Woah - long time no blog!!! Time just goes by so fast, I didn't realise how long it had been since I last blogged (although I wasn't under the illusion that I'd blogged recently).
So - let's catch up on what's been going on since I last blogged.
My simplifying is still going, baby steps all the way. The dining room was done (although it needs a quick tidy in there again now), I sorted through most of the boys toys and their clothes, and I have sorted through my clothes. The boxes which had been set upstairs unopened since we moved here have now almost all been emptied and stuff thrown out, or put somewhere more sensible, and I now have empty boxes to get rid of, but am keeping them to fill with stuff for the brocki or ready for moving.
Yes, at the moment we are looking at moving house (staying in the village where we are). We have decided that as we intend to stay in Switzerland for at least another 10-15 years it makes sense to buy somewhere rather than rent for the whole time. The cost of a mortgage is significantly lower than the cost of renting, and not only would we be saving money on accommodation costs, but some of the monthly costs would be coming back to us eventually when we sell through the increase in our equity, so realistically it makes total sense.
The way mortgages are done over here scares me a bit (it seems that the plan is never to actually pay the mortgage off in full due to needing the mortgage interest to offset against your annual tax return - and that is a massive amount of debt to have hanging over your head, which really doesn't sit well with me). It appears that as soon as you have 35% equity in the property (20% deposit is the minimum over here - ouch), you no longer have to make capital repayments, and are moved to interest only for the rest of the mortgage as standard procedure (although you can continue to make capital repayments if you choose to do so).
The thought of paying a mortgage for the rest of my life is quite a scary thought, but when I looked on line I realised that over here it's actually quite a relief, when you consider that the vast majority of people over here rent property for their entire lives at a considerably higher rate.
One good thing about moving (if we are lucky enough to get the apartment we are seeing tomorrow, we have missed out on two places already, and I have no idea how long we'd have to wait before another one comes up) is that it is a perfect opportunity to go through everything that we own to see if we need/want it. I can't wait!!!
There are a couple of other things that will be great if we get this apartment: firstly we will be able to decorate however we want, and secondly, the new place will be a bit smaller than our current place and should therefore be easier to keep on top of :-)
I had started exercising again, but that has fallen by the wayside (again) and I haven't been eating particularly well - oops!!! One thing to get back on top of for definite (the eating better, even if I don't kick off the exercise again just yet).
I've been reading a book for work called The 4 Disciplines of Execution, which is actually very interesting. It's mainly geared at businesses, but can be implemented in your personal life too. Basically it say you should only set a maximum of two "wildly important goals" (or WIGs), because anything more than that is not going to be achieved to a high standard without falling by the wayside or other urgent usual tasks (day job or the "whirlwind") suffering. It's tough to implement, but the achievement of the WIGs should eventually assist in making the whirlwind more manageable. There is a whole process to follow and without doing it all properly it isn't likely to succeed, but I think I can find a way to follow the processes for my goals, so all I need to do is decide on my main goals and focus on following the processes (including designing an easy to read scoreboard - obviously I won't get distracted on that part of the process - ha ha ha!!!).
In other news - I was 40 yesterday, and do you know what? It feels great!!!
I was thinking this morning about my birthday. Originally we'd been hoping to get back to Vegas for a long weekend while the boys were away, or maybe even to New York, but with the whole issue of us trying to get a deposit together for an apartment we decided that we really couldn't afford to do it. If we'd been in the UK then no doubt there would have been some sort of party/pub crawl and we'd have had a great time. So what did we do? We pretty much did what we do most Saturdays, the only real difference was that whilst at the shopping centre I got to choose my birthday presents (a lovely grown-up watch from my man, and a lovely silver Pandora bracelet with a couple of heart charms from my boys) and that we had birthday cake.
Do you know what? It's exactly what I wanted, and I couldn't have asked for anything more. Therefore I have to conclude that my life is pretty great :-)
Have a great week,
LJx
Showing posts with label Simplifying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Simplifying. Show all posts
Sunday, 27 April 2014
Saturday, 22 February 2014
Time to Attack
OK - so I admit it. I am a terrible procrastinator... actually, that's not quite true. I am an amazing procrastinator, I could procrastinate all day long - unfortunately this has a terrible impact on my ability to get things done.
Although, technically, it's not my ability to do things that is affected, my ability is still the same, I just don't do it. I need to remember that things don't have to be perfect, but they do have to be done :o)
Since my last post I haven't started on any of the things that I suggested as my next area to de-clutter and organise, and as they are areas that don't bother anyone else, and aren't visible to people who may come round (not that there are many of those) I find it easy to forget about them, or sit and plan how I'd like them to look and how I would like them organised.
