43things: do a triathlon

Unfortunately I’ve been without internet access for the last month (and yes I did feel like I was missing a limb). Life did not end, nor did it stand still. In fact for the last 6 weeks I’ve been training for a mini-triathlon and finally did it yesterday.

And since I’m sitting here typing this, that means I lived to tell the tale. What’s more, I even enjoyed it!!

Six weeks ago I made a big decision. Despite it nearing the end of summer and triathlon season, I wanted to achieve this goal. Its been on my list for over a year now, and if I ever wanted to make this happen, I just had to get in there and do it.

There were 2 main things that helped my motivation. Getting back to the pool and swimming laps, and realising my other goal of swimming 1km without stopping. Sure I’m not fast, but I can swim and I do feel safe and confident in the water. Whilst I was at the pool doing laps one day, one lane was closed for a group called Tri-alliance. I picked up one of their brochures and that got the ball rolling…

Another thing that helped move that ball along was a friend of mine talking about doing a triathlon as well. We live on opposite sides of the city, so couldn’t train together, but we decided to both sign up for a mini-triathlon – The Gatorade ActiveFeet race at Elwood Beach which involved a 300m swim, 10km cycle, 3km run.

Just before Christmas we both made the decision to sign up for the March race, giving us adequate training time after Christmas and New Year’s festivities were over. It also gave me time to sign up for Tri-alliance’s Try the Tri 6 week program. Not having done anything more competeitive than the Sydney City 2 Surf (and that was many years ago now!), joining this program was one of the best decisions I ever made.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing. I missed over 2 weeks of sessions due to illness, and couldn’t make every session due to work commitments. But I made enough to learn the basics of transitions, to improve my running (although I still have a long way to go), to experience open water swimming, and I even had fun in the process.

After the first session I was a bit intimidated. We literally spent 1.5 hours learning how to get on and off a bike. It was hard! And I was sore for days afterwards. And I’m still not very good at it!

I was suprised to discover that comparatively speaking, swimming was my strongest leg. I know it’s an indiviual sport, but I couldn’t help but noticing that whenever we practised transitions, or did running training, I was always dead last. By a long shot. Never the case swimming though. I have to admit that gave me a mental boost, for if I was consistently coming last in everything, I think my competitive side would find that difficult to cope with.

But enough about the training, how about the race itself!!

I was a bit panicked waking at at 5:30am yesterday and realising it was still pitch black. I had planned on carrying my gear in my bike basket and riding to the race, however I can’t attach both my basket and my light to my bike. A last minute repacking ensued, and I rode down to Elwood beach, still with plenty of time to spare.

After checking in my bike and setting up for transition, I made my way to the Tri-alliance tent to wait there with the other people I’d been training with. It was lovely to be around other first-timers in the same boat along with more experienced athletes and coaches. At 6am it was a chilly 12 degrees. We had to leave our shoes in the transition area and I hadn't thought to bring a spare pair. As a result my feet were in agony from the icy grass.

During Saturday’s training session I was dismayed to find that the water temperature had dropped signficantly. I am a wuss when it comes to cold water at the best of times. Also being one of the few people without a wetsuit, I was even more freaked out. Since we were only doing a small pre-race swim, I couldn’t even force myself to get in the water. I was worried that if it didn’t warm up overnight I’d be too wussy to do it for the actual race the next day! But luckily the water temperature had warmed up (and was warmer than the 12 degree air!).

The race itself was amazing. The swim was both my favourite part, and the most stressfull. Being accidentally kicked and having people pulling and swarming around you can be stressfull. Luckily the ocean was flat as a tack, so currents and waves didn’t add to this stress.

Image from supersprint.com.au

As always my transition time was slow. I think I am the slowest person alive to put on shoes! It didn’t help that my feet were deadened by cold. In fact I didn’t get back full sensation in my feet until halfway through the run.

The cycle leg was fine, I think I could have pushed it harder than I did though. I hadn’t done enough 10km length cycles to properly gauge how long and how hard I had to work for. I was also conscious of saving my legs for what I knew would be my toughest leg: the run.

