I’ve been struggling to find peace and happiness in the normal of my days. Might be depression again, but I think (hope) there’s just too much for me to process right now. I spent my time either distracting myself with scrolling, reading, or working extremely focused on a single project.

But with the photo book done, being too tired to concentrate on books or websites, and a shoulder injury making it impossible to work on bigger chores in the garden or the house, I found myself wandering around my home, trying to find something to do.

And then I noticed my houseplants were looking neglected. And that’s because they were. I had watered them a few times since we returned, but not regularly and surely not with intent and a bit of love. And I truly do believe that’s what they thrive on.

So I started to give them some attention. Dusted the leaves, cut off dead leaves and stems and gave them a generous amount of water. And with each plant looking so much better, I felt my spirit lifting a bit.

I’m not going to pretend that miraculously all is well with the world now. But I do feel better.

And so do my plants…

Last Saturday I cut down some trees, but my body wasn’t up to more of that kind of activity on Sunday. So I looked for something else to do and realized it was a perfect time to tackle this mess. Yes, that’s my craft supplies. All jampacked in there because I wasn’t using it anyway. But now that I am on my way back to knitting and maybe even sewing frequently again I felt it needed a bit of love.

Also, I finally was able to bring my mom’s sewing box with me from The Netherlands. We had a giant suitcase full of miscellaneous “stuff” and I made sure this fit in there too.

So, that was my first task on the list. Trying to fit those two bins of stuff in the sewing box. The plastic bag holds some items that were in the sewing box. I left some things in the cabin for sewing emergencies and got rid of a whole lot of useless stuff. I really wanted to use this box, not keep it as a shrine for my mom.

Doesn’t that look great? I’m so happy with it!

I didn’t put it back into the cabinet. It sits in a temporary spot right now, but I want to be able to get to it easily.

I also removed my serger from the cabinet. I’m not even sure if I can sew straight lines anymore (it’s been so long! this dress was the last thing I made), and the serger has always intimidated me. I want to feel comfortable with my sewing machine first and then I’m going to get it out of storage again.

So, I ended up with this first.

So much better!

But then I realized the basket that was on top of the cabinet, just being empty, fits perfectly onto that top shelf and easily holds all my yarn.

Nice!

How about another basket?

I like it!

(yes, I know the plastic bins looked more organized. But this brings me much more joy, so this is what I’m sticking with)

Even though I love the act of reorganizing books, I am not too fond of decluttering my bookcase. I have a (genetic, I think) tendency to buy and collect way too many books, but I only have one (rather big) bookcase. And I promised T. not to add another one. That promise was made long ago, when we still lived in the Netherlands, to keep the collection from growing to big (it really helps to have limited space).
I have to admit I can get a bit envious when I see pictures of extensive home libraries. Two of my girls also inherited that book collecting tendency; they too have lots and lots of books and several bookcases and even though I try to share my wisdom (ha!) about keeping it curated, I do feel a bit jealous sometimes when they just add another bookcase because they ran out of space.
Of course, my one bookcase is filled to the brim. No decorative little stacks of books accompanied by other knickknacks for me. Nope. Waste of space, if you ask me. Those shelves need to hold books. Lots of books. I do try to stay away from double rows though. I used to do that, but I realized a few years ago that it’s no use to keep books I can’t see or reach and probably will forget I owned in the first place.

And that’s why my bookcase needed a thorough decluttering. I had some double rows appear out of nowhere (that happens, you know, even in a country with very few opportunities to buy books) and I was on the slippery slope of defending that moving my herbal and medical books to a different place (not an extra bookcase, I just wanted to create a space to keep them with my herbs and herbal concoctions – so sneaky) was just the right thing to do. It had to stop.

But it was hard. Getting rid of some of those books meant admitting that I will never have the time, nor the headspace, to study all the topics that interest me, and giving up on the idea that I can teach myself to like reading “real literature”. There were books that made me believe I could get my life in order or my body strong and healthy and even though I know those methods don’t work for me, it took me a while to put them in the donate pile. There were stories I believed could inspire me to be a different person; they never did, but maybe they would in the future… And then there were books I had loved to read, but I would probably never read them again. Or would I? It was a struggle, really. But it also felt so, so good to do it. I needed a fresh start.

Apart from a few cook books in my kitchen and the novels I wrote myself, that are on display in our living room, all the books we own are in (okay, and on top of) the bookcase now, in single rows (actually most of them are mine – T. has very few books).
Well, except for my Agatha Christie collection (bottom shelf). I have all her books and I feel triple rows are just very sensible. Otherwise they would take up more than three shelves and this just contains them nicely. Never mind that I can’t see them all and never really reread at least half of them. Ahem…

Gosh, I’m long winded these days… I actually just wanted to tell you what I was thinking about when I was making those though decisions about what to keep and what not.

We book lovers tend to think we are above the mere act of collecting. After all, the books we own contain beautiful words, deep thoughts, interesting stories and useful knowledge. I used to believe that. I really thought that collecting books was very different from collecting stamps, or dolls, or teacups or… you know, stuff.
So why do I want to keep books after I’ve read them? If I’m honest with myself it’s because I want to own the vessel containing those beautiful words, deep thoughts, interesting stories, and useful knowledge. And of course there’s nothing wrong with that. But do I really need to own everything I ever thought to be beautiful, deep, interesting or useful? For anything else but books the answer would be a very strong “no, of course not!”. I’m not a hoarder. Or am I? Are books really different?