This weekend I have decided that the area that needs to be attacked next, and that is going to be most beneficial to the whole family is the dining room - more specifically the IKEA Expedit unit (basically one that is just made up of squares) and surrounding area (which often includes half of the dining table too). The unit is the 4 x 2 one which we bought to put the boys chart supplies, colouring books, jigsaw puzzles etc in. Over time however, it has overflowed somewhat due to finished (or more usually part-finished) projects and drawings, toys, general bits and pieces of various child debris that doesn't have a specific home. There are also currently a couple of boxes in the room which contain more supplies (mainly paper, pens, more unfinished projects, sticks, rocks, and I'd hate to even guess what else).
I have realised that one of the biggest problems that we have with the storage in the unit is that we have some of the boxes that fit in the unit, which seems perfect as everything can be stored out of the way, but in practice this doesn't work for us. When there are lots of smaller things that need to be kept together, putting them all in one big box just doesn't work. We can never find anything, and nothing gets put back properly, because once it is back in it's box it'll take an age to find the damn thing again (or at least that seems to be Marcus's reasoning, as he "hasn't finished with it yet"). It's amazing how much stuff he hasn't finished with yet.
To help with this I have bought a block of clear drawers to store the different types of paper in (although when I go through the boxes I may find that one isn't enough). The next step is to go through all the shelves and boxes and throw away anything that is no longer needed, finished pictures that are to be kept will be stuck into the scrapbooks that the boys have. We have so many colouring books in boxes and loose on the shelves that it will be great to see the back of. The boys don't use them, are Marcus is happy for me to throw most of them out (he is much more interested in drawing things himself than colouring in pictures).
Once the storage for this area is sorted I think (and hope) it will be much easier to keep it tidy and organised so that it is easy for us to get the crafting things out when we want to use them, but also easy to put them away again too...
Wish me luck.
LJx
Although, technically, it's not my ability to do things that is affected, my ability is still the same, I just don't do it. I need to remember that things don't have to be perfect, but they do have to be done :o)
Since my last post I haven't started on any of the things that I suggested as my next area to de-clutter and organise, and as they are areas that don't bother anyone else, and aren't visible to people who may come round (not that there are many of those) I find it easy to forget about them, or sit and plan how I'd like them to look and how I would like them organised.
This weekend I have decided that the area that needs to be attacked next, and that is going to be most beneficial to the whole family is the dining room - more specifically the IKEA Expedit unit (basically one that is just made up of squares) and surrounding area (which often includes half of the dining table too). The unit is the 4 x 2 one which we bought to put the boys chart supplies, colouring books, jigsaw puzzles etc in. Over time however, it has overflowed somewhat due to finished (or more usually part-finished) projects and drawings, toys, general bits and pieces of various child debris that doesn't have a specific home. There are also currently a couple of boxes in the room which contain more supplies (mainly paper, pens, more unfinished projects, sticks, rocks, and I'd hate to even guess what else).
I have realised that one of the biggest problems that we have with the storage in the unit is that we have some of the boxes that fit in the unit, which seems perfect as everything can be stored out of the way, but in practice this doesn't work for us. When there are lots of smaller things that need to be kept together, putting them all in one big box just doesn't work. We can never find anything, and nothing gets put back properly, because once it is back in it's box it'll take an age to find the damn thing again (or at least that seems to be Marcus's reasoning, as he "hasn't finished with it yet"). It's amazing how much stuff he hasn't finished with yet.
To help with this I have bought a block of clear drawers to store the different types of paper in (although when I go through the boxes I may find that one isn't enough). The next step is to go through all the shelves and boxes and throw away anything that is no longer needed, finished pictures that are to be kept will be stuck into the scrapbooks that the boys have. We have so many colouring books in boxes and loose on the shelves that it will be great to see the back of. The boys don't use them, are Marcus is happy for me to throw most of them out (he is much more interested in drawing things himself than colouring in pictures).
Once the storage for this area is sorted I think (and hope) it will be much easier to keep it tidy and organised so that it is easy for us to get the crafting things out when we want to use them, but also easy to put them away again too...
Wish me luck.
LJx
Wednesday, 12 February 2014
Simplifying - Is It Working?
Well hello from me on my day off :-)
A couple of weeks ago I posted about starting off on my simplifying journey by reducing the amount of electronic communication I do/read. The next question is obviously - is it working? Hell yeah!!!
My personal email inbox only has items that I need to action in it (I don't receive many emails that I need to action, so I don't feel the need at this stage to set up a separate action folder with possible sub-folders), and everything else has either been filed or trashed.
