Baggage

The stuff you carry with you is telling: the useless things you hold onto; the props that get you through the day; the defences against potential disaster that hinder rather than help you.

I refer, ladies, to the crap that is in your handbag.

I’ve been workign through my issues and gradually downsizing my handbag crap. I haven’t wanted to write about it here. Baggage can be painful. But, after having gone a WHOLE WEEK with my simplified handbag, I feel like I can say: you really don’t need all that baggage.

Here’s a list of what used to be stashed in my standard daily handbag:

Wallet
Keys (Car and House)
Phone
Sunglasses
iPod
Diary
Umbrella
Hanky
Lipstick A (browny pink)
Lipstic B (glossy pink)
Tinted lip balm (red)
Foundation
Blush
Mascara
Eyeliner
Random Multi Purpose Sparkling Cream
Hairbrush
Hair Elastics x 3
Bobby pins x 1 000 000
Dry Shampoo
Toothbrush
Toothpaste
Deodorant
Water bottle
Small packet of almonds
Novel
Tiger Balm
Panadol
Neurpohen
Buscopan
Sudafed
Notebook
Pens x 6

That’s an awful lot of baggage.

Now, this is the exhaustive list of what I’ve been carrying with me this week:

Wallet
Keys (Car and House)
Phone
Sunglasses
iPod
Diary
Lipstic A (Pinky brown)
Foundation
Blush
Mascara
Eyeliner
Sunglasses
Panadol
Hairbrush
Mints

And that’s it. Finito. It all fits into a cute orange and tan leather bag, about the size of an A5 piece of paper. Admittedly, I have employed a calico tote on days when I have to bring gym gear/my own lunch/cupcakes for my colleagues/office supplies with me. But, I still feel a great sense of pride in my downsized self.

It wasn’t easy, letting go of all that stuff. I’ve had to make a couple of changes: leaving some things (deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste, dry shampoo) at work, leaving other things (umbrella, novel, random multi purpose sparkling cream) at home.

And, yes, I did get caught in the rain without an umbrella, and got rather damp, but what of it? And I did have to negotiate a bus ride without my usual please-leave-me-alone novel, but I plugged in my iPod, scowled, and no one bothered me anyway.

So, while I know and understand this is hard, please, have a go at dealing with some of your baggage this week. Or, at least, start small, and get rid of one item of handbag crap.

Might I suggest starting with the random multi purpose sparkling cream? It really is useless, and who wants to look like an extra from Twilight anyway?

Hotties, Heat Lamps, Hoodies and Warm Hearts: How to Survive a Canberra Winter

It’s the middle of winter in Canberra, and it’s Darwinism, pure and simple.

Only the fittest will survive.

Here’s the top ten secrets of the Capital's winter-fit. Now, go and make it work. We've still got two months left.

10) A proper coat. Proper, here, meaning thick wool tweed or worsted, lined, finishing - at least - at your thighs, but preferably longer, with roomy pockets. A lesser garment than the above will be insufficient. If you are new in town, this is the first order of business after ANZAC day (which Canberra natives know to be winter’s unofficial beginning).

A handy hint: the best coats I have found have been vintage, my guess is because air conditioning was less functional back in the day. My particular favourite winter coat was a $45 steal at Narabundah Vinnies. It is my very greatest bargain shopping purchase of all time.

9) Heat lamps and/or heating in your bathroom. Why? Let’s imagine you’re in a particularly awesome hot shower. It’s steamy, you’re washing your hair. You’ve even shaved your legs.

Nice.

Imagine, now, turning the taps off. You’re naked, you’re dripping wet. You step into a frigid bathroom. The air temp hovers just above ten degrees.

Not nice AT ALL.

I have lived in old, cold, Canberra houses/apartments where this sitch was a reality for June, July and August (PhD scholarship ghetto years, yo). It’s a suboptimal way to start the day, but you can avoid it by judicial deployment of energy-guzzling appliances.

8) American Apparel tights. Enough said.

