Friday Share: A Confession

image from style-files.com via pinterest 

I have a confession to make. I'm a little bit addicted to lifestyle and interiors blogs. It's a slightly healthier and cheaper option than it's parent addiction (now cured) which was homes magazines, or 'house porn' as I affectionately thought of it. Mine is a deep love for beautiful cottages and old houses, white washed walls, crisp linens and wildflowers from the garden in a jam jar. It's a love of spacious loft conversions, funky textiles, ingenious DIY and reclaimed wooden floorboards. Tiny clever homes, canal boats, windmills, I could go on (and often do).


Reality check. We live in a 2 bedroom flat which comes as part of our salaries. It's ours for as long as we're employed by our university, perhaps until early next year but hopefully longer. There's plenty of space but the furniture is shabby and the walls are covered in old sticky backed plastic and are in dire need of a repaint. Our linens are garish, our pots are battered and our bathroom has smelly drains. Sometimes I dearly miss my lovely white wedding present bed linen (in storage, I couldn't part with it) and cast iron pots (ditto, bad minimalist!) After a lazy evening of interior blog binging I look at our home with a critical eye. 


When I do though, I am reminded of all that is good about where we live and why we live here. 


1. No rent to pay, that has to be number one. We never have to worry about rent or utility bills, that's pretty amazing.


2. When the walls are damaged, there's no need to be precious. We can sellotape our own art gallery up on the wall (picture to follow!) The boys love seeing their pictures up and I don't have to worry about the paintwork (we've always rented and this has always been a concern). 


3. It won't break my heart to say goodbye to any of our linens, pots or crockery when we want to up sticks. What we have suits us fine and will last us until we want to move further away (when we leave Asia I'm guessing). 


4. Our house is easy to clean. We don't have much furniture and all the floors are tiled. A quick sweep or mop and we're done. No carpet to worry about. Painting and plasticine play are not a problem. 


5. When I miss having a garden I can take a walk around the lush green campus and enjoy the flowers in bloom. 


6. Ours is a happy, lived-in home. We all spend a lot of time here and it suits our lifestyle very well.


7. Did I mention that it's free?


This isn't our perfect home but it is our perfect-for-now home and I'm very happy to be living here. It's worth remembering that when I was living in the UK with my good pots and lovely linens, there were many other things I was fantasising about. Like a husband who was home during the day, a chance to live somewhere exciting and a new career...


We got rid of most of our belongings because they weren't making us happy. I don't need fancy pots to cook with or shelves full of books to read. I enjoy looking at lovely things but I don't need or want them in my life. 


I'll most likely keep adding beautiful interiors to Pinterest but I'll try to keep it in perspective and remember how lucky I am to be living this life. 


Have a happy weekend. 

Friday*Share- Simplicity Parenting

In my 4 years of parenting I’ve read a few parenting books, mostly frantically searching for ways to get baby F to actually sleep. I’ve read airy fairy ones that I couldn’t see how to apply to my life, and I’ve read harsh ones that seemed to me tantamount to child cruelty (one that I actually felt compelled to destroy as I couldn’t bear the thought of a desperate parent picking it up in a charity shop!)  I don’t think reading a lot of parenting books is a good idea. Your life and your child do not fit in a box and the last thing you need is more people telling you what to do. I’m a big believer in instinct and being true to yourself and your child.

Despite that, I’ve found a real gem.  Kim John Payne’s Simplicity Parenting is wonderful.  This isn’t an instruction manual but an in depth discussion of how, for so many children, their childhood is being stolen from them by doing too much, too fast and with too much pressure. Payne calls for us as parents to slow down, switch off the electronics and reduce the pressure, schedules and pace of our children’s lives. He asks us to allow children the space to enjoy their childhood and embrace the vital learning processes that they will naturally go through. It is all that I believe and more that I hadn’t thought of.  He writes as a parent and also as a child psychologist so has some really interesting insights into modern childhood. 

I really enjoy his writing style as he isn’t prescriptive in his recommendations but just shares what he knows and the experiences of families he has worked with, and allow readers to choose if, and how, an idea might work in their own families. 

Since starting to read the book I’ve been thinking more and more about F’s kindergarten schedule. I’ve been very quick to say no to extra things in my schedule that won’t enrich our lives, but perhaps I have been side-lining his feelings about kindergarten.  This week F missed 3 mornings of kindergarten and the effects were instantly felt all round: he had more energy, he was better behaved, he was happier to go to kindergarten in the afternoons and we had a lot more time to play. 

This week his kindergarten began after-school classes in art, English, music and dancing. My first thought was, why on earth can’t they do these things during the day?! F and his classmates are expected to be at kindergarten before 9 and, with a sleep (when we whisk our child away while the others stay), til 5.20pm. They then do activities from 5.30 til 6.15pm. Every day, Monday to Friday. My child is not yet 4. ENOUGH.

Initially we listened to the teachers when they said whole school days would be better for his language immersion, but actually when F is at home in the morning we listen to Chinese songs, my husband reads him Chinese stories and we play games. It’s a fun and relaxing way to learn, and actually he’s learning more than in class where it’s all a bit too fast and over his head.  This week we’ve made indoor tents, explored textures with crayon rubbing and done a lot of silly dancing. We also visited a friend of his who we have trouble catching at weekends. Slow, child-led exploratory play. It’s been wonderful and F has been so happy. 

From now on F will only go to kindergarten in the afternoons and he won’t be doing any after school activities. Simplicity Parenting has made me a bit more confident in my own parenting instincts and abilities and for that I’m very grateful. 

(*Yes it is Monday, we went offline for a few days as we forgot to pay for the internet. It was actually quite nice!)