Spark Joy

Spring has arrived (if temporarily) in London.

People are ditching their coats, smiling more, and the ice cream vans have started prowling the streets.

This is the traditional time for the SoberMummy wardrobe assault.

I only have one (largeish) wardrobe. Not enough space to store four seasons worth of clothes. So, twice a year I store away winter garments and bring out summer ones, or same thing in reverse.

This is always a fabulous opportunity for decluttering, and decluttering is a brilliant activity for sober people.

Why? Well, for a start it keeps you, and your hands, busy. Also, it's great mindfulness training. You have to totally focus on the job in hand.

Plus there's a beautiful symmetry about it - you turn chaos into order externally, mirroring what's going on inside your head.

And, after years of drinking too much, you're bound to have created quite a lot of chaos, right?

This year, I decided to take some expert advice, so I looked up Marie Kondo, enthusiast of the Japanese art of 'KonMari', and author of 'The Life Changing Magic of Tidying.'

Life Changing Magic! What's not to like?

Marie's method applies to your whole home, but she says to take one category at a time - in my case clothes.

What you do is lay out everything you own. All your clothes, dug up from every recess. It's frightening.

Then, quite simply, you pick up each piece and ask yourself does it spark joy? If it does, you keep it, if not you give it away.

Try it! It's extraordinarily liberating.

So many of our clothes are laden with emotion: guilt (it cost me a fortune, but I never wear it), sadness (I loved it once, but it's too young for me now), nostalgia (I looked amazing at that wedding, back in the day).

(I got positively weepy over a pair of bright orange Versace jeans (UK size 10) from my clubbing days).

But much of that emotion is negative. Plus, we only wear a tiny proportion of what's in our wardrobes.

So, when we open the closet, we're confronted by chaos. We can't see the clothes we could wear, because they're hidden by all the clothes we're never going to wear again. It's a Pandora's box of confusion, guilt, shame and regret.

So, Marie says be ruthless. Keep only those clothes that 'spark joy.'

(What I love about this is that it does allow you to keep the nostalgia dress you'll never wear again but has such happy memories. Or the shoes that cripple your feet but are so beautiful that you love them anyway. It's about emotion, not boring practicality).

Once you're done, you rearrange your wardrobe and drawers so that everything is easily visible and simple to locate. (She has special folding methods for drawers which you can check out on YouTube).

And you know what? It really works!

Now, when I open a drawer I can look at everything with fondness, with enthusiasm, with anticipation. I know I love it all, for one reason or another.

Plus, I can see it all! Some gorgeous, forgotten items have resurfaced after the purge. No need to go shopping for ages, Mr SM ;-)

And what you're left with, after all of that, is a feeling of peace. Of joy in a life made more simple.

And we all need a bit of that, don't we?

Now for the children's wardrobes.... *flexes fingers and cracks knuckles.*

So, go spark some joy, my friends.

SM x

Alcohol and Sense of Smell

Has anyone else noticed that their sense of smell has improved massively since they quit drinking?

One of the strangest things about the sober journey is how the benefits just keep on coming.

Some happen straight away - like losing the old puffy face, and ditching hangovers - some more slowly. And gradually, I've noticed that I smell much better. Actually, rephrase that, I can smell stuff much better.

(In fact, I probably do smell better too. I expect I often smelled of stale wine, seeping through my pores. Or sweat, after hours tossing and turning at night. Or toxic breath. Yuck. Enough already.)

I checked it out, and, apparently, drinking lots of alcohol does, over time, damage the part of the brain responsible for your sense of smell. Who knew?

I hadn't noticed losing my sniff-ability. It must have happened very slowly. But your sense of smell is totally tied in with your sense of taste. And I had noticed that my taste buds had dulled.

I'd started adding chilli flakes to pretty much everything to give it a 'kick'. I'd swapped my regular Heinz Ketchup for the chilli version (yes, there is one! #2 picked it up once by accident and had steam coming out of his ears).

Next time you're at a dinner, watch who's adding loads of seasoning and condiments to their food - bet you it's the big drinkers.

Now I can eat a simple tomato, basil and mozzarella salad, and it's like a massive taste explosion party in my mouth.

That's all good. Great, in fact. But there are downsides to an improved sense of smell....

......A mouse has died somewhere in my cellar. Also known as The Pit of Despair. I can't find it, (I can't find anything down there), but wafts of death float up the stairs on a regular basis, making me want to vomit.

When I was going through my sober de-cluttering phase (which never reached the cellar, obviously), I read up on feng shui (see Clutter).

