As it gets colder and darker, I can’t deny the inevitable fact that it’ll be winter soon and I’m going to be spending more time indoors.  Which means I start to think more about the state of the flat, in the summer, it’s fine if it gets a bit messy, that’s not a problem but in winter, those things niggle at my brain and I need more order and less mess. It’s why every autumn, I implement Golden Hour, because when it’s 6am on a cold, dark morning, and my bed is comfy and the duvet extra heavy, the best thing I can do for myself, is an easy path to coffee and the tiny dopamine kick of ‘the kitchen is tidy, I CAN do hard things’. It helps.

Things I can ignore in summer, cannot be ignored in autumn and so I have started to get around to the little things in the flat that have been annoying or irritating me, in the spirit of Michael Mosley, I’m trying to do ‘just one thing’ them as they start to really annoy me, here are the things I have done in August and September so far:

• A new system of the leaning tower of Pisa that was my TBR pile

• A riser for my work at home desk, instead of the pile of work notebooks that I was using before AND sorting and getting rid of the used notebooks!

• Framing and putting my allotment awards on the wall. Because I need reminding that I have worked hard to create that plot.

• Framing and hanging the ‘30 ways to poster’ in the kitchen

Off the top of my head, here is a list of things that I could do/need to do in the flat, there is probably more….

• three bags of books that have been hanging around since April 2023 need to go to the charity shop
• the freezers need defrosting
• the oven needs cleaning
• the cupboard of doom needs sorting and I need to sort out the council picking up some broken furniture (because I have no way to get to the tip!)
• there’s a pile of allotment things in the hall that need sorting.

• I need to wash and sort out plastic pots.
• I need to sort out the box of pictures that have been sitting in my bedroom since the work on the flat (April 2023!)
• My bedroom needs a declutter.
• My kitchen cupboards also need a clean and declutter.
• The white cupboard in the living room needs a tidy.
• The tiles in the bathroom need a ‘mould and mildew’ clean.
• The bokashi bins need emptying.

Not all of them require money, most just require time and effort but I would like to see how many I can do because I think they would make my happier in my space this winter.