Recently, I’ve been wondering whether your home is your castle or prison – does it keep you, or do you keep it? By now you’ll be aware of my thoughts on wealth – it’s not one thing or the other but a constant tradeoff between your time, health, and money. The suburb I live in […]
Tidy Desk Tidy Mind
Does a tidy desk really equal a tidy mind? Or is it just that the open, expansive space feels more relaxing? Rife with possibilities. A few weeks ago I read Getting Things Done, by David Allen who thinks a tidy desk definitely correlates with a tidy mind. I’d heard about his system, often referred to […]
Some Things to Live By
After another few weeks in lockdown, I’ve been thinking about “things”. Both the physical some things and the mental some things we accumulate as the days go by. This time has has seen us both tidy up and slob out. Sometimes at the same time. It’s a little bit funny how easy it is to […]
The Joy of Freshly Mown Lawn
In a rare break of sunshine, we did a little yard work. A bit of pruning, and weeding, and lawn mowing. It’s amazing how much better the garden looks with a freshly mown lawn. And how much calmer you feel looking out over it. It must shake up the lawn dwelling creatures as well – […]
Creating a Happy and Healthy Home
Recently there have been a lot of changes in the Blaelock Household, with the aim of creating a happy and healthy home. Mainly leading out from the transplant rejection scare, and consequently a need to redesign my working and sleeping environments. Happy and Healthy Sleeping Environment We started the sleeping environment upgrades a few months […]
How to Choose What To Do First
It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I have so much to do that I’m not sure what to do first. Or second. Or last for that matter. I’ve been sick, DB’s been sick and pretty girl’s been sick. She was so sick she slept through the last episode of Game of Thrones! (Actually, I […]
Books: to keep or not keep?
Since I read Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying, I keep falling over intense, library voice (whispered) bookish debates about whether to keep or not keep books. More often than not, the argument centres on not keeping, and Ms Kondo’s insistence on only keeping those that “spark joy.” Can/does a book “spark joy”? Well, […]
How To Care For Your Best Rooms
In days gone by, houses were much smaller. They generally consisted of Best Rooms like the parlour, where you received guests during designated visiting hours, and everywhere else. Best Rooms Best rooms were very special places, strictly for showing off, all the very special, very expensive things went in there. You can see a more […]
Housekeeping Standard Practices
We had a “discussion” recently about the current quality of home care, and as I’m hard at work packaging my new book Minimally Viable Housekeeping, (thus the discussion) so I thought I’d give you a quick introduction to housekeeping standard practices. Standardisation Standardisation is the process of developing and implementing an agreed standard, for example, the […]
Housework Survey Says: What You Really Think About It
A while back, I mentioned I was inspired to write a book about Housekeeping, and I asked if there was such a thing as minimally viable housework? Well, housework survey says maybe. As you read the results, you’ll guess that the survey was mostly completed by women, but interestingly, the mix of age groups was […]
The Happiness of Housekeeping Habits and Routines
Work on my new book Minimally Viable Housekeeping is steaming along – I’ve finished the first draft! There’s still work to go on the second draft, but I’m feeling a little smug. But as you might expect, the more involved I am in this project, the less I am in my actual housekeeping. And while DB […]
How to Make Good Purchasing Decisions
Here in Australia, the Banking Royal Commission is well underway. And you may wonder what this has to do with good purchasing decisions, but at some point, we all chose to buy their services, and some of us chose to invest in them, and all of our superannuation funds invest and bank with them. The Commission was […]