7) A million and a half recipes for soup, or a mother/partner/housemate/really really good friend who will make soup for you. Unless you have a Spartan constitution, you will get sick at some point before a Canberra winter is through, particularly if you’re doing the hot shower-cold bathroom hop (see point nine). When you get sick, you need soup – chicken soup, lentil soup, pumpkin soup, pho, broth, laksa – to get you back to full health. That, and a whole lot of boxed sets of DVD’s.

Gavin and Stacey marathon, anyone?

6) Hoodies, preferably from your alma marta. Australian Bureau of Statistics data released this week indicates Canberra’s population is the most highly educated in Australia. It’s a safe town in which to get your nerd pride on.

If you’re a very clever cookie and have studied at more than one institution, pick your hoodies according to international rankings. Canberra is the only place in Australia with a population who knows and cares about such matters - choose your hoodies accordingly.

5) Hotties (Hot water bottles). If you are no longer deriving perverse pleasure from doing the whole Orwelian down-and-out-in-a-freezing-cold-climate thing, the simplest solution to your problems is to get into bed with multiple hotties.

You can pick them up for $3 at Big W. Too easy.

4) Proper Gloves. Proper, here, meaning fine calfskin leather, lined with cashmere, in a colour that says ‘Hi, my name is Fabulous’ (my gloves are violet, AKA Fabulous). As with coats (point ten), a lesser garment than the above will be insufficient. Good gloves will cost you (unless you or someone you know is travelling to Florence – in which case they will still cost you, but slightly less). It is worth the financial pain, though, because chilblains and knuckles-so-dry-from-the-cold-they-crack-and-bleed-as-you-type are best avoided.

You need the best gloves you can get your hands on. Or in. Just get some gloves.

3) Excellent company. If you are going to make the effort to leave your heater and get out of your trackpants, the conversation had better fucking sparkle.

Canberran natives know this. It’s why we all become fascinating people in the winter months.

2) Multiple Cardigans. You need at least one for each day that you are at work, because, if you are working indoors, heating levels will vary throughout the day and you may need an extra layer to keep you snug.

Some people bring blankets to work. My advice on this issue is that because its cold doesn’t mean you need your blankie. You're a grown up, put on a cardi.

1) An iPod, full of cold weather songs, because listening to Bright Eyes transforms your twenty minute walk home from a cold and miserable plod to a beautiful, pathos-filled journey of wonder. We natives know that’s what a Canberra winter is really all about – cold hands, cold noses, cold toes…

And warm hearts.

Bedroom Advice for Young Ladies – Top Five Handy Hints for Better Bedroom Experiences.

Hint #5: Size Does Matter.

I wish somebody had given me this sage advice when I bought my first ‘grown up’ bed 7 years ago, but size does matter.

(What did you think I was going to be talking about in this post? Clearly, the title could be about nothing other than interior decorating. Minds out of gutters, people…)

You see, should you want to be sharing your bed with a Someone, a Someone who is potentially rather tall, you might want to consider splashing out and going for the queen size, as opposed to double, option. Or be totally extravagant and go for a king.

Either way, remember spooning all night is delightful in the realms of imagination, but, in reality, it’s pretty annoying. And nothing kills passion like waking up cranky.

My key problem with my bed is that it has a foot on it – see picture. Whilst my bed looks lovely, like something that a Scandinavian lady-of-the-manor would indulge in romantic trysts on, it means that my Someone, who is a rather tall fellow, cannot lie straight in my bed. Instead, he lies diagonally across it, leaving me with two triangles of mattress with which to rest my weary bones. Which makes for lots of squishing, and a cranky Peggy first thing in the morning.



So, the moral to the story is, if you are at all interested in sharing a bed with a Someone, be considerate of their size. Opt for the next size up, or at least, pick a double bed frame without a foot, so that the Someone’s feet can poke over their edge till their heart’s content.


Hint #4: A Restful Colour Palette for a Good Night’s Sleep.

Your bedroom is for sleeping. Sleeping is very important. Studies vary in their recommendations, but I’ll tell you this for free – a bad night’s sleep is sure to mess up your day.

