Empress Bat's Journal: happiness

Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts

PROJECT: Fun Mail

In this fast era of instant messaging and emails and no time to stop to smell the chocolate, sometimes we can forget to enjoy moments, to embrace fun, to smile. The only thing in your post box is a bill and some junk mail, and your life is full of stress.

I decided that as part of my goals for this year I will do my small part to spread some happiness. I have created a little project for myself called PROJECT FUN MAIL.

I will be sending cards, small fun gifts, stickers and other ephemera to people at random. The aim is to spread some joy to others, and hopefully they can then spread joy to the people they know to, and it can be an exponential happiness!!

Some of my customers will be recieving mail from me, as well as family, friends, and people I do not know but 'met' via social media.

Why not join me in spreading the joy.

Post by Empressbat's Emporium.

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About Me: I work full time, I am also studying for a therapist qualification in Naturopathy specialising in Herbalism, I have a small craft 'business', I am co-admin of an auction page on facebook to help other small hobby businesses, i maintain my own 'store' facebook page, I blog at least once a week and I maintain a facebook page created to support small home businesses and hobby sellers

Pegs as creative storage solutions: Part Four of the 'Organise and Beautify' saga

In my constant struggle to declutter and keep myself and the house organised, I have decided to be creative with storage. It is more a MUST do, rather than a 'oooh isn't this creative lets do it', due to the lack of spare cash in the household!

The house is small, we need to use the walls as much as possible to stash things. Cash is limited so we need to use what we have to create a storage solution.

As I have been decluttering the house I noticed so many paper bits: receipts, bills to attend to, memos... lots of bits of paper that may not need long term storage but need to be in the forefront of my consciousness until they are actioned.

I decided they could be stored on the walls, with clothes pegs. I haven't gone completely insane..yet.. my batlings, stay with me on this.

All i needed was a long piece of picture wire, some nice hooks, and some pegs. I have all those things so no need to buy anything extra here.

The pegs looked a bit hohum, and as you know I do not like drab and dull. I looked at my box of washi tape and knew just how to decorate those wooden clothes pegs!

wooden clothes pegs and washi tape, what a great idea!

Covered in washi tape pegs are useful and decorativet!

In case you are looking for some lovely washi tape designs at very low prices, I buy most of my washi tape from Chiyogami Designs , they have an ebay store and I have always found them to be reliable and honest sellers, with an amazingly diverse range of washi tape as well as Japanese print origami paper.

After covering the pegs with washi tape, I then put some small brass hooks into the wall, (you could also use removable adhesive ones if you are renting) and attached picture wire, the wire is taut so it can handle weight of the paper without sagging.

Finished storage solution: I can even put my spare fountain pen ink there!

You may have noticed I have a lot of washi tape, and as I said before most of my beautiful washi tapes come from Chiyogami Designs. Where do I store these?

On a trouser hanger of course!

Decorative tape stored on a trouser hanger

I would love to hear your creative storage ideas for organising and decluttering, please feel free to let me know them in the comments!

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Challenges and Obstacles to organisation: Part Three of the 'Organise and Beautify' saga

I really want to get the house decluttered, organised, beautiful and peaceful. I have been reading a lot of blogs by proud 'stay at home' people who spend a lot of time organising and making things white and shiny. (Their blog photos also show them beaming with fresh shiny faces and not one hair out of place and not a pimple in sight..yeh bitter i may be...) From what I can tell, as they do not have 'day jobs' outside of the home they can spend a lot of time in this domestic pursuit of organising and beautifying their homes.

Please do not misunderstand me, I am not saying these people are NOT working, I am just saying that as their WORKplace IS the HOME and FAMILY fulltime, they can spend the time WORKING on making the house organised and pretty. I acknowledge that they are working and working very hard.

Additionally the How to Organise your house bloggers all seem to have large houses. One blog I read about making the laundry organised and a happy environment, had a laundry bigger than our loungeroom/dining/kitchen/bathroom combined. Not to mention a blog I read last week about how to organise a loungeroom; their loungeroom was as big as our house.

These blogs however are inspiring and motivate me to work out how to make our house an organised, pretty and decluttered peaceful home with what we have; and make me think of ways to overcome the challenges of making the place peaceful and organised, while facing obstacles of:

not a lot of 'spare' cash,
a very small house,
a house that was a 'flood victim ' in 2011 with no insurance paid out, still trying to replace furniture
working full time outside of the home with long commutes (equating to only having weekends to actually do anything in the house).

So let me look at these challenges and think of ways to work with them to success in my declutter/organisation goal.

Not a lot of cash

This means I need to be even more creative by working with things I already own as well as keep an eye out at second hand shops and ebay auctions to purchase things we need at a low cost.

I have been decorating and repurposing old cupboard boxes as storage boxes and I use them for stashing craft supplies, fabric, and stationery. You can read about my 'upcycling' of old cardboard storage boxes here.