It strikes me that DEAD MOUSE has to be really tragically bad feng shui. Way worse than a picture hanging over your bed, an untidy entrance, or other feng shui cardinal sins.

I wonder where it died? Perhaps it's in my finance corner (which would explain a lot), or - even worse - my relationship corner. Yikes. Poor Mr SM.

I Googled Dead Mouse Feng Shui. Nothing. So bad it's not even considered. What I did find, though, was a piece on dying plants or flowers.

Apparently, it is not good to have any greenery in your house that isn't perfectly healthy. The author writes: do you want to create the feeling that your house is where things go to die?

Bloody hell. What would she say about my rotting rodent?

If I were still drinking I would probably be blissfully unaware of my feng shui car crash and the wafts of decomposition invading my kitchen.

But then I would have been unaware of pretty much everything else too...

Now I've woken up and I can truly smell the coffee.

SM x

Clutter

Day 96, and my current obsession is clutter.

We high functioning alkies, in order to remain high functioning, become masters of prioritisation. We identity all the really important plates and we make damn sure that we keep them spinning.

Much of this is about external appearance. If everything looks as if it's in control then we can kid ourselves that it really is. We're like swans - apparently gliding effortlessly over the water, but in reality paddling like crazy through all the fish poo.

So I would like to bet that many of you have homes that look, on the surface, in pretty good order, but if you look in the cupboards, under the stairs, under the bed or in the cellar they are stuffed with clutter.

When you're drinking a lot you simply don't have time to deal with loads of stuff, to work out where it goes or what to do with it. So you shove it in a drawer and pour another glass of vino. Am I right?

And, here's the spooky thing, didn't we do exactly the same thing with our minds? Oh dear, here's a little emotion that I don't really like and don't know what to do with. Shove it in a recess and pour another drink.

So when we get sober we start clearing out all those rejected and neglected emotions that haven't gone away but have sat there getting mouldy and making us all sluggish and dysfunctional.

It's no surprise, then, that we start feeling the need to do the same thing with our environment. Our gardens (see Gardening) and our homes.

The link between our spiritual selves and our surroundings is the basis of feng shui. I have to confess that I'd always filed feng shui in the 'life's too short for all that up itself nonsense' drawer. But now it makes total sense.

Here's what feng shui has to say about clutter: Clutter is low, stagnant, and confusing energy that constantly drains energy from you. Depending on the feng shui area of your home and where your clutter is located, it can also negatively influence, or even completely block, the flow of energy and events in many areas of your life.

Funnily enough, the two areas of my house that I've started decluttering first are my kitchen and the entrance to my house. Having done some (quick) research I've discovered that the kitchen is the area which is related to your health, especially your liver. How spooky is that?!?

And the entrance to your house is known as the 'mouth of chi' and where your house gets its 'energy and nourishment.' If your 'mouth of chi' is all blocked you're screwed (executive summary).

Now, if you've only just quit drinking and are still in that slight-state-of-shock pink cloudy state, then do park all this and come back to it in a few months time. If, however, this is ringing some bells with you, then here's a link to how to clear your clutter with feng shui.

But, because I'm feeling generous and giving today, I've done a SoberMummy summary:

1. Don't try to do it all at once. Take one small area at a time and spend no more than thirty minutes on each session.

2. In those 30 minutes separate all your clutter into 3 piles: 'keep', 'bin' and 'don't know'.

3. Only keep stuff that you love, or is useful and you have a place for. If you don't love it, or have no use for it and nowhere to put it - BIN IT. (N.B. by 'bin' I obviously mean take to the charity shop/recycle or sell!)

4. Take the 'don't know' box away for a few months, then go through it again doing 'keep', 'bin', 'don't know' until it's eventually empty.

This process is hard work - physically and emotionally - but hugely rewarding. According to feng shui, we are like plants, and we cannot grow without space and light. Clutter saps health and vitality, restricts finances and stifles relationships (apparently).

Let it go (oh God, now I've got that terrible 'Frozen' song in my head for the day) and feel the energy flow.

Since my decluttering frenzy (before I even read all the feng shui stuff), I've created my little herb garden outside my front door, plus a tank filled with the children's tadpoles (which I now think of as my equivalent to the koi carp pool!).

By the front door I have a hook for the dog leads, and pegs for all the children's school bags. And all those bowls filled with bits of stuff have been emptied out and categorised.

I have a long way to go, both with the physical and the emotional clutter, (I haven't been anywhere near the cellar - known in our house as 'the pit of despair'), but I can see chinks of light starting to break through.

Happy Friday everyone!

SM x