What a lovely woman and what a brilliant video!
Love it!
My mother loved things, loved her home, loved ornaments and ashtrays and occasional tables and vases of flowers, and further vases of fake flowers that hung around in bags and bunches, circulated in and out of display. When I was a child, every day she went through the house and made the beds, vacuumed the floors, dusted the surfaces, cleaned the bathrooms.
Every mealtime one of us children would be detailed off to lay the table — with placemats, damask napkins in silver rings, water glasses, silver cutlery, a jug of water . . . After each meal, two people had to clean up the crockery etc, one to wash and the other to dry.
Everything was orderly. This was the 1950s and 1960s so we didn't have much stuff anyway. My toys were kept under my bed in two halves of a box (the lid and the base) the size you buy a pair or boots in. And I had a small children's chair on which sat my two rag dolls, my stuffed fox and my koala. End.
We grow up and things change. I (almost) never eat at a table. Just now I went downstairs to get something to eat because it's time for my evening meal. I got a tin of fish, but the seagull was watching through the window and I didn't want to make him jealous. So I took it and got a teaspoon and ate it at the kitchen counter, straight out of the tin, with my back to him.
Then I got a piece of cheesecake — I bought it in a rash and mad act of defiance even though I know damn well it'll start my veins screaming. I say that's why God gave us paracetamol. I put the last of the raspberries on it because they're on the edge of going mouldy, tipped some cream over it and ate that. Then I wished I had a cup of tea but couldn't be bothered to make it and wandered back upstairs.
Later I'll augment this fare with a kale shake. I've eaten all the actual chopped kale, but I still have some kale sprouts — meant to be very good for you, I expect they'll do. I have a bit of coconut and rice milk but not much, and some rather unsatisfactory frozen summer berries (too many seeds, they get in my teeth). I can put in a dollop of roasted almond butter, and there's a tiny end of ginger knocking about in the fridge — that can go in. I'll add some of the strawberry coconut yogurt — very low carb, marvellously good for you — and I have a tin of coconut milk, I can use some of that and freeze the rest in an ice cube tray for later. All that and a slice of lemon, whizz it up in the machine; done! What more could you want? Don't answer that.
I do have a linen napkin as it happens. I use it as a heatproof mat. I have no silver cutlery; just stainless steel, with knives from junk shops and forks in a nice scoopy shape a bit like a spork which makes it easier to eat stews and curries. We have glasses, but often as not I drink water straight out of my stainless steel thermal water bottle. Why not?
And as for minimalism, I do it because I hate housework and I like peace. I dust when I think about it, usually with my hanky, and I clean the floor when I notice the rollags of fluff or the splots of dropped soup.
Also, giving things away is fun. It's pretty much like buying things. You get to choose and select, and pack them up, and they'll make someone happy somewhere.
Leaving my house today is a bottle of Four Thieves Oil.
You know about this stuff? It's said that at some point centuries ago during one of various plagues, some men were arrested for robbing the dead. Their lives were spared in exchange for their aromatic oil recipe that let them steal from corpses without falling ill. That's why it's called Thieves Oil and it smells glorious and is supposed to protect you from plagues. As you'll have noticed, we've been having one — so I got in extra Thieves Oil. More than I meant to, I had a ludicrous amount, so I gave a bottle away.
The other thing to go was a rucksack — one of those handy lightweight ones that folds up marvellously into its own pocket.
Why get rid of this if it's so useful? Well, I was seduced by its obvious handiness into failing to notice that I always get in a muddle with rucksacks. All those flailing straps and zips like an octopus trying to get away, and trying to get the zip undone and the groceries in before the automated voice on the self-checkout starts shouting at me to take my goods. Honestly? I find a tote bag easier. What's more, I travel on the bus, and then I have to choose between having a rucksack of groceries on my back which means I can't sit properly in the seat, or I have to take it off — which in turn means, when it's time for the bus to stop, managing struggling the rucksack back on while standing up in a crowded moving vehicle and hanging onto the poles so I don't fall over so I'm at the door when the bus stops so the driver doesn't pull away before I've got off. What can you do about the driver and the bus? Nothing. What can you do about the rucksack? Get rid of it. Ha! Gone.
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