A new year....

I have always been the sort of person who finds the beginning of a new year as a therapeutic, soul cleansing event. I love the feeling of a new year ahead, where anything seems possible, you can reinvent yourself, clear out old baggage (both physical and emotional) and begin on another journey. Last year was one of my favourite years, it was my 7^th year being with my husband, which I know people say ‘the 7 year itch’ well for us it was more of a ‘7 year awakening’ I feel like we really learned the true value of each other and it was like the penny dropped, we are in this together, for the long-haul and we must always value and put each other first. And it’s been bliss. We cut out the excess baggage; we stopped making the 4 hour journey from Cornwall back to our roots (and a whole lot of negativity) in Southampton and instead totally focused our energies on the life we are building in our new home of Cornwall. We kept positive; we no longer allowed other peoples negative energy to zap us. I read books on Buddhism and we made some amazing friends. So yer, 2015 you rocked. But alas a new chapter must begin, and I plan to make this one every bit as fantastic as the last.

And so…… I have hit the ground running in 2016; I have been looking within to understand what make me tick, what brings happiness, peace and harmony to my family and what we could all do without. I feel for us living more simply is key. The whole reason we moved to Cornwall was to get away from the negative rat race of town life and focus more on happy, healthy, family time in a peaceful setting. So 2016 for us is going to be all about reducing our carbon footprint, relying less on money, eating healthy organic foods and becoming as self-sufficient as we can. I have tried to put a list together of the key aspects that I’m going to attempt to focus on;

•      Make homemade everything!

No more buying cleaning products, as the existing products I have run out I will keep the containers and refill them with healthy, inexpensive homemade products. There is a wealth of knowledge on pinterest on this subject, so I won’t be short on recipes! Im abit of a cleaning addict, and breathing in all those chemicals on a daily basis is no good for me or the other people in our home, and so i will be using natural cleaning products with no nasties!

I plan to bake once a week, ready for the week ahead, which will actually be some great mother and daughter time for me and little bee as she absolutely, loves to bake!

I will no longer buy lotions and potions, if we have a health problem I will look for natural remedies, rather than rushing to the chemist and pumping us full of artificial drugs. I actually started this one yesterday, one of the twins has a terrible cold, we had no vix vapour rub left, so instead I found a recipe and made a homemade, healthy, organic, natural version, and it worked great!

•     Grow our own!

We already have two chickens in the garden, so have an abundance of eggs, I plan to get 3 more chickens, and so fresh organic free-range eggs are definately on the menu for 2016! In addition to this my husband has been busy using his carpentry skills making me a stand for the top of the drive where amongst other things we can sell our excess eggs, which will then pay for the chickens organic food and bedding, meaning the chickens are having no financial strain on us.

I also want to create my own herb garden; it seems like madness to be spending money at the supermarket every week on cut herbs for various recipes when I could just be growing them in the garden!

I also plan to grow as many veggies as I can, we are hoping to get lucky and source a greenhouse second-hand at a low cost!

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•    Reduce money spent/buy nothing new!

This is going to be the real challenge for me.  Having moved away from a consumerism, 'keeping up with the jones' town lifestyle to the countryside has slowly made me reduce the amount I spend on items we really don’t need, (Lets be honest, im no saint, its mainly because i live down a lane in the middle of nowhere, therefore getting access to shops is about an hours drive!) for ourselves and the house. I do however love to have a nice home, but I feel now that I could have more joy from not spending on unnecessary items and instead reconnecting and loving the items we already have! So my mission is to stop spending! And to help me feel more accountable for my spending I’m going to keep a money journal. Everything I spend is going to be written down in this little journal. I hope the process of actually having to write down and be accountable for every penny I spend will help me to think more and spend less! Accountability people, accountability! 

Also the weekly food shop, I plan to reduce this by a third. We already have eggs, my dad is a butcher, and so he gets us our meat, cooked meats and cheese on his weekly allowance, so these items are all already free to us (lucky us!) so with growing our own herbs and veg we could potentially have some meals which our almost free! And then with baking as well, I’m confident I can bring down the food shop bill!

Wash clothing less! We seem to have a problem in our household with people wearing an item of clothing once, or using a towel once and then throwing it in the laundry basket, when in actual fact things only really need to be washed when they are actually dirty! So all 5 of us will be assigned a fresh towel on a Sunday, and it’s to be kept and reused until the following Saturday, I mean seriously, you use your towel when you’re at your cleanest point, surely it can last a week! And clothes are to be folded and put away, not washed unnecessarily! This will cut down on the washing machine being put on 2-3 times a day (seriously guys, I feel like I’m drowning in washing most of the time!) and then having to put the heating on when we don’t even feel cold just so I can get the washing dried!

I can’t express to you the excitement I have to start our family on a more greener, healthier and simpler life and I hope you will enjoy reading all about our journey…..

'The mind is like a parachute, it works best when it is open' - Dalai Lama