My Facebook time is now under control - apart from days like today, but it's my day off, so I'm allowed to indulge, right? If I hadn't been indulging I'd never have spotted the Gillio for sale in the Gillio group in time to pm the seller and make it mine :-)
My work email has been under control for some time now, with an action folder containing many sub-folders, a "waiting for" folder which mainly contains emails that will be deleted as soon as another item has been completed and signed off, for example the monthly report that I prepare from various submissions from others. The attachments get saved into the appropriate folder on the server for the report, but I keep the original emails until the report has been completed and sent out just in case I haven't saved something down, or it has got corrupted.
One week a month my work email inbox goes all to hell as it's monthend, and I have neither the time, nor the inclination to file mails appropriately, and many of the ones that come in relate to the monthend itself and so I like to be able to see them and flick up and down the list to make sure that everything is OK. Once monthend and reporting are finished I then go through my inbox to see what items still require action. Those that I just need to keep for reference get filed, those that are no longer required get deleted, and all others get put into the relevant action folders. I then go through the action folders to check what needs to be done - list it, and work out when it needs to be, and will be done. This doesn't work for everyone, but this system is working well for me, so I'm happy.
My next task to simplify things for me was to sort out the bathroom sink area and cupboards, to make keeping the area clean so much easier. I like to try to give the sink unit a quick clean each day to keep it looking OK, but when there are toothbrushes, toothpastes, mouthwashes, hair stuff, deodorants etc all round it then it's not that quick as you have to take everything off first, and everything becomes a total dust magnet if I don't. I have now put everything we need on a daily basis into the cupboard above the sink, all my additional moisturisers, make-up, etc. have been removed and put in the desk in the bedroom, which will soon become a dressing table. Now there is no junk on the vanity unit at all it makes keeping it clean so much easier - even the boys automatically put their toothbrushes etc back in the cupboard, without being told once.
Next stop was going to be the recycling area in the kitchen, but that's a bit scary, so do I tackle the bedroom next (set up that dressing table, clear out more old clothes, see how much stuff I can throw away), or do I go and attack my special room with all it's stationery, crafty stuff, etc...? Hmmm...
I feel a need for bin bags coming on - time to be ruthless (although not sure how ruthless I can be when it comes to stationery...).
LJx
A couple of weeks ago I posted about starting off on my simplifying journey by reducing the amount of electronic communication I do/read. The next question is obviously - is it working? Hell yeah!!!
My personal email inbox only has items that I need to action in it (I don't receive many emails that I need to action, so I don't feel the need at this stage to set up a separate action folder with possible sub-folders), and everything else has either been filed or trashed.
My Facebook time is now under control - apart from days like today, but it's my day off, so I'm allowed to indulge, right? If I hadn't been indulging I'd never have spotted the Gillio for sale in the Gillio group in time to pm the seller and make it mine :-)
My work email has been under control for some time now, with an action folder containing many sub-folders, a "waiting for" folder which mainly contains emails that will be deleted as soon as another item has been completed and signed off, for example the monthly report that I prepare from various submissions from others. The attachments get saved into the appropriate folder on the server for the report, but I keep the original emails until the report has been completed and sent out just in case I haven't saved something down, or it has got corrupted.
One week a month my work email inbox goes all to hell as it's monthend, and I have neither the time, nor the inclination to file mails appropriately, and many of the ones that come in relate to the monthend itself and so I like to be able to see them and flick up and down the list to make sure that everything is OK. Once monthend and reporting are finished I then go through my inbox to see what items still require action. Those that I just need to keep for reference get filed, those that are no longer required get deleted, and all others get put into the relevant action folders. I then go through the action folders to check what needs to be done - list it, and work out when it needs to be, and will be done. This doesn't work for everyone, but this system is working well for me, so I'm happy.
My next task to simplify things for me was to sort out the bathroom sink area and cupboards, to make keeping the area clean so much easier. I like to try to give the sink unit a quick clean each day to keep it looking OK, but when there are toothbrushes, toothpastes, mouthwashes, hair stuff, deodorants etc all round it then it's not that quick as you have to take everything off first, and everything becomes a total dust magnet if I don't. I have now put everything we need on a daily basis into the cupboard above the sink, all my additional moisturisers, make-up, etc. have been removed and put in the desk in the bedroom, which will soon become a dressing table. Now there is no junk on the vanity unit at all it makes keeping it clean so much easier - even the boys automatically put their toothbrushes etc back in the cupboard, without being told once.
Next stop was going to be the recycling area in the kitchen, but that's a bit scary, so do I tackle the bedroom next (set up that dressing table, clear out more old clothes, see how much stuff I can throw away), or do I go and attack my special room with all it's stationery, crafty stuff, etc...? Hmmm...
I feel a need for bin bags coming on - time to be ruthless (although not sure how ruthless I can be when it comes to stationery...).
LJx
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