets every single day for a whole month.
2. Complete the Whole30.
3. Start eating 'paleo'
4. Drink 8 glasses of water per day for a whole month.
5. Lose 2.5 stones - and keep it off.
6. Exercise 3x per week for 6 months.
7. Only use DivaCup and CSP.
8. Improve dental health - floss and mouthwash.
9. Reduce time spent on social media.
10. Set a complete some monthly challenges.
11. KonMari the whole house
12. Help Mum KonMari her house.
13. Redo both bathrooms.
14. Plant fruit and vegetables.
15. Finish the back garden.
16. Finish the kitchen.
17. Finish the upstairs rooms.
18. Finish the downstairs rooms.
19. Redo front garden.
20. Set up garden railway.
21. Finish hexagon quilt.
22. Make all Christmas cards.
23. Make all Christmas presents.
24. Finish knitted socks for Michelle.
25. Make B a toy.
26. Make covers for front room lampshades.
27. Finish dressing all windows.
28. Start front room huge hexagon quilt.
29. Sew a new front door curtain.
30. Pimp up all planned board games.
31. Complete TKGA basics basics basics.
32. Complete Master Knitter Level 1.
33. Complete Master Knitter Level 2.
34. Start Master Knitter Level 3.
35. Finish Technical Editing course.
36. Watch all purchased craftsy classes.
37. Blog weekly for 1 year.
38. Read 1 book per month.
39. Start teaching knitting classes.
40. Capsule wardrobe (as much handmade as possible).
41. Meal Planning.
42. Pay off credit card.
43. Become as zero waste as possible.
44. Write a budget (and stick to it!).
45. Pay back Mum.
46. Cash in all change in the house.
47. Sell all unwanted items.
48. Start homeschool savings pot.
49. Do 6x no spend weeks.
50. Takeaways limited to 1 breakfast, 1 lunch and 1 dinner per month.
51. Scan all negatives.
52. Organise all digital photos.
53. Get up to date with photobooks.
54. Write up family history research.
55. Finish baby books.
56. Finish answering 'life story' questions.
57. Sort a memory box for each of us.
58. Type up/scan all grandparents books.
59. Have a name necklace made from Grandad's handwriting.
60. Have a hair/milk charm made to celebrate breastfeeding journey.
61. Grow out pixie haircut.
62. Try a new hairstyle 1x per week.
63. Have a daily morning routine.
64. Have a daily evening routine.
65. Start wearing some make up.
66. Keep nails long and decorate them.
67. Wear something I have made everyday.
68. Try the curly girl method on my hair.
69. Try to get at least 6hrs sleep per night.
70. Get ears pierced a second time on the lobes.
71. Potty train B, whenever he is ready.
72. Write a homeschooling plan.
73. Keep a homeschooling journal.
74. Take B to stay in Durham.
75. Take B to stay in Oban.
76. Day out to a sandy beach.
77. Day out to the zoo.
78. Day out to Legoland.
79. Take B to the cinema.
80. Take B to London museums.
81. Take part in a scavenger hunt.
82. Have a birthday party for turning 35.
83. Weekly movie night.
84. Weekly games night.
85. Plan and book Disneyland Paris trip.
86. Go camping.
87. Play all the board games that we own.
88. Make bento lunch 2x per week.
89. Go on 2x dates per year.
90. Start anniversary holidays again.
91. 1 random act of kindness per month.
92. 15mins mindfulness per day.
93. Clean up email inbox.
94. Start a YouTube channel.
95. Write a will.
96. Learn to drive (again).
97. Keep in touch with friends and family.
98. Go on a steam train trip once a year.
99. Follow the Flylady programme.
100. Start Bullet Journaling again.
101. Put £5 into a pot for each completed goal.

Wish me luck, I think I am going to need it!

3 years and a quick catch up!

I'm not quite sure why I stopped posting in 2014, the longer that I didn't post the worse I felt about starting again, but I am back!

Just to catch you up, we are still living in the same house (and still haven't finished working on it, but that is a whole other story - and probably blog post), I had my son B who is now 2.5years old - ah yes I stopped blogging because I was very ill when pregnant... how could I forget... I have left my job and am now a stay at home.

I have been through a difficult period of anxiety and depression, but am working on making changes to start changing my life and I think this will be an excellent place to document that.

Bank Holiday Washout

The terrible bank holiday weather meant that we weren't quite able to finish the bedroom.

We still have one wall without skirting board (needs to be cut outside). My wardrobe door needs to be trimmed down now that the floor has been laid (needs to be cut outside). The headboard needs some alterations so that we do t have to mount it on the wall (need to be cut outside).... Spotting the pattern here?

We were able to put up some pictures and our two floating shelves, build our ikea bed and change the door handles in the built in cupboards.

So until it is actually finished here are some more pictures...

Back to decorating...

I haven't posted for *ages* and if I am honest it is because I was just irritated with the whole house. After the loft insulation kept being delayed we just kind of lost motivation to get anything done.

The good news is that the loft is now insulated with lovely new, clean, fluffy insulation and we have boarded it out so my collection of Christmas ornaments can move out of the hallway!

The other good news is that our bedroom has been decorated - I feel terribly guilty to say that all I did was pick the colours and bought the paint. We paid someone to do the painting and papering (it feels terrible to have to admit that!).

Our reasons were twofold 1. We have never wallpapered anything, and weren't sure a ceiling was the best place to start... And 2. It had really become an issue not being able to do it, as we cleared it out months ago, but then because of the delay with the loft having a knock on effect with everything...

It does look good though!

More details when it is finished...

We are not planning on paying for any other rooms to be decorated - but the hallway and it's 15foot wall is another matter.