Taking it Right Back to Basics ... in my own time

I've had a few days away from the blog.  It's actually only a couple of days, but it feels like forever.

There's been lots of thinking going on, and lots and lots of bad weather.  

I'm back in Wales at the moment ... and not loving this leaky as a sieve house with all the washing piled on window sills catching the persistent plop, plop, plop of rainwater as it cascades through the lintels, instead of tootling round in the washing machine where it is supposed to be.  When the drips slow down enough to remove the bedding from the sills and have merely the jugs in appropriate places it will be washed and put into a bag ready for taking back to my leak-free home in Lancashire.

I love the meme above.  

I want to slow things down.  I want to slow things down so much that even someone saying 'but what do you do with yourself all day' drives me nuts.  I do things, I move from task to task in a considered and thoughtful way.  I don't rush from pillar to post to achieve things in some man-made or self imposed time frame.  I get things done that need to be done ... and then that's it they are done.

And yes, that is invigorating!!

I need to take things back to basics.

I love this photo, these photos.

They were taken in the Weald and Downland Museum when we were there a couple of years ago.  This is the pace of life and the simplicity of life that I want, that I crave.

I'm not silly ... I know life was tough in those days, no central heating for them, no en-suite bathroom for middle of the night forays to the toilet.  No, instead there was a pot under the bed or a cold and perhaps wet trip to the outhouse. 

Perhaps I want the best of both worlds ... or all worlds.

I want minimal, but beautiful and useful possessions.  I want to have everything I need, and nothing that jars.  You know what I mean ... the thing that sits in the wrong place for the wrong reason.  Sometimes we don't even realise we have them as we pick up and dust an area week in week out.

I need to step back on a regular basis at the moment, carefully and gradually whittling away at what I have.  Adding the things that I do need and removing with consideration those that I don't.

I don't have collections as such.  I used too many moons ago collect owls.  Then every Christmas, holiday, birthday and excuse, would see me being given owls.  My collection got bitty and very to be polite diverse!!  I sold all the owls at a car boot sale many years ago, I was the talking point of the small car boot 'the lady with the owls', but all the owls went ... no doubt to people who loved to dust.

So no collections for me.

I do have lots of books, lots of Dvds ... and at the moment it seems to me lots of clothes.  Some of these areas will be worked on, only the best will remain.  I don't need lots of anything.  

To quote William Henry Channing I want:

To live content with small means;

 to seek elegance rather than luxury;

 to be worthy, not respectable: 

to be wealthy, not rich.

It's something worth working on ... in my own time.

Sue xx