It is so interesting how everything affects everything.
When I go away on holidays or even a few days away, I like to unpack my bags as soon as I get home ( not the instant i get in the door, but that afternoon or evening before I go to bed).
This has not always been the case but for the past few years it has been growing stronger in my body that now it is a given. I automatically do it. 
There is something really beautiful in doing it straight away. Something confirming.
Building consistency, commitment in all the tiny things that I do in my life are life changing. These are the things that change my life. These tiny little choices that I make.
Imagine that. 
We seem to always focus on the big things. Like Change your Job, Buy a new house.
But it is the little things that support us to make lasting changes to our lives. The things that we imagine would not make much difference to the big picture.
But think again.

What if we consider the little things as the important things, and start to build from their, baby steps, implementing little changes in your day and building on these. No pressure, no judging, no beating yourself up, just little changes that support you in your day. A bit like a little invisible friend supporting you along the way. 

       That may sound funny to some, but who is living in your wardrobe,  who are we reflecting if we are living with everyone else's ideal and beliefs. We listen to what other people think, we see in magazines what everyone else is wearing, we are bombarded with pictures everywhere of what a women should wear, how he or she should look, we listen to all the old rules and traditions that govern our beliefs about everything including clothes. None of these are reflecting who you truly are. 

How often do we buy things and get them home and wonder what the hell was I thinking? Only to return it in disbelief or leave it in the wardrobe to sit. These are very common issues, things that I hear all the time.

But what if you were to stop and have a really good look at your wardrobe. Stand in front of it and feel what it is reflecting to you. Feel the person that is being reflected to you, ask yourself is that really me. ask yourself how many thing in your wardrobe do you really love. How many thing in your wardrobe sit beautifully on my body, when you walk how do you feel as you are walking? Do you feel the clothes on your skin, how they sit on your skin, are they soft and comfortable or hard and scratchy. Do you feel your whole body walking with the feeling of oneness of your body and your clothes. 

 No one else can tell you how your body feels in the clothes that you buy.  If I need to ask for someone else's opinion then I know instantly that I am not with myself. Maybe I should go for a walk  before trying anything on.

When I go shopping I like to take my best friend with me. Thats me.
​Connect with my body and off we go together. 

I remember years ago seeing an article on a group of older women in England, they only bought quality and only had about six mix and match sets of clothes that they loved. I have never forgotten this. It would be better to have far less in our wardrobes and love what we have then to have heaps and not particularly like much of it.

 

  Getting my house in order is about so much more then just cleaning.
When I was first married with children, if I felt like it was out of sink, then I would spring-clean the whole house. It was a cleansing for me as well as the house, and for that matter for everyone that was in the house. When I finished I would feel centred, re balanced, like my life was back in order. This didn't mean that the house had to be spotless and everything in it's place. It was about how I would feel on the inside. I would feel very settled, able to see things more clearly.
The clarity would sift through to all parts of my life. Nothing was a struggle.

This was something that I did very regularly, it was like my personal Springclean on the inside. My friends started to call me Miss Springclean, and they would want me to come to their homes and do the same.

I have always felt that my cupboards reflected more about how I was living,  even thought they were closed and no one else saw inside them. It was how I cared for the things in my cupboard that was important.  How I cleaned, looked after and put away all the things that went into the cupboards, the joy I got when I cleaned my cupboards or when I  would go to put our clothes away and feeling the love and order that was there for everyone.

​If you have read any of my blogs you would already know how much I love cleaning and clearing spaces.  I say how I make love to my saucepans because I lovingly clean them, I love to use Gumpton and give them a really good scrub after they have been used. I love to look into the bottom of the saucepan and get a shinning reflection back.
 
Cleaning is about so much more then cleaning. It is a reflection of how you live in every way.
 
The other night I was hanging my whites on an inside line before I went to bed. I love to hang everything I can on coat-hangers and then hang the rest in a loving order.
 
The next morning as I was walking to the office I was stopped in my tracks. I stood there looking at the clothes hanging on the line. It felt like slow motion.
I looked at the detail that I had hung the clothes on the line, the loving way that I had faced them in a particular way, like they were all looking in the same direction. The socks were also all walking in the same direction.
 
What I felt as I stood looking at the clothes on the line was the love that I had hung them in, the playfulness, the joy that doing this little job before bed gave me and then to get up the next morning and feel the quality as I walked past, all the love, joy and playfulness that I had hung them in the previous night. It felt divine.
 

 Yesterday morning as I was getting dressed for work I went to get a pair of briefs out to put on, as I was about to put them on I felt how they were not the  pair of briefs that I had previously chosen, as I went to get them out of the draw I grabbed another pair. There was nothing wrong with them but I felt how they weren't the ones that I wanted to wear today. I put them back in the cupboard and got out a pair that I love to wear.

