Clothing Conundrums, Minimalist Wardrobe Problems, and Shopping IRL.

There was a recent Best of Both Worlds podcast guest who was a "wardrobe expert".  Last year my goal was to only own things I love and wear, and I am like 85% of the way there.  However, one of the problems with a "minimalist" wardrobe is that my stuff gets used A LOT and some of the things I own are starting to wear out.

I also try not to own a lot of stuff I don't often wear.  For instance, it's usually not hot here, so I only own 2 sleeveless shirts for hot weather.  

When it is hot, I think I might benefit from another sleeveless shirt.  

I decided to try and find the following pieces which will help my wardrobe situation:

A pair of shorts. Buying another pair of shorts was a 2024 goal and I did not succeed.  I have two relatively unflattering target pairs, 1 awesome denim pair which I bought seocnd hand 15 years ago, and 1 long cargo pair also secondhand 15 years ago.

A dress. I have about 5 dresses but all of them are work dresses and I wish I had a fun dress I could just throw on when it's hot.

A jumpsuit/playsuit.  Some people look soooo put together in these and I would love to have a simple thing that makes me look put together!

A sleeveless shirt.  I have this shirt and I love it and I wish they made it in another color

A denim Jacket in not blue I have a blue denim jacket but now I also have mostly blue denim jeans and I want a different jacket to wear.  Also I have heard that a denim jacket can make "worky" clothes more casual, so maybe my "work dresses" could become casual dresses with the right jacket.

I ordered a pile of clothes from one of my favourite brands and when it all arrived I didn't like ANYTHING.  

One of the comments the podcast guest made was that it's important to feel how things feel and see things in a shop.  Half the stuff I ordered I wouldn't have even tried on in a shop because I could see immediately it was a weird cut or I didn't like the fabric.

I realized that while it seems "easier" to order online I basically spent 30 minutes putting the order together, 15 minutes trying stuff on, and probably 20 minutes returning it all later.   Almost an hour to buy... nothing.

I think I'm going to have to go to a store and look for clothes.  I don't love the idea, but overall it seems it will be quicker than piddling my time ordering on the internet.  Alternatively, I may have to just frequent the local charity shops more and hope that one of the above items shows up in my size... but that seems improbable.

Also, there is a mexican restaurant in town, so at least if I figure out a time to go shopping I can also get mexican food.

Do you shop in real life or shop online? Are there any "wardrobe staples" you're after at the moment?

Weekend Update: Summer in Wales

Recent weekends indicate that we have somehow moved from the really tiring baby/newborn/young kids hard times to the really really tiring young kids good times.  I am basically always tired, and there isn't much of a break, but there is a lot of fun happening now.

Friday
There is currently a heatwave in Wales and it is 32c/90f today.  Friday was a childcare day for me and I took Lily and the twins to the Park after dropping Ezra at school at 9am and it was SO HOT we left within 30 minutes.  I know maybe 90f isn't hot for most, but it is hot when there is a shade-less play park, and when you're used to 65 degrees.  We came home and did this instead:

I like the flow of my Fridays right now - Ezra to school at 9, Lily to school at 1, twins asleep from 12-2:45... I can get up to 2 hours of Rachel time on a Friday.  The summer will mean my Rachel time disappears since Ezra and Lily will be home on Fridays... but also I think we have guests 4 of 6 Summer Fridays.  So maybe, it will just be summer.

Saturday

We had a relatively calm morning on Saturday... until the twins decided they were bored at 8:30 and Andy took them to a garden center.  Ezra (6) and Lily (4) played with Duplo and wrote thank you cards.  We had a picnic lunch in the garden, and then I went out for a swim with a friend and had lunch at a cafe which was dreeeamy.

In the afternoon we were invited to a friend's house for dinner, which seems very foolish of them but they had a padding pool out and the kids had a great time.  We brought macaroni and cheese because when yous show up to dinner with 6 people you may as well offer to bring the main course?  Twins are getting better and better at eating in new and exciting places.

