Tag Archives: decluttering

Great Bullet Journal Spread Ideas for May

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Great Bullet Journal Spread Ideas for May Suzie Speaks

This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small amount of money if you make a purchase from any of the Amazon links included.

All of the images included were given with full permission from their creators and I have linked each account – feel free to go and check out the great Bullet Journal spreads they are creating on Instagram!

May seems to have come round so fast! I decided that my theme for this month is focused on the idea of simplicity – it has been rather overwhelming in recent times and I have become much more conscious on self-care and getting rid of things that are unnecessary. I have reduced my usual number of spreads and made them much more simple to match, creating vases with flowers, books and plants and accenting certain areas with a pale grey Tombow Dual Brush Pen. My main inspiration was taken from a YouTube May ‘Plan With Me’ tutorial by Christine My Linh from 2018 – I loved the simple drawings and layout. Continue reading →

How to Live a More Simple Life

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I’ve had a busy week / few weeks / month seems to be a staple sentence within a number of my blog posts. It’s isn’t an exaggeration as it’s rare that I get a long period of uninterrupted time to myself, and when I have logged off on a Friday night my brain has often felt more than a little fuzzy. However, being busy doesn’t equate to stress in the way it did when I was teaching – I’m lucky in that a lot of the things that I do and experience during each week vary widely and are usually lots of fun – but over recent months I have been trying to consciously trying to take steps to make life more simple. I have created lots of habits individually which I have blogged about over a period of time, but even just focusing on one of these could make a large amount of difference to your stress levels.
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Simple and Effective Ways to Build Healthy Habits

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Simple and Effective Ways to Adopt Daily Healthy Habits

As my workload has increased over recent months I have found that my general feeling of anxiety and overwhelm has grown with it. I have recognised the fact that I easily slip into a familiar and comfortable rut when I feel like this, and so I have had to develop a consistent routine and adopt healthy habits to continue to be productive and motivated. Everything is instantly easier when done in moderation, and so I have taken the time to make sure that these daily habits are broken down into small chunks, becoming part of my routine instead of perceiving them as extra tasks to add to my permanently large lists. Here are some healthy habits that I have incorporated into my day.

Mindfully focus on the positive. I have a specific set of mantras and quotes that I remind myself of each morning.

Wake up earlier, even if it just by fifteen minutes. While the prospect of dragging yourself out of a warm comfy bed is the last thing that most of us want to do (particularly if you already have an early start), but those extra minutes will give your brain chance to wake up for the day. Use the time to stretch, do some deep breathing or meditation exercises. I also avoid using the snooze button.

Plan, plan and plan some more. I’ve mentioned on more than a few occasions about utilising a Bullet Journal Notebook to help organise my mind and daily activities. I use a daily tracker for my client jobs, a monthly calendar to keep an overview on upcoming events and activities and a daily log for individual tasks that I need to complete. Before I go to bed I fill out the tracker for the work I have completed (which takes five minutes as it is simply filling in some boxes), look over my monthly calendar and then write my jobs list for the following day in my daily log section. This means that I have a general idea of what I need to do when I start work and saves me the time (and inevitable anxiety) of having to figure out a plan when I have just woken up. Here’s a great post on useful Habit Trackers to develop in a Bullet Journal.

Develop a routine, schedule your time and avoid sabotaging yourself. Procrastination is a huge time waster – block out what you need to achieve and give yourself a reasonable time frame to do it, focusing on just one thing.

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Top Tips for Selling at a Car Boot Sale

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The Bloke and I are hoarders. We’re not obsessive – we don’t keep things like old newspapers, boxes or general household goods, but we both are easily attached to things that we consider to be of sentimental value. As a result, our house is filled with stuff, even more so now the wedding is over.

On a whim, we decided to try and downsize and sell some of our things in a car boot sale, creating some space and hopefully earning some cash in the process.

It was an eye opening experience.

We found a reputable car boot about half an hour away that didn’t require you to sign up and only charged £8.00 per car. We were ruthless and threw together a load of things that we could possibly sell, and at 5.45am we found ourselves stood in a muddy field in freezing temperatures… as you do.

Six hours later, we had sold all but one box of the stuff we had brought, and I had a brilliant time talking to loads of lovely people. I learned a lot, and I was already planning the next one by the time we drove home. Continue reading →

So, What Now?

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The Bloke and I met up with a friend that we haven’t seen in a few years. As we were chatting and catching up, he asked us a question that has been in my head ever since:

‘So, what’s the plan next?’

I suddenly realised that, for the first time in over two years, I didn’t have a plan, or goal, or even a general direction that I wanted to go in. Since 2015 I have changed my job, got engaged, got married and been on our honeymoon, and these large life adventures have predominantly taken up the majority of my headspace. Now that it’s all done and dusted, what do I do now? Continue reading →

50 Things to Remove from Your Home and Your Life

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Decluttering and minimalism

Updated 2022: This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small amount of money if you make a purchase from any of the Amazon links included…

I’m a hoarder. It’s one of the first things I talked about when I started blogging all those years ago – I like to keep everything for so many reasons: future crafty projects like scrapbooks, saving memories and often as a ‘just in case.’ After moving house several times in the last four years, it became evident that I had amassed more than I ever wanted or needed, so I have embarked on a self-styled project in recent months to rid my house (and my life) of unnecessary items that took up much needed space.

Home

Before I started, I gave myself a one year rule: anything that I hadn’t read, listen to, worn or looked at had to go. I then decided on three categories for the physical items: rubbish and recycling, charity and sale-worthy.

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50 Easy Steps to Make Life Better

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Easy steps and life hacks

This was a list of physical, psychological, financial and emotional things that I created a couple of months ago to make life that little bit easier… and it really works. Of course, it’s impossible to do all of these in a day, but I have broken it down into smaller chunks – I’ve found that incorporating things into a daily routine, while occasionally adding in a few extra tasks makes day-to-day life easier and good for the soul.

1. Find a mantra. I have one that I refer to regularly during difficult times: Create a life that you don’t need to take a vacation from. This is what drives me in almost everything that I do.

2. Learn the power of no, and recognise what you do and don’t owe others.

3. Declutter. Be ruthless. Anything that you haven’t read, worn or listened to in a year serves no purpose and is simply taking up space. Sell, give away and/or upcycle. For that extra feel-good factor, take your unwanted items to a clothing bank or charity shop.

4. Create a meal plan and, where possible, prepare food in advance. To make it more exciting, research cheap and easy recipes that you have never tried before. Pinterest is a brilliant place to find these.

5. Exercise. Go for a walk. Swim. Cycle. Run. Anything to get those endorphins going. Continue reading →