by Carla Louise | Oct 17, 2016 | carlalouise, Little Business, Multipotentialite Life, Organise & Declutter, Portfolio Career, Work Happy |
This weekend I disabled the auto-renew on four of my domain names. When they expire, they’ll no longer be mine – and this is a rather strange feeling.
Some are old, some are ones I’ve not used yet, some I had great plans for but things have changed.
Mostly, there just physically isn’t enough time for me to maintain fourteen websites. Disabling these and letting them go leaves me with ten domain names and seven actual sites – carlalouise.com / carlawatkins.com / carlawatkinsphotography.com / runawaydays.co.uk / unfurlingyourwings.com / sillykittens.co.uk are all sites that I use and maintain and develop, plus of course inkdrops.co.uk which sits separately.
duckingfabulous.com / mermaiding.co.uk / mermaiding.uk / paperdollsburlesque.co.uk are all redirects, but valuable to me nonetheless.
So what am I giving up and saying goodbye to?
The Website Beautician
The Website Beautician is officially retiring when the domain expires in early December – I’ve been doing minimal maintenance work for a good 18 months now, and avoiding taking on any more website work. I loved the clients I had and their glorious small businesses, but it was one of those times where following your passion isn’t the answer to everything.
It turns out that though I enjoy fiddling with my own sites, and will happily sit up till 2am tweaking CSS, that joy turns to terror and heavy responsibility when someone else’s site, livelihood and money are involved.
Girl Meets Van
Girl Meets Van has also sadly come to a halt, because I accidentally bought a house last summer, it’s needed a lot more work to it than I anticipated, and the last of my camper van savings are going on the studio build which is starting at the end of October – I’ll finally have an office/studio space again and I can’t wait!
(I’m typing this to you from the bureau in my living room, where both laptops balance precariously among filing, the mic and piles of post its. My wall planner is draped over the sofa. It is driving me INSANE.)
While I’m letting girlmeetsvan go somewhat reluctantly, I’m also acknowledging that actually, my life goals and what I want have changed since I started that fund and blog.
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by Carla Louise | Oct 11, 2015 | At Home, carlalouise, Memories, Project Home |
There is nothing in my living room but a pile of suitcases, one recliner and some garden chairs. I have a glorious kitchen and no carpets, and my new bed is yet to arrive so I have put the old mattress on the floor. My bedroom floor is covered in filing and my makeshift curtains have just started purring…
Such is the joy of moving back into my house. And oh, it is wonderful… Rather odd, not least to have such a small amount of stuff in my home. And it looks so different! But quite inspiring at the same time, and I have great plans.
My carpets arrive in a couple of weeks, I am going to attempt to install sliding doors to make a wardrobe of sorts, and my sofa, bed and mattress and sofa bed for spare room arrive in the middle of November. Ish.
Luna and Clover and I moved home on Friday night, in a remarkably painless process – I think Mum and Dad were sad to say goodbye to the cats, but also relieved to have their house back. The three of us are not the most subtle visitors (especially as the litter tray had to live in my bedroom. I think Mum is probably still airing her study!)
Let them out today and they promptly buggered off over the shed, but came back when they had done exploring. And have been good as gold (worn out?!) this evening. For any cat owners in the same situation, of moving their cats around a lot, I can highly recommend the Pet Remedy diffusers and Zylkene – I was dubious of both but they have helped chill my two out muchly 🙂
So what’s next? I want to re-read the Magic of Tidying Up and implement some of Marie’s advice – this means it may take me six months to get all my stuff back into my living space. But that’s a good thing – I keep a huge amount of things for sentimental reasons and I suspect a decent digital photo of the things would do just as well (plus they’re harder to get weepy over when I’m so inclined).
It’ll be good to get back into a routine – I have missed blogging regularly!
by Carla Louise | Apr 11, 2014 | carlalouise, Gratitude and goals, Life Magic, Organise & Declutter |
Good grief. I work almost exclusively online – here, with The Website Beautician, and as a web content editor at the university. So what I want to know is, how on earth has my daily handbag ended up full of all of this?!
Yeah, not Clover – she was just being “helpful”.
That’s a makeup bag, four eyeliners, two blushers, three lipglosses, a mascara, two mirrors, a pair of tweezers and foundation – and I don’t wear makeup during the day at work.
A CD (wtf?!), a pencil case with 15 (15!) pens and one pencil, chocolate, biz cards in a Loughborough holder, a notebook (green) for a course I’m doing, my beloved Moleskine diary, £20 I’d forgotten I’d got out of the cash machine, my little camera, half a pharmacy (ibuprofen, iron supplement, antihistamine, rescue remedy), my clip in dreads, various hairbands, my purse, two forks, a spoon, a cloth for cleaning my glasses, a plug for a phone charger (but no cable) and a USB stick. And a half written letter to Chloe.
Which would kind of be ok, if a) I didn’t also carry a bag with lunch and two big folders in it everywhere and b) I hadn’t cleared it out literally two days ago. At which point I removed two types of eczema cream, antiseptic cream, more pens, my TV remote control (again, wtf?!), the cable for the charger, two books, a magazine, the beads I bought on Thursday, half a brownie, four packs of tissues and a necklace. And today I left tap shoes and a scarf on my desk at work.
No wonder my back and shoulder hurt!
What the contents of my bag say about me: I reckon I’m prepared for just about anything, but that I REALLY need to pay more attention to the state of clutter in my life. So it’s just as well that the fantastic Anna Kunnecke is teaching the Queen Sweep course for free. It sarted on Monday and prompted this post. And, well – if the rest of the course is as effective as this first week, hopefully I’ll be much more aware and much less cluttered in the not too distant future!
What’s in your handbag? I suspect I’m not alone in my delusions of travelling light…