After seeing my parents struggling with letting go of 75% of their books five years ago, and helping my father to get rid of another 50% (or more? I think it was more) of the remains this summer, I realized I had to change the way I feel about my books.

(this is just me, by the way, I am by no means forcing this upon others, just sharing).

I do want to have a nice collection of books that I love to pick up and reread, but I don’t, really I don’t, want to be emotional attached to them, or even to the thought of having them. If I ever lose my books, or have to downsize my bookcase, I just want to remember them (or rather the words, thoughts, stories and knowledge in them) fondly without being too sad about letting them go. People are important, stuff is not. Books are stuff.

So, I guess I do need to go through that bottom shelf…

When we decided to stay in The Netherlands for so long, I knew my house/porch plants would suffer. It was an offer I was willing to make, but with a bit of pain in my heart. I overwatered them as much as I dared (rotting roots are even worse than no water at all), moved most of them inside, in the shadow, and hoped for the best.

So when we came home, I was surprised and relieved to see how many actually survived. Just a few were beyond saving, but most of them were doing okay, or at least not too bad.
These three though… They looked like they weren’t going to make it, but I was not ready to give up on them yet. So I gave them some love, water and time.

And look at them now (three weeks after we arrived home): new leaves!

I know, so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But small victories need to be celebrated too, don’t you think?

I thought I would do an “in my kitchen” post today, but I realized that I never even showed you my new kitchen. When I last posted about my kitchen, it looked like this:

I was actually quite happy with it. But last year, in June, T. decided it was time for something better. We went to Building Depot to look what they had and I fell in love with a conveniently cheap solution almost right away (after talking myself out of a beautiful kitchen that would empty out our bank accounts completely).

But first we had to demolish the old kitchen. That sounds easier than it was. It was build with concrete blocks, so we definitely needed that sledge hammer.

And then it was quite easy to install the new closets. It’s metal, so easy to clean and durable (particle board would swell up within a year or two in this climate, wood is only available custom made, so incredibly expensive). I love that it looks vintage and I am thrilled with the amount of storage. They even sold a pantry solution, so my open shelving (remember the old shelves on concrete blocks?) is gone now.

I’m so, so happy with it!

In the (messy) back ground of the last picture, you may notice that the iron gate is gone (as seen in the last picture in this post). The month before we did the kitchen, T. built a little hallway, connecting the kitchen to the main building. That was such a game changer! Before we had to open two gates (that we locked with padlocks) to get from the house to the kitchen (getting a cold drink or a snack at night was really hard and made a lot of noise). Now you can just walk through! We chose to use a big glass folding door, so the kitchen still feels as open as it did before.

And now that I’m looking at those pictures: we also finally found chairs that match our table. The plastic ones were breaking up (as everything not wood, concrete or iron seems to do in this climate), but these (solid mango wood – we found them at a secondhand shop) will be just fine.

So that’s another (triple) house update. Trying to get the blog up to speed with our house makes me realize we actually did make some big changes over the last year, even though it feels like we didn’t accomplish that much.

So fun to see!

A few weeks ago, Chris asked if I had any house updates to share. Truth to be told, I’m not sure where I left off and my archives… well, that’s a whole other story (in short: I thought I had saved them, but I lost a lot of my pictures).
But when I was writing this post about the guests in our pool (see below), I remembered that I never really told you about that pool, even though it has appeared in some of the pictures lately.

So I thought I’d do a little update about that while I was going to talk about our pool anyway.

We’ve been thinking about if and how we’d want to add a pool to our home for… years, I guess. We do have a beach very close to our home (a 7 minute walk), but to get home, you have to walk up a steep hill. It is fun to swim in the sea, but it doesn’t help for a quick cool-down. So we decided we wanted a pool and started looking around. We had some experts tell us that what we wanted was hard to do (although we’ve seen it in many modern homes) and we’ve made calculations that would have taken all our savings.

But then T.’s brilliant out-of-the-box thinking mind got to work.

We had a few men that we know are great with building make us a level concrete base.

And then we ordered a simple Intex pool that was just the right size.

T. had made calculations that had made sure the pool was at just the right level to build a deck around it that is level with the porch, so we can walk into the pool straight from the house. He built the deck all by himself, making up the construction as he went.

And now it looks like this:

We’re so, so happy with it! Since we filled it up (last year October) we may have skipped two or three days, but (except for our months abroad, of course) we’re usually in it multiple times a day. Especially right now, since we’re in the hottest period of the year. It’s so great to be able to just jump into the pool when we start to feel overheated.

We’re not the only ones who think that way, it seems. We’re constantly saving bees and wasps. Wasps can actually swim and get out themselves if their wings stay dry, but bees just jump in and drown if we don’t get to them on time. It adds a whole new dimension to our swimming moments, but we try our best.

And last week we found another swimmer:

Yes, that’s a crab. A land crab to be precise. It must have walked in at night, so it drowned before we were able to get it out of there. I have to admit though, we weren’t too sad about that, because we both find them pretty scary. They’re rather big and those shears look impressive when they raise them. When they enter the house (they do!) we use a broom to push them out of the door. One of our builders said they are very tasty, but we haven’t brought up the courage to try yet.

The same goes for these guys, by the way. We both tried them (in a restaurant – they do taste like chicken), but we’re not eager to catch them. And come to think of it… I so hope that he sticks with eating the leaves of my moringa trees. I really don’t want to try and save a panicking iguana from our pool…