I’m not a natural, nor a fast runner. But I can get myself into a slow rhythm and just plug away. And plug away I did. My legs sure felt it from the riding, but I was just happy not to have to stop and walk. Towards the end, I even got a comment from someone on the sidelines about how I was still smiling. With 100m to go, my deadened legs made a final sprint for it. At the finish line, I didn’t even see the clock, so I had no idea what my time was.

I got my results in the mail today, and here they are:

• Swim – 08:55, 26/68 in my age category, 368/599 overall
• Transition 1 – 02:23
• Cycle – 23:25, 40/68 in my age category, 396/599 overall
• Transition 2 – 01:15
• Run – 18:04, 48/68 in my age category, 482/599 overall

Overall stats: 54:01, 42/68 in my age category, 142/239 females, 428/599 overall competitors

Not bad, but definite room for improvement!

Things I would do differently next time:

• Swim – Ideally wear a wetsuit. Yes this would involve buying one.
• Transition 1 – need to be at least 1 minute faster. Shouldn’t have worried about socks (most of the sand had come off anyway). Do more training in shoes only to make sure this would work. Also shouldn’t have bothered putting on a dry singlet, it only got wet!
• Cycle – could have pushed harder, especially the first half. Also getting a proper road racing bike might help too!
• Transition 2 – don’t bother drinking my own water this time. Plently of water stations along the running route.
• Run – faster faster. More practice!!

Despite the room for improvements, I’m happy with my race, and more than happy that I got off my butt and did something I’d wanted to do for ages. It didn’t cost a lot of money, and the only new equipment that I bought were elasticated shoe laces ($10) and tri shorts ($30 from the 2XU factory outlet). Of course the gadget-geek in me is already plotting away at future purchase ideas - a wetsuit and maybe even a new bike too!

Speaking of room for improvement, the St Kilda race is on in only 2 weeks. Whilst part of me wants time to recover, another part of me wants to give it another go. Another part of me is also afraid of how much colder the water will be in 2 weeks. Another part of me thinks that part of me is a wuss. Which part will win is yet to be determined!

Regardless, my new goal is now to to a full-length Triathlon when the season starts again at the end of the year!

See more progress on: do a triathlon

43things: Swim 1km without stopping

Image from http://www.msac.com.au/aquatics/lap-swimming

I have to keep pinching myself in order to believe I actually achieved this goal. And so quickly too.

Honestly I don’t know how it happened. I’ve been to the pool about 1-2 times per week for the last few weeks. Prior to Tuesday, the most I had swum without a quick break at the end of a lap was 200m.

Somehow on Tuesday it happened. I was aiming for 300m (6 laps). I was still feeling good after 6, so thought I would be ambitious and aim for 10. By 10 I was still ok so aimed for 12, then 15…By the time I reached 16 I was determined to make the 20, so I did.

It was more by accident than any specific traning or pre-planning. Maybe it had something to do with not having done any other exercise for 48 hours beforehand, so my arms and shoulders were fresh.

As exciting as that was, it’s a bit scary. I’ve raised the bar now.

Today I’m a bit tired, a bit hungover, and a bit sore from a training session I had yesterday. However its 35 degrees and I need to cool down. I’m about to head to the pool. I’m afraid I won’t be able to swim 6, let alone 20 laps without stopping, which will make me a fraud.

But even if I do stop and take breaks, I know I’ll get to 1km. I don’t always have to swim without stopping, just because I have before. Sometimes I’ll want to have a drink. Sometimes my goggles will leak or fog up. Sometimes I’ll be lazy and hungover.

And while it’s not perfect, I have to remind myself it’s ok. Just making the effort and getting out there and doing it is a great thing!

See more progress on: Swim 1km without stopping

43things: Get a bike and start bike riding

I'm finally marking this goal as done! I’ve had my bike for over a year now. I’m by no means an expert cyclist and in that time I wouldn’t say its gotten the biggest workout ever, but I am using it!

