So last week I urged you to love your laundry, this week I urge you to apply an ever more popular gardening/farming technique to your homemaking :)
 
I first heard about permaculture a few years ago, before our eldest was born. At the time I assumed it was some sort of farming technique, like organic or biodynamic. I always read about it in relation to farming you see.
I then found "the new complete book on self sufficiency" for a rediculous price in a local WHSmith, its cover had been damaged quite a bit bit that didn't matter to me, I had for as long as I can remember wanted a smalholding and these would help me dream. From there I read more about various ways to garden and keep your allotment and found more on Permaculture. It wasn't until I found "an introduction to permaculture" that I started to get excited about this particular way of thinking.

As I was reading trough this book I quickly realised that permaculture is more than a gardening or farming technique but rather its a way of life. I strongly believe in mindful living and I see permaculture as a part of that.  Permaculture is conciously placing and connecting the parts to create a whole in where the output is much larger than the input. That might, for example, mean that I plant a tree, this tree not only gives me nuts to eat it also fixes nitrogen in the soil and produces food for the animals and provides shade in which I can easier grow lettuce.

Now move that to your home. For me it meant placing a washingbasket on our superstair (odd corner stair that is much larger than the others) where everyone throws their laundry into instead of me scouring the bedrooms and hoping to find those socks (this I will admit was hubby more than the kids!). It meant moving all cleaning items into the extension,buckets brooms mops soaps and jugs of vinegar, everything found a new home there. It's also where the washingmachine lives and where we have a washbasin and a toilet. It means that instead of dragging the dirt from the garden through the house like they used to do the boys get to the porch right by the backdoor they undress drop everything in the machine and put their bathrobes on.
It made me rethink the way I used my storage space in the kitchen and where I had what houseplants. It made sure that I use the space in my house much better because I actually spend time thinking about what I was doing.
I have a smaller bucket upstairs in the airingcupboard with cleaning supplies that I use there. Everything Is streamlined, everything has a purpose and a reason for being where it is. And because its so easy for me to do the chores that need doing I find that I am doing them quicker and easier than before.

You might say that this is all just common sense and I agree with you :) Permaculture is in my opinion very much about common sense.
So do you have a system? Or do you run up and down the house without really thinking  about how you are doing it, just that it needs to be done?

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Today promises to be a lovely sunny day and my washingmachine will be on for a large portion of the day. We had rain for days and we don't own a dryer, so today is catchup day.
As I was sorting the laundry into piles, white, black, darks etc I was thinking about how my mother always complaines and mutters as she does this and how I used to do the same but thankfully shifted my perspective of the "chores" a few years ago.
I read a book called "sweeping Changes", a Buddhist perspective on cleaning and chores. That book kickstarted my shift from complaining about the chores and disliking them to where I am now.

You see I am lucky, very lucky, to have a loving husband who works hard to put bread on the table. I am lucky that we have managed to arrange our lives in such a way that I am able to stay at home, care for our boys and educate them. I will be doing this "job" for at least another 10 years, most likely more. Why would I spend such a long time doing something I hate doing?

First I accepted the chores, I stopped creating resistance to it. Then slowly I started to look at the individual chores and finding the silver lining in all of them. Finding the bit that I do appreciate. Sweeping the floors at the end of the day became a way to sweep up the aruments between the boys, the fights they had, and the times I had lost my temper, I sweeped it al in the dustpan and dumped it in the big green wheeliebin.

The dishes became an extension of feeding my family. I cook them lovely food everyday, I enjoy the process and washing up the plates at the end became a confirmation for me that they did indeed enjoy the foods it and a preparation for the next meal and the next enjoyable family get together at the kitchen table.
The lanudry was no longer about washing piles and piles of stuff but a way to offer my children warmth and protection even when I am not there. Protection from the sun & the cold and as I fold each piece of laundry I envisage the item on the child (or my husband) it belongs to and I picture it turning into a little piece of armour protecting them from whatever life might throw at them.

Selfcare extends beyond the half hour (or 10 minutes or however long you get) of 100% self focus we allow ourselves a day, self care extends to every aspect of your life. You deserve to be happy all the time. If the thought of loving your laundry seems to rediculous than take small steps, as small as you need. You are going to have to do it anyway (unless you suddenly became super rich?) so find a way to enjoy the process!

This Sunday just past, besides being 9/11, was also the start of the Barefoot Breathing ecourse I signed up for. The one thing it has made me realise is that eventhough I spend a fair amount of time outside each day, tending the chickens & the garden, playing with the kids, hanging laundry, I don't spend as much time as I'd like out there. The quiet moments at night that I spend outside now have been something really special.
When I am outside with my kids I spend time in nature, when I am outside at night I spend time with nature. It might not seem like a big deal, its one little word in a sentence, in versus with, but for me it has made a big change.

Spending time with nature I am more open to what she has to say, I notice the little things like the hundreds of teeny tiny brown spiders that weave webs in the grass. My kids are convinced this is purely for their enjoyment when they find the webs in the morning covered in pearls of dew.
I can hear the fox nearby (too nearby!) and the hedgehog muching the treats I left out for him. The bats that fly overhead. the stars so very many stars! The Netherlands is very lightpoluted and until I went to New Zealand I hadn't seen so many stars. Moving to London was the same as living in the Netherlands but then coming home to Wiltshire has once again opened up the magical nightsky for me. This week its been expecially beautiful with the Harvest moon in the sky.

One thing this moment each night has given me besides the pure joy of being with nature is one moment of just being. Noone demands anything from me, noone judges me, noone expects me to be something I don't neccesarily want to be at that moment.

So tell me do you spend time with Nature?