After bedtime I met a friend at a local Thai restaurant for dinner.  I had emailed beforehand to ask if there was any cooling system there since I knew it was a small warm open kitchen restaurant and they said "yes we have air con!" which clearly was a con (dad joke sorry) as they definitely did not have any air con and it was soooo hot.  Like, Thailand hot.  Which makes sense for the cuisine but also if I was eating in Thailand I would probably be outside and not in a small terraced house restaurant... oh well! Food and company were great, and we ordered ice cream after because of course it was almost mandatory

Sunday

Because it's so hot I've been waking up early... this morning around 4:30am I  decided to go for a "long run" before the kids woke up (and while it was only 20c/70f).  I am definitely tired and also hot but I managed 4.7 miles before I had to come home and do breakfasts.  I only need to learn how to run 8.7 more miles before my half marathon in October.

Andy and I have started swapping weekend mornings for our own time (although I did lunch on Sat instead) so Sunday morning I took all the kids to a local splash pad which also happens to be near a girl we know who is at the perfect age for mothers helper-ing.  She was great with the kids and there is no way I could have taken them all myself.

Aubrey is highly suspicious of water.  Clara loves water.  

We made it out with only minimal difficulty:

And now we are waiting for a grocery order before friends join us for playing (Andy set up a slip and slide) and dinner at our house (It's falafel and other things that don't need cooking!).  And then we've had another very very summer weekend and it will be time for the last week of school.

Andy reminded me that the twins will be 2 in 3.5 months which means it will be the end of October in 3.5 months which seems crazy because right now I feel like summer will last forever (in a good way).  But I am also sure in about 5 weeks I'll feel like summer will last forever (in a bad way) so maybe I can go back and read this post then.

Are you having summer weekends? Are my kids probably or definitely going to break bones on a slip and slide later?  Can we come over to your house for dinner if we bring macaroni and cheese?

July Midyear Review, goals, and a giant planner!

I managed to get a bit of a midyear review in this week with both Andy and with my own goals.  

This year has been... crazy. In the first half of the year

• We spent 3 months very short of childcare (only 2 days a week to balance a 4 day and 5 day workweek)
• Andy applied for and started a new job
• I applied for two new jobs in my company, got both of them, and start one in September
• The kids are doing great in School.  Lily left her private nursery to have more home days with us before she starts school
• The twins transitioned to one nap a day
• Andy and I have gotten out for multiple date nights and two mountain biking days

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I'm "on track" with some of my goals and way off with others.  

After a weekend watching 3 kids from Saturday morning to Sunday night both Andy and I agreed that we are not in a "solo parent travel" phase of life yet, so he cancelled his 3 day biking trip and my goal paris trip has been postponed.

I have done 49 strength workouts this year, of my 100 goal.  However, I did a lot more strength in January-March than April-June.

I have started running again and on 27th July I'll "officially" start training for my Half Marathon (ie, I'll follow a real plan, not the 3 day a week running I'm doing now)

I've done 7 in person yoga classes of my 15 goal

I've not been great about tracking stuff either, so I've reduced the number of things I'm trying to track.

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Midyear Goal Updates: 

Personal Weekly Planning.  I feel like I make a weekly plan and then I just don't really look at it again. Which is kind of cool, but it might be better to actually plan things into my weekly plan in future months and know I'm going to look at it rather than sometimes planning and sometimes not planning.

Declutter house, and put things away.  Our house is becoming a stuff house and could use a summer sort.  I should book 3-4 hours to work on this project because I know I will feel better living where everything has a space to live.  Also, I often resent spending time on housework, so I don't.  But if I view this as "me time" not "me picking up after kids time" then I might enjoy it more

Audiobooks.  I should get some audiobooks on the go so I can read more and also maybe not resent the declutter/tidy time because it will also be reading time.