The day I bought my bike!

In the last week alone I have ridden to:

• Port Melbourneto meet friends for dinner & drinks
  
• Step into Life class
• Sandringham beach and back with friends for a swim

I don’t know if I’ll ever be an everyday communter. That will probably depend more on proximity to work and shifts, but I’m enjoying what I’m doing for now. I already have dreams of other bikes I’d like to get – cruiser, racer, vintage road bike…..but that’s a story for another time and place!

Me on a recent ride taking a cheesy self-portrait

See more progress on: Get a bike and start bike riding

day 1 (again) - 9/3/10

Well I’m starting up the exercise for 30 days challenge (again)!

To make it fair to myself, I’m only doing this on days where I work less than 13.5 hours, otherwise there just isn’t time to do this and keep my sanity. Days like today where I’m doing a 10 hour shift it is manageable.

So this is only the second time I’ve gone jogging in Melbourne, but it’s a start, right?

My right knee is still not 100%, so I really need to get myself to see a physio. I’m hoping this isn’t a lingering symptom of the SI joint problems I was having in December, but there’s only one way to find out. That’s on tomorrow’s todo list.

Only 3km so far, but the only way is up right!

See more progress on: exercise every day for 30 days

Different....ouch

For yesterday's exercise, I went and did a beginner's yoga class.

That doesn't sound like much of a big deal, does it? But to me it was, for several reasons.

It's now, what, September? That means it's been 9 months since we moved here. That means its been 9 months that I've been thinking "I REALLY need to go and check out the yoga place just around the corner". You know how it goes. The longer you leave something, the bigger deal it seems and the harder it is to get off your butt and do it.

I'll admit it, I was also SCARED. Yep I am a wuss. Entering a brand new studio with a new teacher and new other students is a daunting thing. Plus this is an Iyengar class, which I don't know much about, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

And guess what - surprise surprise - but IT REALLY WASN'T THAT BIG A DEAL. Sure I felt self-conscious entering the room and not knowing what to do. I also had to deal with my usual claustrophobic tendencies when someone set up their mat so close to me and wedged me into a corner that for some of the poses the instructor asked them to move it a bit away.

But all up I am so glad I went. The different style of class was interesting. It never really twigged to me that this is what a non-Vinyasa class would be like. The props were a bit scary at first, but we only used pretty simple ones so it wasn't too bad.

Will I go back? DEFINITELY. Once my muscles recover. My back and shoulders are feeling it today baby!

Shoes all sorted

It was over a month ago that I proudly announced I'd bought all the do-dads to get my shoe storage organised. It took me less than an hour to sort it all out, but for the last month I've been busy procrastinating finishing off a project that's been hanging over my head for so long it isn't funny. Finally I think it's sorted so I'm allowing myself to procrastinate play here again!

So hows it all looking now? Pretty bloody good if I do say so myself.

Here is the left side of my wardrobe - before and after (click on each image for a bigger version).



A significant improvement, no? And the right side of my wardrobe - equally as impressive I think!



Amazingly, in the nearly 4 weeks that I've had this set up, this is still what the floor of my wardrobe looks like! I've found it easy to access shoes when needed, and it's so easy to come home from the gym and just chuck my sneakers in one of those boxes - no excuse for leaving them lying around on the floor anymore!

I got a few other goodies while I was at ikea. Firstly, some storage boxes for the shelf above my wardrobe. That's where I store spare bed linen, towels, photos, sleeping bags, travel bags and other bits & pieces. Here's what it looked like before (sans the towels because they were in the wash).



It doesn't look nearly as bad without the towels (I have a lot!) but you get the point that its a shambles, right? This is what it looks like now, after the purchase of some ikea skubb drawers.



How much do I love the colour!!!!

And while I was there, I picked up a few other things I couldn't resist: a new frying pan, chopping boards and serviettes.



And some supplies for my next "project".



