Unexpected early withdrawal symptoms

I'm well into the challenge now (well, first week and a bit anyway) and I've spent more of it than I expected making mental lists and fretting over all the things I "need" to replace this year which I will now not be replacing.  

I will admit that a little niggling voice has been chastising me for not having gone out and shopped up a storm before starting the challenge.  For the record, this was definitely something I made a point of NOT doing as it's so against the spirit of the whole thing.  We still have more "stuff" in this house than some whole villages will ever collectively own, something I'd like to remember, a lot.   

Some of the ridiculous things I've stressed about are:

• All the towels we own;
• my gym gear;
• the carpets in the house (????? that's a first, hadn't even noticed them until this week).

I'm thinking this is retail withdrawal and that it will pass, hopefully in the next couple of days. 

Apologies in advance though to all who share gym space with me as I will be looking very shabby, very soon, if not already.  On the upside, I will be clean and so will my ratty old gym clothes, I promise.

I'm feeling really positive and excited that it is already making me think about things.  Maybe I'm more of a retail junkie than I thought I was!

Keep you posted, 

Leigh 

Garage conversion - project room for me - YIPPEEEEEE!

Right, so here's the thing.  I know I'm lucky to have the space I have but with a houseful of students staying with us in the early part of this year I was worried about my projects taking a back seat when the spare room was in use.  When we had students last year I found that my activities kind of slowed to a stop as all my gear lives in the spare room wardrobe.

I'm really keen to scale it up this year, not the other way around so I put my thinking cap on.   Result - garage conversion!

Now, we have not been able to fit the car (or anything much else) in the garage for almost two years so nothing lost there.  However, the reason we have not been able to fit the car in is the amount of "stuff" lurking in there.  Solution - deal with the "stuff" and create a brand new "project space" and area for the printer/filing etc so that all that stuff is out of my therapy room - yay.

It's taken a bit of a reshuffle,otherwise known as "Leigh's Big Day In".  It was a big day and I was shattered by the end but I'm super excited by the space I've created.  I've split the garage in half  across the middle so that all the utility stuff is at the front and therefore easily accesible when the door is up. 

The non-projecty, non-sewing friends amongst you will look at this and maybe think, yeah so but to me, this means a whole new level of opportunity.  A space where I can have my "works in progress" around and can leave them out when I'm not working on them.  Somewhere where my machines, tools, fabrics can be set up and ready to go anytime without driving my family crazy, oh the bliss!  Any sewer or crafter with limited spare time will know relate to how much energy is spent packing up and getting out your stuff to work on the project.  Sometimes I'm getting too tired in the evenings before I'm even set up so a designated "Leigh space" is unbelievably decadent.  I've actually been cruising out there just to look at it and imagine the possibilities, sad but true.

So, without further blabbing on, here are the pics of my new "room":

2012 challenge "Make do with nothing new"

As I've got more into my recycling projects I've also become more thoughful of just how much of a throw away society we have become.  The only trouble with that is that there is no "away", all the stuff we chuck out is still here clogging up our space/planet and this bothers me.  I've also realised that stuff = stress and that I have way too much of both right now. 

Soooooo..... my challenge for 2012 is to "make do with nothing new" for the whole year in an effort to vastly reduce our family's footprint.


We are an ordinary family who have never attempted anything like this before so I do realise it's gonna be a huge challenge but I think I'm up to it and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it changes the way we live.  So here goes:

In 2012 I challenge myself to:

• Make no new purchases of non-essential items for 12 months.
• Source things we do need from recycled (preferably charitable) sources.
• Re-use and re-purpose things we already have in our household wherever possible.
• Consciously choose foods with minimal packaging and source all we can from local businesses.
• Recycle everything we can.
• Greatly increase the volume of food we grow ourselves organically.
• Continue to recycle and upcycle all sorts of things for my projects.
• Generally make do with what we already have and get creative with it.

Essential items are:

• food;
• toiletries;
• kids shoes & school gear;
• replacement of necessary household appliances should they be unrepairable; and 
• repair/servicing of cars and the caravan.  

After much thought I have also decided to exclude tools and materials for my upcycle projects from the challenge.  Although largely recycled, there are some things (paint, staples, threads etc) which simply cannot be obtained second hand.  

This is going to be a huge learning curve for us and I would love you to share all your positive suggestions, tips, advice and support.  Please remember that I'm a person, just like you, I'm not trying to tell anyone how to live, just trying something new for us.

I'm looking forward to blogging our progress, who knows were we'll end up?  Right now I'm off to install the "No junk mail"  sign on the letterbox.

Ciao for now