We recently purchased second hand solid pine shelving unit from ebay, for $40. New it would have been well over $200. We keep an eye out for good quality storage bargains and sometimes we find great things at a low cost.

A very small house

A small house means, keep the clutter at a minimum, THINK before we buy anything (do we need it, where is it going to be stored, what gets donated/discarded to make room for it).

It also means we need to think of storing UP: taking advantage of walls and putting floor to ceiling shelves in for example, and hanging things up on hooks on the walls to clear floor space.

Lost our furniture in the flood

Okay yep I know, the flood was three years ago, but as the insurance refused to pay anything, we have got by with the generous donations from friends, family, and total strangers. We have re-stained, varnished and repurposed the donated shelves, tables, and chairs, and are doing a lot to make the items we were given look refreshed as well as useful. (it is amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do)

No time

We have almost a four hour round trip each day to and from work, and then an eight hour day in our workplaces, this means that we are exhausted by the time we get home. In order to get us some time, we cook on the weekends and freeze meals to reheat on week nights. That way husband, his son, and I have nutritious meals to choose form and with the flick of the microwave are eating in less than ten minutes.

I utilise my filofax to keep me organised and allot certain tasks to certain days. I do not put times on the tasks, just assign them to block days so i know that sometime that day this needs to be done.

On the weekends we get the washing done, cook meals for the week, and do the basic housework that needs to be done. We need to be organised with our time so that we can manage to find a few hours to relax in a week.

We also assign small ad hoc tasks to ourselves: for example today I am sorting through my clothes, discarding the torn, faded clothes that are beyond repair (assigning them to car rags), and repairing the ones that need and can be fixed; adding any good clothes that i no longer want to a charity bag, and then neatly placing my To Keep clothes on the hanging device i have for them ( i do not have a wardrobe).

To conquer the 'we have no time' to declutter and organise the house obstacle we need to be in control of our time.

Storage boxes i 'prepared earlier' organised in a shelf

I would be very interested in ideas on how others conquer challenges to keeping the house organised and beautiful. Particularly if you, like us, have a small house and need to be inventive on how to organise the things you need or want to keep.

Please feel free to comment.

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About Me:
I work full time, I am also studying for a therapist qualification in Naturopathy specialising in Herbalism, I have a small craft 'business', I am co-admin of an auction page on facebook to help other small hobby businesses, i maintain my own 'store' facebook page, I blog at least once a week and I maintain a facebook page created to support small home businesses and hobby sellers
............................................................................................................... Please visit me on etsy! www.etsy.com/shop/empressbat handcrafted gothic goodies at bargain prices. see me on etsy! www.etsy.com/shop/empressbat ...Please visit me on etsy! www.etsy.com/shop/empressbat handcrafted gothic goodies at bargain prices. see me on etsy! www.etsy.com/shop/empressbat

Organised chaos? Part one of the 'Organise and Beautify' saga

Looking at blogposts and Pinterest images of super organised rooms, amazingly organised handbags, shelves with everything labelled... makes me sigh! I would love to be so organised that I knew where everything was, and everything was labelled, and it all looked artistically pleasing. I have read books on how to declutter, I have bought filing systems, I have bought well crafted organisation boxes. All to no avail.

What am I missing here? Am i destined to always be a person whose creativity outweighs my ability to actually keep things organised?

I look around my study/computer room/craft room/hang out and am so depressed by the clutter and chaos around me.

The only thing that is organised is my filofax!! Why can't everything else be as under control?

I have had enough of the mess in this room!
I have had enough of the disarray in the pantry!
My clothes (I don't even have many!) are stowed away untidily.

Time to start operation 'Organise and Beautify'

Stay tuned for the next episode in my aim to organise myself! (I manage to keep my filofax organised, functional and pretty... so hey i can do this!)

In the meantime please view these blogs from very organised people:

Label me organised: blog by a lady who is studying, working, and blogging, and is also extremely organised.

I heart organising : blog by a stay at home parent who manages to create beautiful and organised rooms, shelves, things .. while maintaining a home and being a good spouse and parent.. please check her blog out!

Feel free to post a comment: hints , laughter...anything

............................................................................................................... Please visit me on etsy! www.etsy.com/shop/empressbat handcrafted gothic goodies at bargain prices. see me on etsy! www.etsy.com/shop/empressbat ...Please visit me on etsy! www.etsy.com/shop/empressbat handcrafted gothic goodies at bargain prices. see me on etsy! www.etsy.com/shop/empressbat

Thought for the day

............................................................................................................... Please visit me on etsy! www.etsy.com/shop/empressbat handcrafted gothic goodies at bargain prices. see me on etsy! www.etsy.com/shop/empressbat ...Please visit me on etsy! www.etsy.com/shop/empressbat handcrafted gothic goodies at bargain prices. see me on etsy! www.etsy.com/shop/empressbat

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