As I continued to get dressed I got out a bra that I liked, a shirt that I love to wear  and a pair of slacks that I fell amazing in. They are so comfortable and I feel so sexy in them. I was off to do a cleaning job.

In the afternoon after I had finished the cleaning and I was back at work I felt what a beautiful day it had been. As I pondered on my day I felt how stopping and making that tiny choice in the morning had made such a difference to my day. 

It was then that I felt how if I love myself enough to only choose to wear things that I love, that then spreads through-out my day, if I love what I do then that also adds to my day and if I continue by loving what I wear and eating the food that my body loves to eat that supports it, then my day is filling up with a grandness,  this feeling of absolute joy that i'm driving home with a smile on my face and feeling so gorgeous inside that I want to give myself a hug.

I recently cleaned out the whole garage, I washed all the walls, we shifted the fridge and cleaned out the cupboard in the garage. It felt amazing after we finished. For the next few weeks I would sweep the floor each time leaves accumulated on the  floor making a mess. I love to sweep instead of blowing it out, there is something that is beautiful for me when I sweep. I love the ordered way that I start from one side and work my way across and then come back and then start again.                                                                  

Since cleaning out the garage I have noticed that I have been more aware of my car and the vacuuming of it. I had been vacuuming the car each time I saw that the floor needed to be cleaned, but last week I cleaned the car and it didn't even need to be cleaned. It felt amazing. This was the first time I had ever considered cleaning it when it didn't need to be cleaned. It was a real marker. 

I have also been cleaning the leather seats as well and wiping  the surroundings with "Armorall". Last week I also gave it a polish, it was called lazy man polish. It is great as it doesn't leave a white polish that can be hard to get off the corners if it goes over the edge, I also  cleaned all the windows inside and out. 

Boy is the car looking amazing. Its probably 10 years old and even though it is starting to look a bit worn, it  still feels amazing and is loving all the attention.

The reason that I'm saying all this is that I can feel how my lovingly cleaning out the garage has just continued to spread and deepen, each week there has been more attention to detail.  When we love what we are doing, then the love has a way off seeping into everything. It keeps expanding and growing. 

I used to keep my car clean and Chris would always wash my car for me, But I feel that me taking responsibility for washing my car as well has had a huge impact on keeping it clean. The whole experience has had a profound impact on what I am seeing and feeling. It is like I have thrown a rock into a lake, the circles go around and around spreading out and touching the next circle. Evolving as they go as I am also. 

I am feeling how this has had an impact on my life that is far greater then I am consciously aware off. Showing me the depth and the quality of how the little things can impact on everything in my life,  building a consistency that I am feeling does not have me in the equation. It feels like the choice is coming from something inside off me, the way I live, that is now guiding and supporting me.

Can't wait to see what the following few weeks will bring. I'm really enjoying this unfolding. So is my car.

​Update.
For a few weeks the car and the shed have been on my list but I hadn't gotten to them.The other day Chris washed the cars, did the wheels, and all the extra bits  and I spent nearly all day detailing them both. Then when I was finished I cleaned out the shed that had gotten a bit untidy. It now feels like the cars and the shed also have a holding in them, this supports me to bring them back to a beautiful space were everything is holding everything else. Every part of our home is being supported by the love and attention to detail. Building consistency, and a commitment to caring lovingly for all that we have. We can then take this love to work with us to build on a foundation in the world. 

This morning after I said good bye to Chris I felt to give my car a vacuum. We recently bought a hand held vacuum that we keep in the garage to make it easy to give the cars a clean instead of brining the big one out of the house. I felt this would support us to keep on top of cleaning the cars.
Usually we clean them when we see that they are needing some TLC. But this morning I felt to give my car a vacuum and it didn't even need it. It felt so lovely like the car had put its-self into my rhythm list without me even knowing. 

Rhythms are something that I like to use to keep me in a natural flow. I look at it like painting the opera house, its always in the link and then not forgotten.  

It feels so different when something just naturally pops up to be cleaned, there is no pushing,  it then comes with a joyful feeling that pushing to get it done just doesn't bring. Pushing makes it hard and usually something that we don't want to do.

​Choosing to make life so much more simple, flowing and most of all joyful.

I have always had a love of Order, since I was a little girl and I read Wind in the Willows where Mole was white washing and Spring-cleaning his little home I have loved cleaning, reorganising and getting rid of clutter.
 
Over the years that I have been supporting women and men to eliminate clutter from their homes, my awareness and understanding has grown in that there is so much more at play here then we could possibly have ever imagined.
 
Have you ever considered that the way you keep your home could be nurturing yourself?  It is the bed you lie in so to speak.

