Lucy Lees' Joy Of Living

OK so you've cleared out your clothes, you only have items you love. So how are you caring for these clothes? For lots of us it involves chucking everything in the machine together, powder, fabric conditioner. Then dryer/outside. Just an aside, I no longer use fabric conditioner or biological washing powder especially for female underwear and nightwear. The chemicals in these products are a sure fire way to induce reactions ie itching, thrush and urinary tract problems. I use  non-bio on all clothes now at 40 degrees on a thirty minute wash and our clothes are always clean. What happens then? Some spend hours ironing, some just hang up or fold from the dryer. They then stuff said item either into an already full wardrobe where no matter how well you've ironed it or how quickly you hung it from the dryer it will crease due to being pressed up against other clothing. Or the push it into a drawer stacked in a way that means you have to rummage to find anything, ...

Clothes. I've loved clothes all my life, I like wearing them, touching them, reading about them looking at them. There's not much I don't love about clothes. Well apart from everything involved in the care of them. That's because the entire family had too many. I was under the misguided impression that more clothes equals less chance of running out of clean stuff. It doesn't. It means you will wear as much of your wardrobe as you are willing to ( roughly a quarter of what you have if you're like me) in order to avoid washing until one day your entire house is knee deep in clothes and you have no idea what is clean or dirty so you just wash and dry and pray you get round to putting it away. REPEAT No more. Follow these steps and you could be this time next week in a house that contains only lovely clothes that you always want to wear and has minimal washing needs. Step one Retrieve every single item of clothing you own from whatever part of the house ...

I'd like to tell you how three bears epitomised all that was wrong in my house. The reason I hated tidying. The reason I hated clothes, washing, folding putting away. The reason I would do anything in the world other than housework. The reason I stopped baking and cooking from scratch. The reason why many cupboards were no go areas for one false move could bring on an avalanche of crap. These three bears Clingy Bear, Stolen Bear and Woffett had been with me pretty much all my life. I loved these bears with all my heart when I was growing up. They slept with me, ate with me, dried my tears and did all that a child's bear should. Every time I saw these bears in present day though I felt nothing. Nothing other than a slight sentimental tug of my heart strings and wondering where I could stuff them now as I only ever came across them when I 'decluttered' (they were always hidden away quite frankly due to being a bit minging). Matted fur, half an eye missing, a...