Colour, lots of it, is fabulous, and the rest of my home, and indeed most spaces I inhabit, are a veritable rainbow. But, the one place I make an exception is the bedroom. Just as certain fast food restaurants (*cough* MacDonald’s *cough* *cough*) use bright and clashing colours to stimulate appetites and encourage you to EAT THEN LEAVE, choosing restful colors, preferably from the same colour family or an analogous grouping, is a simple way to make sure that your bedroom visually cues yourself into being calm, rested, and serene. Even if you’re the latte-chugging-hurry-sick-mobile-phone-irradiated self you are during your business hours (*cough* Me! *cough* *cough*), a room that’s got a monochromatic scheme, or a subtle range of colours, is going to have some sort of a calming effect. Think shades of blue with greens, a mix of creams and wood tones, or even the classic white on white. All are excellent bedroom choices for a young lady.



Total mastery of the bedroom colour scheme isn’t easy to do in a rental property, or in other situations where you can’t paint. But, all is not lost.

One way around this is to go with whatever colour your walls happen to be, and roll with that as the theme. Luckily, the last three rooms I’ve had have been white or off white, which has meant that I’ve built up a collection of bedroom furnishings and furniture around a neutrals/white/black/wood palette.

Also, don’t underestimate the power of soft furnishings – soft in texture, but strong on impact, if used correctly. A fugly chair can quickly be turned into something much more attractive by the artful draping of a throw or two in a chosen colour – and the textural interest a throw provides can break up the potential monotony of monochrome. You can also choose to match YOURSELF to the monochromatic scheme, but I think that’s crossing the border between restful/serene, and padded walls. But everybody’s line is different…


Hint #3: Be Flexible.

As mentioned above, I’m renting, and anticipate being a renter for quite some time. Which means, regrettably, moving quite a lot more than I would like.

Moving a lot necessitates a high degree of flexibility in the bedroom. When selecting bedroom furniture, it’s imperative that it’s flexible in two ways: firstly, it’s easy to transport – it comes apart, or is lightweight, or, at very least, has ample gripping points for the brothers, dads, and friends enlisted to the task of moving to grab onto.

Secondly, you want, as far as possible, any furniture you buy to be up to radical multi-tasking, as, in the process of changing house, your room size and layout is likely to change radically as well. One of the things I loathed about working in furniture stores as an undergrad was that the ranges were targeted very specifically towards certain rooms, and to having a single use. To me, this is a really inefficient way of thinking about placing furniture in a space

My bed, with all its faults as outlined above, is fantastically flexible – it comes apart and can be put back together in ten minutes, and none of its component parts weigh more than five kilos. It can be stored virtually flat (thanks IKEA!). Because it’s a frame and mattress, rather then an ensemble, it’s also a multi tasker, in that the under bed space can be used for storage. This almost, but not quite, makes up for its other shortcomings.



Another piece of flexible bedroom furniture is my great grandfather’s fold out desk. Aside from being a lovely thing to have, with its ink stains and faint smell of pipe tobacco, it’s a truly flexible marvel.




Point A: the desk can be lowered or raised as needed, opening up a compact space when the desk it not in use. Point B: It’s actually quite roomy – and lockable – and is thus a perfect repository for various important documents and other secret things. Finally, Point C: Although it now makes its home in my bedroom, it is not bedroom specific – it’s flexible enough to be used, in other future houses, as a telephone table in an entrance way, as a desk in a study, a funky book display in a lounge room, or even as a hutch to store kitchen palaver. With flexible pieces, you are only limited by your imagination (and there I go, lapsing back into furniture salesgirl mode…)

Hint # 2: Put That Thing Back Where it Came From.

There is nothing worse than trying to relax when you are surrounded by a sea of moving bedroom debris. Hence, my very simple piece of advice: put things back where they came from.


As my pics suggest, you don’t necessarily have to put the things back neatly – they just have to go back. In their place. Leaving the important surfaces (bed, desk, reading chair) sans clutter.



So, you get your favorite yellow cardigan out to wear with your new skirt. It doesn’t work.

What do you do?

You put it back where it came from, on the hanger, in the wardrobe.

Simple.

Hint #1: You’ve Got The Love.

All of this is sounding a little didactic, but, at the end of the day, this is your room, so it should be personal – it should reflect, probably more than any other space in your home, your loves and your passions. And not in the l’amore, l’amore sense, but in the sense of who and what really matters to you, the people and things you want with you when you are dreaming.