Stay tuned!!

riiiiiiiight

I’m starting this entry having bought the raw materials, but not even having unwrapped them.

So what did I end up deciding on for my shoe storage? To be honest, I hadn’t decided for sure till I was metres away from the checkout.

My dear Mum was kind enough to offer to trek out to ikea and DFO with me on Tuesday. After dosing up on coffee, we had a quick squiz at Howards Storage World before braving ikea. I wanted to see and price the options at HSW before scoping out ikea.

Minutes before I left home I measured the space underneath my wardrobe. I’m glad I did, because a lot of the beautiful solutions at HSW and ikea (including the tjusig shoe rack I’d had my eye on) wouldn’t fit into either of the two halves of my wardrobe.

Before the shopping commenced, I’d vaguely decided on getting:

• a shoe rack (a la tjusig) for one side of the wardrobe, where I’d put my nicer shoes that I didn’t want to get crushed.
• Several boxes for the other side, where I could dump sandals, sneakers and less delicate items. I was hoping the komplement ones would do the trick.

The first snag was the wardrobe measurements. The tjusig rack wouldn’t fit in either side by at least10cm lengthways. HSW had some great expandable shoe racks, but they were a little pricier. Since we’re moving in a few months, and I obviously have no idea what storage will be like at our new place, I decided to get a solution for now that would be as cheap as possible (but hopefully not too nasty).

Here’s what I came up with.

Firstly, the baboard shoe rack. At $9.95 its much cheaper
than tsujib. Plus it has the added advantage of fitting into my wardrobe. Both racks have the disadvantage of not providing dust protection, but I figure this is a cheap way of working out whether that will be a long term problem or not.

For the other side of the wardrobe, I settled on these komplement boxes.

The komplement shoe boxes I’d originally eyed were big enough to hold maybe up to 4 pairs of sandals, but I needed a lot more room than that. These komplement boxes are much bigger. 3 of them fit neatly inside inside my wardrobe (and quite handily they came in a pack of 3). Nice and cheap too. Of course the biggest drawback is no lid, but again, a good way to temporarily see how this solution works out.

Ikea had a lot of boxes on offer, at varying prices. Other options I considered were these, these and these. I grabbed all of them off the shelf, and pretty much did a meenie-mini-moe to pick them out. And went for the cheapest of course :)

That’s the theory anyway. I haven’t unwrapped or assembled any of this yet.

Perhaps this afternoon. I need a cup of tea.

See more progress on: Organize my shoes

back to the fridge

I’m back home now, and back into the fridge!

Last night I felled 2 birds with 1 stone: Thai red curry paste and coconut milk.

What to do with these two was pretty obvious. Combined with a few other ingredients, a tasty red curry was made. Tofu and sweet potato for me, and chicken for A. For both of us, a healthy serving of asparagus, sugar snap peas, mushrooms, coriander and spring onions.

No pictures, because we gobbled it down too fast. Tonight we’re having leftovers, so maybe I can pause before chowing down to take a few pictures.

See more progress on: use up the random ingredients cluttering up our fridge, freezer and kitchen cupboards

Shoe dilemmas

Having just recently returned from the OC to Sydney for the final time, I have a few storage-related dilemmas on my hands.

To cut a long story short, I have too much junk, and not enough places to put it.

Now this has clearly been a long-standing issue for me, but what makes this higher priority than ever is that in a few short months, A and I will have to pack up not only all my crap, but all of both-of-ours crap and move it down to the gong.

Another confession: I am a complete sloth when it comes to unpacking. It's now been 3 days since I've returned to Sydney. The car got unpacked on day 2. Day 3 finds most of the bags that I lugged inside scattered over the lounge and bedroom floors.

But that's not what's really bugging me. Instead, I've suddenly developed an uncanny ability of being able to ignore the majority of the filth right under my nose. Instead I've focused on my shoe organisation, or lack thereof, as my main source of despair.

Case in point: the floors of my wardrobe, where I "store" my shoes.





