And now for something completely different..

Time to shake things up a bit and defunk myself - body, mind and wardrobe.

First of all, a big thanks to Angie from youlookfab for recommending this ruffled singlet earlier in the year. I struggle with buying tops, especially summer tops. This is my first day wearing this top, but I already love its light fabrication (hello 30° weather) and the way it skims over the lumps and bumps in my tummy. Now I wish I'd bought 2 different colours!



But the real reason for this post? I need to move house, and my wardrobe into a much smaller space. Most likely some of it will end up in storage as well. So it's wardrobe cull time. I need help!!

To start off with: 3 blazers (pictured both buttoned and unbuttoned).

The brown and minty green ones I have not worn for at least 4 years. Not because they don't fit my body. Maybe they just don't fit my lifestyle? I always err on the side of under, rather than over dressed. Initially what appealed to me about them was how the linen fabric made them more casual. However I still can't get over the fact that they are a blazer. I always seem to reach for a cardigan or a different cut of more casual jacket first.

I can't wear them to work either, because the sleeves would get in the way too much. The sleeves are too tight for scrunching, but I was wondering if shortening them would work? Worth it or not?

Or maybe its the colours. I love the minty green, but maybe the lighter shades just don't work on me?




This final jacket is less summery. It's a black velvet jacket I bought in Egypt. The quality is not amazing - it's not even lined. The loop-through front closure is very forgiving however. This is the only time I've worn it in the last 3 years.



As ruthless as I am tempted to be, I half wonder whether if I move to Melbourne I would be influenced to smarten up my wardrobe a bit. Especially in the cooler months. Maybe I shouldn't discount the blazer look as too stuffy after all?

What do *you* think - keep or cull?

Click on each picture for a larger version.

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?

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!!

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

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