Much as I dismiss the tests, the fact that I wasn’t a Finisher does actually seem to have held some water. We’ve come a long way in the last few years. The contents of our house must have at least halved. We’re nearly at the point we want to be with all our stuff. Ok, so we’ll never achieve the 100 things challenge, but to be honest that’s not really what we’re about. As long as the stuff we’re surrounded with is of use or value (by which I mean it means something to us), we’re happy. And when I said “nearly” I really meant it. We’re so close! Yet there are things around that just keep us from feeling like we’ve got there. The bits.

You know how it goes, you sort out all your stuff and there’s this box left at the end. It’s stuff you don’t really think you want but then again you’re a bit slow to get rid of it. It’s stuff you can’t bring yourself to just give away. It’s stuff you need to find time to make decisions about. In the meantime it’s sitting there. The box. It represents all those unfinished projects (you know, that “To Do” list that you keep re-writing with a new date at the top). It gets in the way. I have to move it around every time we have guests in the spare room. I have to look at it at some point every day. Occasionally I remove the contents and shuffle them around a bit and put them back in. It’s on my mind. Sometimes it even makes me a bit nuts and I have a rant about getting something done about it. Sometimes I try and shift the blame and get Simon to sort his stuff in the hope that it will give me the motivation to sort mine. Deep down I know I just need to FINISH it.

Can I step outside my personality type? What lies on the other side of project Reduce Stuff? There’s only one way to find out.

During these times my children play together. I sometimes have to intervene, but on the whole they play beautifully. I hear them giggling, chatting, making up stories, going on aeroplanes, making dens, having picnics. My older daughter “reads” to her little sister. And they collect stuff and distribute it around our home. By stuff I mean feathers, flowers, little piles of grass, glass beads that for some reason appear in our garden, empty snail shells. Mostly it’s stuff they have found outside and sometimes it isn’t as clean as the stuff you would choose to live with.

I do remember being in that place. Finding those things fascinating and wanting to collect them. My sister and I made boxes of similar bits as holiday souvenirs. I have to remind myself, however, of the importance those little things have now I’m older and no longer live in that world.

Today I made a parenting mistake. I didn’t take the time to stop and think. I was tidying the house and cleaning. Not something I do with any routine or system. I just found myself with an hour when the girls were busying themselves. I whipped through the bathroom with a rubbish bag and without thinking threw away a rather scruffy feather which had been sitting on the windowsill for a few days.

At bedtime our story book mentioned feathers and the girls jumped up and said “we’ve got a feather, we’ll go and find it and show it to you”. Ah. As they dashed off to the bathroom I asked Simon “how do they remember all that stuff? They haven’t touched that feather for days”. And he said, rather profoundly “It’s part of the landscape that makes up their world”.

So much as having a tidy house is really important to me, I promise to be extra careful from now on with the little things the girls bring home. Minimalism is great, but it has to accommodate the world inhabited by two small children. After all, it’s their house too.

Still, my first morning in the office since mid-December and I’m going to spend a little time organising myself and reviewing where I’m at with printing and other projects. Doing all this just makes me think about how I go about organising myself though and I’m going to waste just a bit more time writing about it rather than doing it……

I’m pretty new to blogging and all things associated with it but so far it has helped me to really focus my ideas about life and connect with some great people who are interested in the same things. It has also helped me make some really important decisions about what I want and perhaps more crucially what I don’t want (I want more experiences from life and less stuff – sounds so simple and it is). What it hasn’t done is help me find a way to get there. A way to stay organised, focused, move my projects forward, keep my life flowing in the right direction, not get distracted. In fact, the sheer amount of advice and information has been, at times, more baffling than it has been helpful.

Clearly different things work for different people, but I guess I just don’t respond well to being told that this particular way is the way to do something. I imagine I share a preferred way of learning with at least some other people out there, but the direct, “this is the way” one ain’t it. Blogs that present information in this way are so often contradictory, even within themselves on occasion. I’ve learned, for example, to make a list, not to make a list, to prioritise, not to prioritise, to de-clutter, of course not to de-clutter, to organise, and yes, you guessed it, not to organise (the argument here being that if you have stuff to organise, you have too much stuff….). I’ve learned the importance of setting myself goals that I must achieve in order to be productive, and then to forget the rules, not to set goals for fear of failing. To digitise everything but of course not to constantly be at the beck and call of digital devices but to switch off from the world. Blogs that set out bizarre systems seemingly for the sake of having a system.

I don’t ever seem to manage to follow a particular system either. I read a very good book recently which set out a whole approach to life. It works, apparently, and on the face of it it certainly seemed to offer solutions to all the things I want to achieve. A system for keeping notes, having a clear desk, not forgetting stuff, moving forward on projects, being productive, achieving. But it fundamentally goes against my instinctive way of organising myself. It requires constant attention. It’s like a machine that needs to be fed otherwise it goes crazy and sends your world into disarray. I have a more ad-hoc approach. I have limited time in the office and two small children who require my attention (and to whom I’d much rather give it!). I can’t devote enough of my brain capacity to such a system. I’m not organised enough to be organised!

So how do I learn? Well I’ve found out over the years that my learning style is much less direct. I learn from other people’s stories. My favourite blogs are those which offer someone else’s experiences for me to share. No right or wrong implied, no direction given, take from it what you will. I wonder if people are essentially unchangeable. If we can tweek our ways and methods but major change just isn’t possible. Or is it just me? Our mothers advise us girls that we can’t change the men in our lives and to try is just a recipe for heartbreak. Maybe that goes for me too. I can’t seem to adopt another person’s system. Interesting though they are to read, those lists of ten ways to do whatever just don’t work. I have to find my own way. It would be great though, if a list like that did work. So quick, no effort required, just tick them off and away you go.

Right then, where’s that piece of paper….