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I spent a bit of time looking at the rest of the year, and the big things that are happening in the next few months.  I realized why November is such a bummer month for me usually... there's really nothing to look forward to, especially without Thanksgiving.  I decided to make November my "learn things" month and will book in a biking course and a breadmaking course then (both on my yearly goals)

I cracked open my giant 2025-2026 family calendar, which I LOVE already

So much writing space! So much future time!

Do you do any sort of midyear review? How has the first half of 2025 treated you, overall?  Do you think the rest of 2025 will be better, worse, or the same?  Do you like a giant planner?

Happy Things Friday

Elisabeth writes a really well written and joyful weekly post called Happy Things Friday which is a joy to read.  I'm feeling the happy things vibe so thought I would do one of my own this week!

July Family Calendar Snapshot

• We are having the best weather.  The Sun is out!
• We recently discovered that we *can* have people over for meals again, especially if it's outside and if the people are cool with chaos.  I love having people over so this is great.
  
• We had people over for July 4th for a pulled pork and sausage dinner.  It was fun! I love a reason to celebrate, and July 4th is a good enough reason. It's weird because no one cares over here but I am going to bring back the July 4th Americana where I can (and not in the weird current political way, in the way that I loved it in primary school... friends, food & optimism. If only we could do fireworks) 
• Andy bought this discount sourdough and we ate some and chopped and froze some for French Toast Casserole.  Yes please 59p bread!
  
  
  
  
• I have been figuring out a new running schedule, which is 5:30am on Monday, Friday, Saturday.  I think I can get up at 4:45 three days a week.
• The kids have two more weeks of school.  
  
• We can now do family bike rides with Ezra - he's getting so good on the pedal bike.  And the twins love the bike trailer
  
  
• My brother is visiting in July
• I have the last week of July off with kids
• This giant Tub of pretzels:
  
  
• I got the new job I applied for in work.  I've not signed the contract yet so I'm not super ready to shout to the world about all the awesome pieces, but I think it will be very good. I'm now in "leadership" and my name was on a "Leadership Team" slide next to really cool other people who I am excited to work with and it's all... good.
• Andy and I have started swapping weekend mornings for our own funtimes.  My mornings are currently swimming and running, although I may try and throw a bike ride in tomorrow too if time allows because I'm starting to miss being a triathlete
• Our nanny cooked two meals this week for the kids dinner and not thinking about kids dinner is great
• This really weird card that Ezra made for his friend's birthday. In case you're wondering, it's a picture of a robot dressed up as a man with really long arms sitting on a toilet
  
  
  
  
• I lost a pair of sunglasses and then my 10 year old Goodr Sunglasses got quite scratched and so I ordered two new pairs of sunglasses from Goodr and I am very excited for new sunglasses.
• I finished Florence Adler Swims Forever and it turns out books that lots of people like I also like.
• Weekends in July are a good combo of fun things and nothing which means we have space for more things and also we know there are upcoming fun things.
• I have embraced "Decide Once" for lunches and recently my mealtime food choice has been a salad with whatever veg is in the fridge and also avocado and also nuts.  Nuts in salads are crunchy and delicious.
• We can take all 4 kids to a cafe and it's not awful! It's not super relaxing but it's a nice option that now exists
  
  
• Going to bed at 8:30 on a Friday is a happy thing.  Goodnight!

What are your happy things??

Time vs. Energy, late evenings, current running fails but other life fun.

I currently have a rather big disconnect between the time I have available for things and the energy I have for things.  I would like to do more running and sport, but not at 8pm.  I would like to plan adventures with enthusiasm... but also not at 8pm.  Basically, I am not an 8pm person, and yet most of my "me time" is at 8pm.  

Often when I am super ready to accomplish things (ie house stuff or fitness stuff or life admin stuff) it's midmorning and I am in work or watching kids, or Andy is at his job.  Or it's breakfast time and my mind is whirring with ideas and also a kid has put porridge on the floor.  

I don't feel like I have a regular time that I can download all my thoughts and ideas and make sure I'm not missing things.  I'm fairly sure this piece - the "get it out of my head" time - is key to an organizational system.  Instead I bounce things around in my brain forever and ever until I get them out or do them.  But... I am not good at the "getting out" right now.

