I hope you have had a great week and that you have had many reasons to be grateful. I have really enjoyed getting back into the daily habit of physically writing down the things I am grateful for – I hope this is something that has also worked for you. If you have tried it I would love to hear how you got on.

Today we are up and about early ready to brave the shops and start our Christmas shopping. We are late getting started this year and part of the reason is that I am more mindful than ever about what I buy and what comes into the house.

Earlier this year I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo an international best seller where Marie shares her methods to de-clutter your home and create a sanctuary where you are only surrounded by things that “Spark Joy”. In turn this lightens the mind – it has been a game changer for me – and my Mum!

Marie suggests that rather than de-clutter room by room or an area at a time – such as your wardrobe – instead you choose a category, for example tops and you take out every top that you own from every area of your house and put them in one pile. One by one you pick up each top and ask yourself “Does this Spark Joy?” If the answer is yes it can stay if the answer it no it goes.

This KonMari method, which is a play on Marie’s name, is a great method to follow to systematically de-clutter the whole house. The idea is you start with low emotional value items such as clothes and move through the categories ending with the more difficult emotional categories such as sentimental items and photographs. The idea here being that you get better at it over time.

I am probably 75% through all of the categories but I still have big areas to tackle including the dreaded loft and photographs. Over the last 6 months we have got rid of bags and bags of items that no longer “Spark Joy” – a good chunk of which probably never did!

This really is just a skimming the surface of the premise of the book. I will share more in a follow up post and I will share my own checklist that has worked for me. However, the reason this is front of mind today and why I wanted to introduce it, is that when we are out and about today we are bound to be tempted to buy things for each other that we really don’t need.

I am going to do my best to be mindful of this with everything that catches my eye today. I really don’t want to bring in more bags of “stuff” that we just don’t need when I have worked so hard to send everything out of the house that doesn’t spark joy.

Wish me luck! I will follow up to let you know how I got on! xx