Now before you say "that's not tooooooo bad" (whilst secretely thinking it is), I have a further confession to make. That tangle of shoes doesn't include the 15 or so pairs that I took with me to the OC. Yes, there are more shoes to add to this awful mess!

So before I go ahead and throw those shoes on top of this pile of ungainly debris, I'd really like to do something about it.

Over the past few months I've spent a few bit of time procrastinating scouring the internet for the ideal shoe storage solution. Unfortunately perfection is hard to find.

This is pretty much as close as I could get.

Mariah Carey's shoe closet, courtesy of http://www.instyle.com/instyle/package/falltrends/photos/0,,20053995_20045143_20066678,00.html

Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of owning my own wardrobe, let alone apartment; making this kind of customisation quite impractical.

I've been quite intrigued by all those clear plastic shoe boxes that seem to have sprung up everywhere. But how do you decide which ones to choose? Which are best? With handles? With a drawer? The cheapest? Clear or opaque plastic?


Image from http://www.imelda.com.au/well_shod_well_imformed/2008/02/shoebby-doo-whe.html

Given that I own a ridiculous number of shoes I can imagine forking out hundreds of dollars on flimsy plastic boxes only to get screwed. I'd either fill my wardrobe up completely with no room for clothes, or have them all break on me. Or not fit some of my shoes (I have big feet). Or I'd want more but suddenly the type I ended up choosing weren't being made anymore so I'd be stuck with unmatchy plastic boxes.

The possibilities for disaster are endless.

I like the look of racks like these Tjusig ones from ikea, but don't like the fact that they don't protect shoes from dust and don't really hold that many pairs. Yes you can stack two on top of each other, but can you store them two deep? Plus at $59 each, buying enough of these for all my shoes would be prohibitively expensive (for me anyway).


I'm hoping an in-person trip to ikea over the next few days will seal the deal for me. Man cannot wait endlessly for perfection, so I'm just going to settle for the best (and cheapest) I can get right now.

I'm thinking that for now, a compromise may be one of those Tjusig shoe racks, and a set of komplement shoe boxes.


They're cheap and come in a pack of 4. They'll protect shoes from dust, and you can still see what's inside.

The plan is that the shoes I wear most often will go on the rack, and everything else will fit semi-neatly into these boxes.

What do you think, is this a reasonable solution, or am I dreaming?

Back and bad

So I’ve been back in Sydney for a week and barely done anything exercise-wise. I haven’t broken a sweat more than once. Granted I have had a bad cold and am currently battling a sore and cricked up neck, but sitting on my ass isn’t going to get me anywhere good.

So today, a 7km walk (in 2 parts). Not amazing, but it’s something. I could have just got public transport instead.

See more progress on: do some form of exercise every day.

An awesome salad

With A down in Melbourne on weekdays (a fact I may have neglected to report here) I'm left alone to fend for myself. My solution to this last week was to catch up with friends for dinner every night, an endeavour that left me well socialed, but tired, poorer and lardier than before.

Thanks to the Melbourne Cup this week, I'm only "home alone" for 3 days. Tomorrow afternoon I'm heading down to Melbourne myself - and hopefully escaping the deluge that has engulfed Sydney for the last week!!

What I have decided is that these 3 days are going to be the start of Operation "Me Time".

I'm going to take advantage of this time to make healthier meals than I might if I was feeding both A and me, and to cook all the things I love, but that he finds less agreeable. Namely a lot of salads and soups - lucky its soup weather at the moment!! A is gradually being converted to soups and salads, but is not the biggest fan. There's also other things he doesn't eat - like tofu, eggs and spinach - that I'm bursting to cook.

As part of this, I want to use up some of the random ingredients cluttering up our fridge, freezer and kitchen cupboards. I've got tapioca that I bought 4 years ago sitting in the pantry, 2 falafels left over from a Lebanese meal in the freezer, and more dried porcini mushrooms than I can poke a stick at. It's all gotta go!!

