As I emerge from the long dark winter, this blog finds me between seasons but moving and preparing for the readiness of Spring. I have been working with clients with this in mind, a feeling that has come naturally.
Working within the seasons within your home and life is a great way to plot yourself and your home management into your everyday life throughout the year.
Seasonal home management allows you to tick jobs off each month and leave them done until the next year. The result I have found:
frees your mind of unwanted decisions
the guilt of not having more time and
having hundreds of to-do tabs open in your mind all at once
Imbolc, is a Gaelic traditional festival marking the beginning of spring. It is held on the first of February, or about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.
It is a time when snowdrops appear through the cold ground and nature gets ready to start clearing the debris of winter, injecting new life into our souls. A time when we can be, full of promise and expectation and for better, warmer times to come.
We can stretch out into the warmth of the year.
So, February’s to-do list can be a wonderful time to create a calm, less cluttered space in our homes, brushing away the relics of winter and getting ready for Spring.
“ I can’t make everything perfect, but I can gain control over my tiny corner of the world” Withering by Katherine May
Imbolc is a time for bringing new ideas and projects into the new light, for growing what we have been reflecting on over the winter months.
It might not be the most glamorous of tasks but this one job will clear your mind and your home of clutter.
Other jobs which are good to get a handle on are house renovations. Now the light is becoming longer and the sun stronger, open the windows and take a fresh look at any house works that need doing. Heyworth Gordon can inspire you with interior styling consultations and project manage, with a wonderful reliable black book of local tradesmen and women.
Spring clean your paperwork
Spring cleaning your home is a wonderful task, but it is an immense job and best left to the professionals if you can delegate or just managed throughout each month so you don’t have to build up to one great big job.
However spring cleaning your paperwork is well worth doing at this time of year.
For untaxed income earned during the tax year, the online deadline for filing your Self Assessment tax return and paying your bill is midnight 31 January . If you managed to get yours in on time, well done! If however your paperwork was a mess and you had to scramble around looking for receipts and invoices fear not a simple home management can be in put in place this month that lasts you for years to come and make sure you miss the deadline and get fined.
Set up your systems – find a space in your office, work station, kitchen or hallway which will be your administration station.
Finding the right stationary – my experience from my client work has lead to finding this product – see below links - the best for keeping all papers in categories and away from piles around the house.
Having a station where each member of the house has a rack and then the house and the tax office have one too and any other projects, is simple and effective for keeping track of paperwork without doing much work.
I have mine in the kitchen and in my office and every piece of paperwork that comes in through my door gets read and then put into one of the racks or the bin. I have an action rack for life and work.
If a piece of art work comes in from school it gets put in my daughters box, if a gutter cleaning note drops through the door, it goes in the home rack. Until you can’t stuff anymore paperwork in, it sits neatly and quietly at its station, keeping your surfaces clear of paperwork.
If you need to find anything you know where to look. Once it is full, sit for five minutes and sort it out. Either it goes in the bin or it goes to its final resting place, archive box, memory box or scanned and saved on your cloud storage.
Heyworth Gordon has seen this method work over and over again in many different homes. Once done it pretty much manages itself.
If you would like on site help setting these systems up, we can come and work with you.
Sending you light and warmth.
Olivia x