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The autumn cleanse | Growing Spaces

I’m calling it – the autumn cleanse beats the spring clean hands down for me. In spring, all I want to do is get outside, but in autumn I go into full home declutter mode. For some reason this always takes me by surprise, but having looked back in my blog archive it seems I get this urge every September. It’s my seasonal reset button, with its promise of a new start (remember the joy of all that new stationary for the brand new school year?), and the reintroduction of routine and structure after the summer break. So I’ve gone into… View Post

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How to remind myself to drink more water - DIY water tally magnets

I don’t drink nearly enough water, do you? We’re generally advised to drink at least two litres of water everyday, but I know that I’m coming up short. At the beginning of the summer I made a real effort to get my water intake up, managing three litres some days and I felt SO much better. I had more energy, my skin looked better, my digestion improved, but I’ve let those good habits slip again. Some days I realise in the evening (usually as I’m pouring myself a G&T!) that I’ve probably had nothing else to drink but coffee all… View Post

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How to beat clutter using the 'touch it once' principle | Growing Spaces

Yes, I know, I know – this sounds like it’s going to be rude, but there’s nothing x-rated here, I promise. This post is about the principle of ‘touch it once’, much celebrated as a way to improve productivity and time management. It’s the idea that when you pick up a piece of paperwork, you deal with it there and then, instead of adding it to a pile that grows into a mountain and ultimately swallows loads more of your time to sort through. However, I want to talk about applying the ‘touch it once’ rule to housekeeping, rather than… View Post

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You may remember the collaborative project with Sarah-Lou that we named The Everyday Spruce. We posted regularly for the first half of last year, and then the busy summer months hit us. We never managed to find our groove again after that, so the project got shelved. However, Sarah-Lou and I both fancy reviving it, albeit in a much looser form.  It won’t be a full-on as it was before – I may try to post something monthly but we’ll see. It’s more that if and when we think of something that fits, we’ll blog about it. Here’s a little… View Post

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#TheEverydaySpruce - beat the stress this summer with mindful colouring | Growing Spaces

#TheEverydaySpruce – a collaborative project by lapinblu & growing spaces – | SIMPLIFY | CLARIFY | BEAUTIFY | The other day, everyone’s tempers were a bit frayed in our house – a combination of me being stressed out with work shoots and deadlines, and the kids suffering from that end-of-term exhaustion – and I couldn’t think how to dig us out of the dark hole of grumpiness. And then it struck me. I’ve recently written a feature for a magazine about mindfulness, and as part of my research I got hold of a few mindful colouring books. I dug out… View Post