Why less-stuff?
When I was little we moved every three years. By the time I left home and moved to my own place I had boxes of belongings, untouched for years and I had no idea what was in some of them. I did what I thought was needed: a big purging declutter. I honed down my 77 pairs of trousers to just a few, forgetting that my shape changed through the month. It was incredibly stressful to declutter in one go. I got totally overwhelmed and threw out stuff I now regret, including my birth certificate! The worst thing was that a year later, I was almost as cluttered as I was when I started to declutter.
What went wrong?
Big sessions of decluttering are like crash diets. They do work, but only for the short term. If you are like me and have a keen eye for a bargain, or have a soft spot for broken bits of furniture you can fix ‘one day’, your home will fill up with clutter pretty quickly. When I realised that clutter has to be dealt with like healthy eating and that fad diets wouldn’t help, life got a lot easier. Now, instead of trying to do it all at once I can identify the totally useless stuff in my life on a daily basis. Instead of lots of bin bags that sit in my hallway for weeks, I just get rid of just a few things at a time. I developed a working strategy for daily decluttering and my house got tidier without much effort on my part.
Who is less-stuff?
I’m Lisa Cole, a mum who likes making things, including a mess. My house isn’t a minimalistic white blur, it’s a real, lived in home and this website is all about how I live a relatively organised life in a chaotic world. It’s about how I manage the time I have, it’s about how I stay sane and it’s mostly about how I control the amount of stuff in my home. I like stuff but I also like to be able to find it when I need it!
I love a bargain and I was very happy to find this in a charity shop. As you can see, I’m not a minimalist and I live in a constant state of DIY!
I’m keen to save money and limit my impact upon the environment too so you will see a lot about living an eco-friendly life on this site. It all ties in together and I’m very happy to try something even if I fail. You don’t get anywhere by doing nothing.
The whole point of this site is to share the little things I find that help me lead a more ethical life, on a super tight budget. You can find me on Instagram but I don’t do carefully laid out images, you get to see snapshots of real life on my feed. I’m on Twitter and try to join in on chats about organic food, gardening and living ethically. I’m also on Pinterest where I’m working hard to gather really good resources to help us enjoy seasonal food. You will find boards about productivity and crafting there too. Finally you can find me on YouTube, testing eco-friendly products and attempting to film without being interrupted by a cat.
My background is in fashion, textiles, design and education. I’m a graphic and website designer – you can see my work at www.nakedwebsite.co.uk . I’m a human being, I’m not pretending to be a guru, I’m not a life coach and I’m not a genius at downsizing because I like stuff too much. I have found things that work for me that could well work for you. My priorities for my little family are to make life easy without austerity and to remember, it is ok to have stuff.
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