January 2025 Minimal Monthly Hello, hello! During the raging fire earlier this month, a woman from L.A. wrote in to me, asking about a picture of some metal bento boxes she had seen on Tidymalism. She was putting together a bug-out bag in case she had to be evacuated. She struck me as being incredibly calm. I had a hard time finding the right words to respond to her in such a situation, but I let her know where I found the steel boxes and wished her good luck. I hope she's okay. I hope you're...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
December 2024 Minimal Monthly Hi Reader, Wow. 2024 blew by fast. As the year winds down, I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to get caught up in planning, learning, and gathering inspiration—but then sometimes we don't get around to taking action. This morning, I opened up my battered copy of the Daily Stoic to this passage from Marcus Aurelius. It feels like the perfect closing thought for the year: Great little book btw. It’s a reminder that fresh starts don’t come from empty hopes or...
3 months ago • 1 min read
November 2024 Minimal Monthly Hi Reader, Ah, November. When a hint of what we can assume is the sun comes out at 11am and goes down half an hour later. It's so dark and rainy out I can't even be bothered to open the curtains. I'm taking my vitamin D and holding out for 21st December when the days start getting longer again. Meanwhile, and despite vitamin supplements, I managed to get sick for the first time in ages. I'm all bunged up as I write this and just want to lie down and sleep for...
4 months ago • 2 min read
October 2024 Minimal Monthly Hi Reader, Did you know that when you cancel a subscription, you will often receive a new offer that's much more inexpensive? It works surprisingly often! Two examples: I cancelled Spotify Premium and got offered three months for the price of one (OK!). Then I cancelled my CRM software and got offered 40% off. Like, wow. I'm going to be doing this more often now. Of course it's not guaranteed to always work, but I'll take my chances for stuff I can resubscribe to...
5 months ago • 2 min read
September 2024 Minimal Monthly Hi Reader, What a jump in temperature this week. Within 48 hours we went from flip-flops and shorts to jacket, scarf, beanie and booties. The sudden shift gave me the impetus to get out on the rooftop and clean the gutters before the cold really sets in. All that's left to do is bring in the containers that aren't winter-proof and tackle one final round of weeding in October. Easy-peasy. No knotweed in my neck of the woods. 😉 Good Housekeeping lists seven other...
6 months ago • 2 min read
August 2024 Minimal Monthly Hi Reader, Home organisation obviously focuses on the tangible—sorting through drawers, decluttering closets, and arranging living spaces. But what about things beyond our physical environment, noise for example? In a free society, much like in our homes, we face an abundance of choices. Just as we navigate through our possessions, democracy allows us to sift through a multitude of information, opinions and ideas, and tune out what we don't like and what doesn't...
7 months ago • 2 min read
May 2024 Minimal Monthly Hi Reader, If your favourite home & garden bloggers have been quieter lately, it's because they're deep in the trenches of social media, trying to figure out how to recoup the 70-90% loss in website traffic they're suffering. And it's not just home & garden that's been hit. Now that Google prefers to serve content from Forbes and Reddit (or just display utter nonsense), web publishers large and small are in the doghouse. Adding insult to injury, everyone's content was...
10 months ago • 2 min read
April 2024 Minimal Monthly Hi Reader, Habit stacking is probably one of the most efficient and relatively painless ways to stay on top of all the daily stuff you have to contend with at home. We all have things we do routinely. The trick is to tack a task onto them and presto, you're habit stacking. It can be as simple as stacking the task of wiping down the bathroom sink onto the existing habit of teeth brushing. Then you just build more elaborate stacks of mini tasks to maximise time. We're...
11 months ago • 2 min read
March 2024 Minimal Monthly Hi Reader, Whether it’s a car, appliance or pair of jeans: I tend to use my stuff until it’s on its last leg. I have an old friend who always chuckles whenever he drops by: "That coffee grinder STILL works?" He was with me when I bought it nearly 20 years ago. My electric beater is from the mid-80s (yup, the nineteen-eighties). It’s ugly as heck but it still works. It sits in the cabinet next to an electric citrus juicer from 1997, also still in weekly use. You get...
12 months ago • 4 min read