I feel that my home is giving me a reading on the way I live in every way. It is telling me far more about me then I had ever considered. It goes far deeper then what you can see with your eyes. 

Our homes are constantly reflecting to us the way in which we live, far beyond just doing our housework and keeping the house tidy and clean. What if something as simple as putting gloves on to do the washing up then affected every movement that you made with your hands. It was like you took that love and care into everything that you touched, the way that you washed your face, the way that you put your cups away or the way you put clothes onto the clothes line. The list goes on and on.
 
How amazing would that be that something as simple as putting gloves on to wash up could change your whole life? It’s interesting that when we go looking for the things that can make a difference to our lives we look for the big things. Like loosing weight, but what if it is the tiny little things that make the most profound impact on our choices. Who would have considered that learning to love yourself could support you to loose weight. Its the simple things in life.
 
One of the things that I have always wondered about was that I felt  my cupboards reflected far more about me then what my house looked like. I like my house to be neat and tidy but it is my cupboards that I have always felt showed me far more about me then my tidy house. It is not having things inside me in a mess, like a messy cupboard. 
 
My cupboards have always been a marker, years ago if my life felt like it was out of sorts in some way then I would Spring-clean my home from one end to the other. Cleaning and clearing as I went. After this I would feel a sense of balance back in my life, it felt like a breath of fresh air now ran through my home. There would be a feeling of clarity as I walked through the house after I had finished, I loved this feeling.
 
I feel that my home is like my reference book on how I’m living my life. Something that is always there for me, supporting me, I just need to remember to STOP and read it. 

1. Building consistency is my Top Tip. Committing to doing things on a regular basis is building a routine that will support you each day in your kitchen as well as the rest of your home. I like to run the sink with hot water as I’m about to start cooking, it keeps the kitchen in order as I’m working and that way I don’t finish with a pile of dirty dishes.
 
Building consistency is something that needs to be in every part of our lives.
You then get to see so clearly when something is amiss, if something is not right. These are little signposts for us to stop and have a look at what is going on.
 
2. When I put things away every thing has a place and everything goes in its place. That way I know were things are, and everyone else knows where things go as well. It puts an order in the cupboards and it is easy to see when you are running out of something so that you can pop it on your grocery list as you go along.
 
3. Cleaning out the fridge is something that I like to do before I go shopping, it's a way to see what is left in the fridge and what is needed when I get the groceries. That way I’m already organised when I get home and things can go straight into the fridge.
 
4. My husband and I do the washing up together each night, we unpack the dishwasher together, the kitchen is our responsibility not just mine. Before we go to bed I like to check that everything is off the bench and put away, the kitchen is tidy and ready for the next morning and feeling beautiful.
 
5. I like to wipe things as I’m putting them away, they might be the sauce bottles or other containers, that way you don’t have sticky things in your cupboards or fridge. It makes me more aware of the kitchen surfaces, the cupboard doors, the drawers, fridge doors and the pantry shelves. All these little things that help keep a clean and tidy kitchen and by regularly doing them the kitchen stays organised and sparkling.
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Yesterday I had a little giggle as I was walking around the house as I remembered that in the past I would always have a room that was messy. It was like a collection of all the things that I didn't know what to do with, they would all end up in the one room and then I would shut the door. What I felt was that I had to keep something incomplete, like I was holding myself back, staying in a pattern.

I feel that I have come a long way since then. Things are always and will always be unfolding for me. Now when I look around the house I can see how we are building a commitment and a consistently in our daily lives.

Now if I see something that I want to make part of my daily routine, something that makes my life simpler, I committee to myself that I am going to do this regularly, make it part of my daily routine.  

 I have found that if I don’t make that choice to commit, it will just drop of my radar.
 
The other day my husband came into the house and said to me why don’t I use the orange mop each day to mop up the small things that appear on the floor.
This brought me to a stop, this was something that had fallen off my radar.  I had completely forgotten that it was something that I used to do. I would vacuum once a week and then use the mop each day to keep the floors clean. It was simple, it only took 5 minutes to do the whole house and it makes such a difference.

I find that I can think that something would make my life much simpler but if I don’t let it fit in or give it a place somewhere in my daily routine, then it will not become something that I will do. It gets forgotten. 

When I build consistency and commitment into my life they feel like anchors, they support me to keep our home sorted. As I build these little anchors, they constantly bring me back to me, a moment to stop and look around and appreciate the things in my life that I am holding. As I walk around the house all these little rituals that I am making part of my daily/ weekly routine support me in a way that is far beyond just keeping the house tidy and making my life simpler. I get a feeling of Joyfullness each time I stop and appreciate.
                           
These choices are deeply nurturing choices that support me to build a life that holds consistency and commitment in more parts of my life. Building an appreciation for the choices that I’m making.