Living Lagom

So two weeks ago today I had my home visit from IKEA as part of the Live Lagom project. Chayten and Marta came to my home and we discussed how I could make my life more Lagom: sustainable and living with the just the right amount of everything – not too much, not too little. It is interesting discussing your life and home with new people, and refreshing to see it through new eyes. All the little niggly things that just sort of happen, (like the accumulation of stuff on every available surface, or the hopelessly dull light fitting in the lounge) suddenly become something that I can change. Because actually the only reason there is a pile of stuff or a rubbish light is because we haven’t got round to it- it hasn’t been a focus- because being busy gets in the way and its gets neglected.( There are a lot of ‘becauses’ in that sentence. )

At the home visit I said the thing stopping me from living Lagom was time, but I am not sure that is strictly true, I think it is lack of focus that is stopping me. Like most people I am incredibly easily distracted- this is the main reason why it has taken me two weeks to write this blog entry. I am hoping that by managing to focus on the niggly bits that can be easily fixed in my home life will become better and I will find more time.

The things I am going to focus on are :

1. Better organisation of waste/recycling – We don’t have much waste to go landfill as I keep lots of it to recycle in various places and ways. At the moment I hide it around the house until I get round to taking it to the right place. I am going to buy several SORTERA boxes, put them all in the same place and keep all the recycling (except food waste) together.
2. Making recycling easier -This is linked to number 1. I am going to get 2 bins for all the rooms, one for proper rubbish, one for recycling. Then I can easily sort it without having to pick through old tissues and sweet wrappers.

Hopefully then I will be able to recycle more, be more efficient and not send more to landfill than I need to.

3. Lighting – this is two fold, we want to replace all the light bulbs with LED ones to save energy (this is a no brainer), we would also like sort out the lighting in the lounge, this might include some stand alone lights as well as sorting out main light (which hardly creates any light at all).

4. Rechargable batteries – Again a no brainer, IKEA LADDA rechargeable batteries last the life of 500, yes 500 !!! , non rechargeable batteries. Do I need to say more

These two changes will save energy and money.

I don’t think this will exhaust the £300 I have been allocated , I am hoping to be able to get a MULIG clothes airer and clothes baskets, not life changing but will make the washing easier. I also need to change the whole area around the washing machine, as mentioned in previous post. This will be change as it has been a place for stuff that has nowhere else to go for a long, long time. Hopefully after that there will be still some left to buy some growing things, I would like one of those little SOCKER windowsill greenhouses.

My shop with the #livelagom team is next Monday- I will let you all know then what sustainable delights I have come home with.

Until then live Lagom.

 

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Lagom

So we have a new IKEA store opened just down the hill-(luckily within walking distance so anything I buy has to fit in my bag, not in the car). And I signed up, and got accepted, on the Live Lagom scheme, focussing on making lives more sustainable by people making small changes in their lives.

We have some big changes happening here, we have finally decided to extend the house, to move the stairs out of the lounge and to make my son’s bedroom bigger. To carry this out we have to take out the side wall of our house- I am envisioning huge amounts of dust and lots of disruption. Life at the moment is beginning to be chaotic- to say the least. My initial reaction was to start packing everything up, so now the dining room/play room is full of half packed boxes, the unfinished game the children were playing this morning and the desk/half table that I am sitting at now typing on. In this room there is also a non working pinball machine and a couple of big boxes of things to get rid off. Chaos- on top of my usual chaotic madness.

And into this the lovely people from IKEA came. I think you have to be lovely to work at IKEA, positive and kind, I am not sure if they only recruit IKEA type people or if working there makes you IKEA type but it is definitely something to aspire to ( and now my children can aspire to it as well as it has opened just down the hill…) We chatted for an hour about what would make it easier to Live Lagom (having not too much, not too little just about right of everything). And it was decided life would be easier if everything was more organised. Amazing really ! So we have decided to sort out the general dumping area around the washing machine which currently looks like this:

 

And hopefully will end looking tidy with enough boxes to fit everything in -and put all the recycling in. I am also going to be replacing several light bulbs with LED ones to save energy and money.

So is this the start of making this house more organised and life more sustainable? A strange phrase that… There were a whole load of other little things to do to tweak day to day living- many of them don’t need an IKEA product to do it,

Oh and I am supposed to use hashtag livelagom. I am not sure I am quite brave enough to do that just yet.

I need a few days to digest all the information and decide what would be best to buy. I think a wander down the hill to IKEA is in order, for research purposes of course…