Spring is in the air!

It’s May! How wonderful. Now it won’t be long till summer’s here (if you're living in the northern hemisphere that is).

I’m still living sugar free (read about me quitting eating sugar here) and feeling all the more wonderful about it. Quite surprisingly, soon after I left sugar out of my diet I had the urge to start spring-cleaning so I've been doing that but it didn’t seem to be enough that I had my living space clean, my mind was pushing me to do more, to dive below the surface and open drawers and cupboards and get rid of unneeded items stored in there. It’s as if my mind wants to get junk completely out of my life. How peculiar I thought but really good, too. 

I've mainly been working on three different projects relating to this.

One. I’ve had an urge to work on unfinished projects and to finish them. You know how when you have something that you started but for some reason stopped working on it and put it somewhere to wait for the next day and months later it’s still there either gathering dust or just taking space? And even worse than the physical space it’s taking is the knowledge that you have unfinished business somewhere, that nagging feeling that it’s there that just never quite leaves you alone and it weighs you down. 

My biggest unfinished project is a summer dress I started sewing about a year ago. Yes, a year ago. And because I hadn’t finished it by the end of last summer, I kind of lost interest in it. And I’d got to a tricky bit, putting on the zipper and was having difficulties understanding the instructions. And while I was relieved to put it away for a while and spend my time with other things, the bleeding dress was hanging in my bedroom all this time, right in front of my eyes, reminding me that I’d quit, that I’d given up on it, that I hadn't completed a project I'd started. So about a month ago, quite unexpectedly, I took it down again and started working on it. Just like that. I didn’t need to force myself to do it, didn’t need to bribe myself with promises of rewarding myself with something nice if I started sewing it again, nothing like that. That alone stunned me. I could hardly recognise myself. Was this really me? is this what quitting sugar does to you??!! 

 

The dress that's been in the making since May 2013...

Well, in the end it wasn’t quite as painless as that. I stalled again and started putting off working on the cursed thing again, blaming the complex zipper. Then I came up with a brilliant idea. What if I told myself that I only needed to work on it for half an hour? Half an hour is not an awful lot of time but even so you can get quite a lot of done in it if you put your mind to it. So I did, and to emphasise the amount of time I’d put aside for the task, I downloaded a countdown timer app on my mobile, set it to countdown from 30 minutes and set the phone so that I could clearly see the screen while working on the dress.

An amazing thing happened. I set to work and because I knew I only had half an hour I started quite briskly, tackled that tricky bit where I was stuck that turned out to be really quite easy and enjoyable, and half an hour later when the alarm went off I was so immersed in the job that I continued for another half an hour. Result! Since then I haven't needed the timer, I've been happy to work on it a little most nights.

I’ve also read books that I’ve had for quite a while that I’ve been meaning to read for years and I've banned myself from starting any new projects till I’ve finished everything that needs doing. I feel so energised now that the weight of all these unfinished things is lifting. 

Cute they may be but my collection of sample sized

lotions and potions will soon be no more.

Two. My mysterious urge to spring clean my living space has been accompanied with a need to declutter. Understandable, they kind of go hand in hand. I’m particularly keen to get rid of this army of lotions and potions I’ve accumulated over the years and have just one of each item I need. And that isn’t very much at all as I’m trying to avoid unnecessary chemicals and cosmetics. But you know how when you go and buy something at the cosmetics counter of brands like Clinique and Clarins they always give you some freebies to go with it in the hope that you like the samples so much that you go back and buy the full sized product? And at first I’m always on a freebie high, thinking yay, freebies! If for no other reason than because those small packages are so damn cute. Cute they may be but more often than not I just dump them in my cosmetics drawer. So the project now is to go through these, use up all those creams and potions and shampoos and conditioners. And if I’m not willing to do that they find themselves in the bin. 

And three, a project which I’ve now completed, was dying a duvet cover and pillow case set from a colour I really didn’t like anymore to something I really do like. I’ve had that set for years now and was actually thinking of giving it to charity because the colour annoyed me so much but because it’s a good quality set, 100% cotton, and feels really nice I didn’t have the heart to do so. I’d been thinking about buying some fabric dye before but never got round to it but now, full of new found energy and in my best spring-cleaning and decluttering and transformation mode, I bought some. Ooh the excitement when I put everything in the washing machine and the water turned deep purple! And out came the bedding set and some tops I’d put in for a new lease of life in a brand new colour. I really like the colour. Success! 



My duvet cover before and after dying it. Not the best of pictures,
especially as it makes the before colours on the left almost look
better. Believe my words, it looks much better now.

These projects may not sound very exciting but in actual fact they have been quite fun. I feel much lighter, the weight of clutter and unfinished jobs is disappearing and I feel so much better about everything. My workmates have noted how I seem very happy and cheerful. But then again, I'm a person who gets excited about such little things as running out of post-it notes at work. "Ooh, I get to go to the stationery cupboard!" I exclaimed just yesterday. "You really need to get out more" my workmates responded. They're right, of course. I do. I'm working on it.