730 things — Day 70 of 365

Clear Your Mindset is a YouTube channel I hadn't come across before, and I really enjoyed this video from that channel.

I tried to find the name of the person whose channel it is, but though I looked in the "about" pages on her YouTube channel, her Facebook page and her website, I couldn't locate that information. Anyway, I did very much like what she had to say. She is on Instagram too.

One of the topics she touched on in that video is the trend for neutral palettes in minimalism. I wonder if that comes in part from HSPs (Highly Sensitive Persons) being drawn to minimalism because they need to lower the input from stimuli in their lives. Of course, if you're going for a very small (or capsule) wardrobe, then having all neutrals gives you more possibilities with fewer garments. If your clothes are black and white/cream/beige in simple shapes, you're good for everyday, a party, office work, public speaking, going to the theatre, attending a funeral — whereas if you have a lot of bright florals and frilly things in hot pink, your suitability options are more limited. Perhaps especially if you are a man.

In my own forays into small wardrobes, trying to make it work for me, I have tried, failed, given up and started again, several times.

At the present time (I dare say nothing more confident than that) I have reached an interesting — well, it is to me — compromise with colours and neutrals. I like strong, warm colours — spice box colours. They suit me as well. However (it's an HSP thing) I find the vibration of strong, assertive colours very tiring. If I have colourful clothes, I like them when I first put them on, but quickly get fed up with them. What I've settled on is quiet, deep, peaceful colours (or the natural colours of yarns) in my actual clothes — grey, black, brown, green, navy blue, beige; that sort of thing —but my room is very colourful, with the ceiling painted a warm olive green, the walls in two shades of strong mustard yellow, and the bedding a riotous large paisley pattern in red and yellow and turquoise. The floor is natural wood but quite a bright honey colour. And on my door hangs my dressing gown, which is red and orange flowers on a peacock green background.  Like this.

And there are little places in my room — small flashes of joyful colour — that please my soul.

So I get to have the best of both worlds — slinking about in quiet neutrals while simultaneously revelling in warm, bright colours.  It's a compromise, or synthesis, that feels good at the present time; but one of the benefits of minimalism is that not having all that much stuff makes it fairly easy to make a change if I feel the need to do so — which happens quite often.

While we're wandering around my room — I said I'd show you my wardrobe/cupboard organisation once it was all sorted, didn't I?

On the outside I used to have a blanket in a strong Indian pink hanging up. I liked it, but it was a bit short. So I swapped it for this cream coloured one which is just about long enough with the fringe. I have a snuggly blanket as an extra warmth layer (for me, not for the wardrobe), made from two of those acrylic 'yak' wool shawls from Tibet stitched together, which I keep on top of my cupboard but I let it hang over to make a kind of pelmet. It's strung on a bamboo bean pole suspended on pot hooks — which handily is a few inches too long, giving me somewhere to hang my lamp.

Inside my wardrobe/cupboard things are organised like this. You can read about those people who live in my wardrobe here.

My clothes aren't all black, it's just that they're in packing cubes which are black.

I wanted to get Iris Ohyama storage for my stationery, just because all the Japanese minimalists seem to sleep on Iris Ohyama's folding mattresses, and I love Japan. I mean, I've never actually been there, just explored into its culture from a long way away. It has Kyoto and mountains and Shinto and cherry blossom and Marie Kondo and Fumio Sasaki and futons and tatami mats and rice paper windows and Zen Buddhism and outdoor baths and people bow to each other. Epic.

But the Sundis storage height fits my space perfectly so that's what I got. I still feel slightly sad about it, though. And if your belongings need organising, the Iris Ohyama store on Amazon repays investigation.

It was a relief to get my papers herded up into drawers — they'd been under my bed wrapped in pillowcases for a while. I still need to go through all the papers again, though — some categories are a bit muddled up. Anyway, those drawers are new, but I did swap out some things in exchange.

Meanwhile, today's items to go are a hat and some jars. 

I got this hat to wear at my mother's funeral. I was careful in selecting clothes for that event, making sure to choose things that could be worn repeatedly in many settings. Then, to my surprise, I found I didn't want any reminders whatsoever of the last year of her life, which was very stressful indeed. So out went the hat.

It looks in the picture as if it was new — it sort of was, but I got it on eBay from a private seller who just hadn't worn it; it wasn't full price from a shop. I forgot to photograph it, but that was the actual hat. It's the photo off the eBay listing from when I bought it back in January when the funeral was.

And these jars — well, I always think packaging looks so useful, and I often wash up, and save for a long time, pickle jars or the little plastic pots with salad dressing in from an Indian meal, or the nice sturdy boxes raspberries and mushrooms are sold in.

But every now and then I see sense, and throw them away. Not to landfill, you understand. First we tried putting these on Freegle, but it's not soft fruit season quite yet, people aren't thinking about making jams and jellies. So when they didn't go we put them in the recycling collection. Later on I retrieved the Nutella jars (with the white tops) because they make good drinking glasses and we were a bit short on those when family come over, but I swapped out other hoarded jars to chuck instead.