Andy and I plan our weeks on Wednesdays again, because by Friday we were too tired.  On Wednesday we are also tired.  I think we are generally tired.

[this post was interrupted to place the grocery order that I forgot]

I know I'm a morning person and yet... people are evening people.  Once a week I meet my a friend in the evening for sports.  This week we did outdoor yoga and it was super nice and then we sat in the garden and talked until 10pm because it was still light and lovely outside and it was great but I definitely couldn't wake up early enough to do sport the next day.

On Tuesday night Andy and I went out to the local climbing/bouldering center and did some bouldering and then went out for a drink and  it was great but I definitely couldn't wake up early enough to do sport the next day.

On Wednesday night we did our planning meeting and I stayed up until 10m and then Clara woke up sad (possibly cold?) at 11:30pm and I definitely couldn't wake up early enough to do sport the next day.

And now it's Thursday and I haven't done morning sport since Monday.  Everything that I did instead of morning sport was good and fun, but I also want to be running since I've got a half marathon in October.  

Maybe this is balance.  Some weeks are evening weeks and some weeks are morning weeks?  Some weeks I write blog posts until 8:45pm, even though I could also be finishing the May photo albums or finishing June budget or planning my week next week or replying to texts?

In other news, I am reading Florence Adler Swims Forever and enjoying it.  It's not as sad as the synopsis made me think it would be (although I'm only 50% through the book).

I decided to go open water swimming last Saturday at a local reservoir and had an amazing time and now I want to go open water swimming all the time.  This seems a weird hobby to pick up in the midst of a book about a drowning.  

Also, picking up a new hobby (swimming) while I'm supposed to be training for a half marathon is not really great for training for a half marathon.

Small life updates and a mini Friday DITL.

I want to write something like "it's been a crazy few weeks" but honestly, all weeks are crazy weeks in my life right now.  Last week Andy started a full time in office job.  He started on Wednesday because a life pro tip is to always start a job on a Wednesday.  No one really wants to start training on a Monday.  In my current job I started on Wednesday and the IT guy said "we don't usually have people start on a Wednesday, but it's probably good for you because we didn't actually have enough computers for all the Monday starters this week and one person had to wait 4 hours".  

I've "officially" gone down to 4 days a week (not at all officially, I'm actually bleeding annual leave to take this time off, but I am eternally thankful that I accrued 25 days of leave while on Maternity leave), and because Andy was in the office this week I had to attend the kids sports day AND Lily's Reception induction day, each of which took 2 hours.  I am trying not to stress because my job *is* flexible, but last week I interviewed for a new job (a promotion, but also a more doable on four days a week promotion) and that's provided a stressful and exciting backdrop to everything else.

In good news, I am excited for Lily to start Reception, and I like her teacher, and her school.  The headteacher said "You'll be here until 2032" which I quickly realized meant "2035" because of the twins don't start for three years which means I will be 50 when my youngest finishes primary school.  Wow.

Anyways, here's some random phone photos from my second friday "off" where I do a fulltime job (watching kids) but get no money for it.  I am far more beaten and battered from this Friday than from any work day I have ever had.  

We dropped Ezra at school at 9am and then drove to the local park that now has a coffee shop because playground + coffee is the dream.  

After the park we went to the grocery store to buy nappies.  We are reconsidering our grocery ordering because the current place we order from is kind of expensive for some things, and we can't get some things there, but the quality is generally good AND they score pretty high on Ethical Consumer.   But they don't sell nappies, so we may end up getting deliveries from two stores on rotation, because this is definitely not a sustainable way of doing shopping (but it is kind of fun):

After the grocery store it was home for lunch, twin nap, then I dropped Lily off at nursery school (my mom was at home with the twins).  Then I had two hours to do whatever I wanted, except that I also needed to make sure I got everything done to keep the rest of the day moving.  I had lunch and then prepped veg for dinner, made hummus, set up the smoothie for after school, put laundry in the drier because even though it's a Welsh heatwave (30c/86f) I cannot be pegging out 50 tiny kid clothes on the line, and then set up water play for when the kids got home from school.