Apart from food, other things I want to do with this "Me Time" is continue to clean up the mess that is our kitchen cupboards, second bedroom and the verandah. These feel like never-ending tasks, but I hope I can make a dint in them.

Doing some more study, and working on my honours project wouldn't go astray either!!

Before I go, here's the salad I made tonight:

Yummy chicken, sweet potato and haloumi salad

• Lettuce and rocket leaves
  
• 60g chicken
• 90g baked sweet potato
• 15g grilled haloumi
• 1 tablespoon toasted pine nuts
• 4 cherry tomatoes
• sliced red onion
• dressing: 1 teaspoon olive oil, 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar, juice 1/2 lemon, cracked pepper
  

Very tasty, and very filling - in fact next time I might cut down the portions - especially if I'm eating late.

And right now, I need to finish packing!!

Washing Betty - long overdue!

A washed, and I polished. Was way easier than I thought it was going to be, despite the shockingly dirty state she was in.

Can you believe I have owned her for nearly 3 years without ever having washed her before? The shame!!!

But now, ain’t she beautiful!!

This needs to happen a lot more often!!

attack!!

Thanks to not realising it was daylight savings, and turning up to my yoga class just as it was finishing, I was a little more awake (and in a slightly worse mood) than usual when I got home and watered my plants this morning.

Perhaps that’s why I noticed that they had been attacked by evil caterpillars!!

Image thanks to flickr.

It was the mint that I first noticed. Mint is nothing if not hardy, so I was immediately suspicious when I saw that a few of it’s leaves looked a little moth eaten. Evil plans don’t just make themselves, you know.

Closer inspection revealed a couple of dark grey looking caterpillars. Ugh. After having lost a battle with caterpillars on my rocket earlier this year, I wasn’t relishing the though of having to repeat the experience.

Observation of my other plants revealed a similar invasion. My basil had been all but demolished by a number of the green suckers.

Despite the copious foliage, my tomato was also under similar attack by a mixture of green and brown suckers.

This particularly disturbed me, because the first of the plant’s fruit had just started to appear. I’m desperately hoping I get some to eat before I got to Vietnam!!

The only herbs that are (so far) immune to the caterpillar’s attack are the lettuce, chilli and parsley. Fingers crossed they stay that way!

1. Lettuce, 2. Chilli, 3. Flat-leaved parsley

Needless to say, I wasn’t going to take this lying down. When my rocket suffered a similar fate earlier this year, I lost the battle despite using slug and snail pellets, and a combination of soap, garlic and chilli (a method I devised, but must have read about it somewhere though surely?).

I was aware this wasn’t going to be easy, so I pulled out the big guns – Google – where I stumbled across this recipe for an organic bug spray. Deciding it looked suitably caterpillar-toxic, but person-friendly, I thought I’d give it a go. After all, should it survive, I do want to eat this stuff!!

Spraying it onto the plants certainly had some effect. At least 10 caterpillars dropped off and died. The tabasco also went right up my nose, and a few hours later my hands and lips are still tingling.

The question is, how many caterpillars remain?

See more progress on: grow an herb garden

Bay run!

I finished at hospital early today, so decided that despite not having run any distance for a while, I’d give the Bay run a go. It’s perfect running weather at the moment – not too hot, but still nice and sunny. What better track to run and admire the slowly setting sun?

It wasn’t all peaches and cream though. 15 minutes in I got a stitch that lasted a good 20 mins. It wasn’t too bad that I had to stop and walk though, so I just pushed through it. With 15 mins to go I also noticed my knees were hurting – I hope that is something that will go away rather than continue if I try to do this more often.

All up I did the 7km in 45-50min (I forgot to look at my watch until after I had finished stretching). I was pleasantly surprised that I made the whole thing without having to stop and walk.

A few hours later and I can feel my calves are tightening. It feels good knowing that I pushed myself today.

Let’s see how tomorrow feels though eh?

decluttering - zones 2 & 3

Top of chest of drawers is now done:

I bought the bookends from Officeworks. Was sceptical they’d withstand the weight of my textbooks but they did!

