It's been a hot minute - hello again!
Yikes. The last time I published a blog post was November 2022. To my horror, a whole year (and then some!) has passed. I’m still here, business is still running - there are a few changes in that realm, but that’s another post! This one is purely a quick update on the last 15 months or so, so anyone that has been wondering “where’d ya go, Beks!?” can get caught up.
Soooo November 2022. That must have been just after I started Clutter Collect. That was a whirlwind of a time, and probably is a large part of why I fell off the face of the earth for many people. I had 4 years of experience running The Ship Shape Shoppe, but somehow starting Clutter Collect and hitting the ground running was a whole new ballgame. Probably because at the exact same time as I was getting Clutter Collect off the ground, the organising business kicked up a notch. All of a sudden things went from being comfortably busy but with definite room for more (hence starting a whole new business!) to being run off my feet. Jo starting taking on more clients and I could feel The Ship Shape Shoppe morphing into something bigger, and an inkling that perhaps the winds of change were blowing.
While Clutter Collect was in the early phases, Otis started school. To say it was an adjustment for our family is an understatement. Moving from daycare hours to school hours was a shock for me especially, and I struggled to adapt. I ended up quite grumpy and resentful, and ultimately we hired a lovely nanny to support our family a couple of afternoons a week. We sllllooooowwwwlly found our feet and before we knew it, the 2022 school year was over and 2023 had begun in earnest. Time, relentless as ever, marched on. Otis adjusted to his new teachers and classmates, and to my great excitement, friendships began to flourish. By the end of 2023, he was a confident school boy with mates, a good routine, and mostly pretty happy to head off each morning for the school day. At the end of 2023, we said goodbye to our nanny and settled into a new routine for our family.
The renovation (or not!) of our home has lurked in the background of daily life for the last 4 years, often like a festering wound, due to the stress it has brought us. The house we purchased was plagued with issues, and everything we tried to fix seemed to open a can of worms that was bigger than we could handle. Our beautiful planned renovation never got off the ground, despite finally getting building consent from the Council - with the cost of building materials and labour going through the roof during and after Covid, followed closely by the cost of living crisis, it has never just been the right time. I’ll be completely honest and say that this has had a negative impact on my mental health for a lot of 2023. I absolutely hate feeling stuck and trapped, and that is exactly where we were with our home. The weather last year was a shocker, which of course affected everyone, but for us meant we were spending so much time in a home that was making me seriously miserable, on top of the leaking and dampness issues. The misery spilled out into other areas of life, and if you happened to speak with me in 2023 you probably heard about the renovation, the house, and how unhappy I was because of it all! I’m pleased to say that as of November last year we’ve made a start! We are focusing on the very small things that we can manage ourselves, and prioritising things that fix a problem AND give us an increase in quality of life! I am happy to report that I’m no longer feeling stuck and miserable when at home, and for sure the lovely weather we’ve enjoyed over summer has been a big part of that! As of last night I’m excited to report that our garage is finally finished - watertight, painted, carpeted and our beloved Elvis-inspired neon sign is on the wall. (TCB stands for “Taking Care of Business” and was Elvis’ personal brand. We fell in love with it when we visited Graceland a few years ago and thought it would make a great neon sign, so had it custom made.)
So that’s really what has been happening for the past 15 months. Work, family, life… the same for everyone, right? I had an epiphany late last year that I really missed the running of the business part of my work - the blogging, the content creation, the connecting with people in email and social media. So, as I mentioned earlier, the winds of change have been blowing, and it is time for a new era of business…. but as I also mentioned earlier, that’s another blog post!!