I woke up the twins, collected Ezra and Lily, then sorted a snack of breadsticks and smoothie before letting the kids do this for an hour:

We are trying a new Friday night dinner for "picnic for dinner" and it went well-ish today.  I mostly do not understand how one is supposed to have a job and make dinner for kids (and/or adults) but that is a post for another day.  Aubrey ate a bowl of hummus, Clara ate some bites of ham, and mostly no one griped too much about the food.  The chopped veg was barely touched but I feel like a better person for chopping it (I had some!).

And then, it was night, and I feel battered and tired.  

There are only 4 more weeks of school here, so I have 4 more of these Fridays.  Then 6 weeks of Summer Fridays... and then Lily will be in Reception and I'll have twin only Fridays.  These Fridays of twin 1.5 year olds and a 4.5 year old are fun, but much of their fun comes from being so time limited.

Habit Tracking - a perfectly un-perfect day.

I've been doing some habit tracking this year (inspired by Kae). I'm tracking whether I do following things:

• Daily Planning
• Floss
• strength
• cardio
• yoga/stretch
• Ate Veg
• Ate Fruit
• Vitamins
• Meditate
• walk
• Line a Day

I'm not sure I love habit tracking, but I'm learning some things about myself.  

I don't eat fruit. I spend so much time chopping and preparing and serving fruit to the kids and then I will go days without eating fruit. I like fruit!  Perhaps I need to start eating fruit whenever I make fruit for the kids.  I think the problem with fruit is that it doesn't seem to fill any real need - I love strawberries but how many strawberries should I eat and why?  I'm not going to reach for strawberries if I'm hungry.  And I usually don't eat when I'm not hungry.  Maybe 3pm needs to be "Rachel eats fruit" time, because eating fruit is good and I guess there's no good reason to wait until I'm hungry to eat fruit?

I also don't really meditate or floss.  I floss more than I meditate though! But I feel like there's benefit in tracking the things I don't do, so I can tell when I do start to incorporate them or for how long.  Sometimes I floss for like two weeks straight... then I just don't.

Yesterday - Saturday the 14th - was my first ZERO Habit day. 

I had a dinner with friends on Friday which kept me out to 11pm (unheard of for me!) so did not get up early (ie before 6am which is the cutoff for kid/toddler wake ups) for exercise of any sort.  I did not plan my day before it started.  I did not eat any fruit or any veg all day (this was a big mistake, I was ravenous by the time we had dinner, which was macaroni and cheese, and I ate 3 bowls of it,.. although it have peas in it so maybe I did have veg?) I ate a bagel for breakfast, a cliff bar at 3pm, and half a scone for lunch because apparently moms eat like college students.

I did not take vitamins and I certainly didn't meditate.  I did go for a walk carrying Clara and chatted with some neighbours but it was a 1/4 mile walk that took us 45 minutes because OMG are 19 month olds slow walkers.  I guess I could count that, but I usually try and count walks where I maintain forward momentum for more than 50% of the time.

I usually do my line a day in the morning (because evening entries say "I ate x for dinner I am tired" and morning ones are slightly more rounded reviews).  I did not do the line a day yesterday.

This was my first ZERO Habit day of 2025.  It wasn't the worst day, but it certainly wasn't the best.  

Also, as a 40 year old human, I really need to be eating some fruit and vegetables if I'm going to eat three bowls of macaroni and cheese for dinner.  Habits are here to support good decisions... Macaroni and Cheese is always a good decision but needs some supportive habits to not feel like a bloat monster after.

I'm sure I'll learn something bigger and better from a year of habit tracking than "fruit and vegetables are good".... but apparently I'm not there yet.

Do you track habits? Do you eat fruit? Can you eat three bowls of macaroni and cheese?