Next challenge was the table next to the bed. As you can see, it was covered in crap.

You couldn’t see the top of it, let alone appreciate the fact it’s made out of a recycled surfboard.

My brother made that table. He's a bit of a legend, isn't it?

So that’s zones 2 and 3 done. Now I’m down to the hard stuff. Here’s what remains behind my door:

Still pretty shocking, but better than what was there back in May:

See more progress on: finish cleaning out my wardrobe and behind the door and donate clothes to charity

New exercise plan

For a while now (12 weeks to be exact) I've been planning and tracking my exercise on 43 things and trying to do something every day. Looking back over my past entries, I've been pretty good about doing something, but not very good about doing what I'd planned to.

That's why plans are merely guides and not set in stone right?

The trouble with not sticking to a plan is that it's easy to stop pushing yourself and become a bit complacent. For me, any opportunity to slacken off and make excuses is just inviting danger and sloth-dem.

Now that I'm home for the next 3 weeks I've decided my generic plan needs some alterations if it's going to be closer to reality. The main changes I'm making are to:

• Do more weights at the gym (Pump classes).
• Take advantage of the $5.50 weekday yoga classes at the studio less than 5 mins walk from my house (thanks Mary for introducing me to this place!!)
  
• Get off my butt and do the Bay run in the beautiful weather we are experiencing (fingers crossed it lasts). Otherwise if the weather is nasty, go to the Gym instead.
  
• Do my exercise in the morning - why not when I'm at home anyway? What a start to the day and beats going to the gym in peak hour! Plus I can get a coffee on the way home.
  

After poring over my gym & yoga timetables, here's what I've come up with:



Don't freak out over Saturday. It's basically saying I've got yoga, Pump and BodyAttack all going on. That's so not going to happen but it's good to remember all those options are available.

So that's the plan for this week. Next week will be different because I've got exams all day Monday and Tuesday (eeek!) but I'll worry about that when I get there. One day at a time!!

decluttering - zone 1 finished!

I’m happy to say the space between the wardrobe and my desk is now complete. Doesn’t it look a lot better!

Next challenge: the top of my chest of drawers. Not exactly overloaded, just in disarray (and in need of a good dusting!)

See more progress on: finish cleaning out my wardrobe and behind the door and donate clothes to charity

Decluttering my room, one item at a time

The obligatory BEFORE shot.

This isn’t technically either inside my wardrobe, or behind my door, but it’s where I’m focusing on tidying up right now.

Clutter, clutter clutter.

Some of these things have been sitting here in this particular spot FOR 3 YEARS. Unmoved.

Sigh.

See more progress on: finish cleaning out my wardrobe and behind the door and donate clothes to charity

mon afternoon

• tired when I got home – CHECK
• already dark – CHECK
• muscles still sore, knee still bruised and jaw still aching from netball on sat – CHECK
• my turn to cook dinner – CHECK

• got off my ass and did 45 mins yoga before cooking – CHECK
  
• felt a hell of a lot better afterwards – DOUBLE CHECK

yay :)

See more progress on: get into yoga: start doing it regularly in some, any, way, shape or form

Lemon seeds - take two!

I've started working on one of my 43things again - to grow a lemon tree from seeds.

Last time I lost my seeds in a little accident on the verandah - I decided they weren't getting enough direct sunlight, so I thought I'd move them from their safe spot on the kitchen bench to the verandah for an hour or two on sunny afternoon.

Minutes later when I went to check on them the paper towelling had blown away, taking my precious seeds with them.

Since then I've been avidly collecting seeds - I have about 50 by now, so surely some of them have to pop!!

This time, thanks to a great suggestion from little miss ruby, I'm using cotton wool instead of paper. Hopefully that'll mean less drying out, and less blowing away.

(I didn't have normal cotton balls, so I'm hoping those cotton wool make-up pads will do the same trick)

Fingers crossed this time is more successful. However due to the nasty and greyness outside I don't foresee there being much verandah-time put in - today at least!