Image: AmeliaKay on Etsy

So I've been pondering a little bit. Pondering what this Experiment is all about. Trying to come up with a good response to the question that inevitably arises when people say:

"Oh, you blog? What's your blog called? ...The Lavender Experiment? And what's that all about exactly?"

If I had five minutes I could give them a rambling repsonse, but no-one wants a five minute monologue answer, so I generally say, "Oh, well, um, it's about living simpler and greener. A bit of craft, a bit of repurposing, a bit of recycling, some gardening, cooking. You know." It does the job I guess, but I think it lacks panache.

This is what it's all about:

Living simpler by: decluttering.
Living simpler by: organising my life.
Living simpler by: buying less and making more.
Living simpler by: cooking healthy, easy meals for my family.
Living simpler by: budgeting.


Living greener by: reducing waste.
Living greener by: repurposing things into beautiful decor and toys.
Living greener by: using all-natural cleaning and body products.
Living greener by: buying our groceries locally and in season.
Living greener by: producing some of our own food at home.


I want to live simpler. I want to live greener. I want to create a home for my family that is beautiful, mindful and full of good memories. I want to show people that even small changes, over time, add up to make a big difference.

 Now, to condense that into a one-sentence answer...

River Cottage Love

Dear Mr Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall,


I very much like the cut of your jib. Please sponsor me and my family so we can work and live at River Cottage. Your vegetable garden makes me swoon.


Sincerely,
Brooke

I Wanna Be Like Hugh - by Ben Walker

Please tell me I'm not alone here in my love (in a non-husbandy way, of course) for Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall. He's so earthy and funny and embracing of the simple life. And he's so fabulously...British.

The River Cottage life runs pretty parallel with my ideal lifestyle, and I sometimes dream about living on a big farm, in an old farmhouse, with a huge, abundant vege garden and a handful of livestock, living off our land as much as possible. But the reality is that that is a full-time job and Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall most likely has a staff of gardeners and stock-keepers who look after it all for him.

But I can dream.

No Angel

Tenuous photo link: I'm drinking a beer.

I'm no angel. Like everyone, I'm busy. I'm a busy mum and wife and sister and daughter and writer. I like things to be simple where possible. I like to do things efficiently where possible. I don't like making extra work for myself.

I like wearing make-up. I like having my hair done (and getting it coloured!) I like eating lollies. I am a big fan of coffee. I love wine. I shop at Target. I travel. I used disposable nappies on both my little ones until they were six weeks old and would fit into the cloth ones I bought.

If my goal was to live completely without chemicals, and in a carbon-positive way, then I would be making very different changes to my life.

My goal instead, is to simplify life.

I love that I'm learning about green cleaning because, yes, it reduces the amount of unnecessary and harmful chemicals in the house, but also because I now have four spray bottles in my cleaning cupboard, rather than the dozens I had before. Things are simpler.

I love that I use only a handful of daily beauty products and the vast majority of them are completely natural.

I love that I try to reduce our household garbage by recycling, shopping smarter and reusing more, because it means I'm more mindful of what I buy, which in turn means less stuff in general.

But I'm so not an eco-bully. Or a green-snob. Just sayin'.

xxx

Gardening: Getting Started

Our beautiful jacaranda. I can take no credit for this. It's much older than me.

When I was younger, I would listen to my parents talk about their garden, what plants they had planted, what was performing, what needed fertilising, pruning and mulching, what had to be moved and what they would change. I found it so incredibly confusing and remembered thinking, "How the hell can you know all this stuff? How can you remember all this information?!"

Fast forward a few years, and while I'm very much still a novice gardener, I think I've discovered the secret to garden knowledge and know-how:

just do it.

I tried reading gardening books before I ever planted a single thing and it just didn't work for me. Unless I had the physical experience in digging, planting, watering, weeding, fertilising, feeding and pruning, the words in the book meant nothing.

So I got started. I bought a really cheap, crappy set of hand tools from Bunnings (I think it cost me all of $10), bought some natives and tube stock from the local plant reserve and gave it a shot. I put in about 20 plants in the beginning and I haven't looked back since. Initially, Don Burke's The Lazy Gardener was the only book I took my lead from, and I've learnt heaps since just through trial and error.

I do love seeing the garden come together, and spring is by far my favourite time to plant-watch, but for me the real, simple joy comes from just being outside, hands in the soil, getting dirty, hearing the birds, smelling the earth, watching the worms, checking the flower buds. It seriously is like therapy to me, and a major part in why I started The Lavender Experiment in the first place. If there was so much pleasure in such simple, grounding tasks, then surely simplifying other parts of our life could only be a good thing?

Crafty: Pom Poms!

Part of the Lavender Experiment, for me, is to decorate our home with handmade things, things that have a little piece of us in them, things that mean something.

I'm certain I could go and buy loads of pretty knick knacks all at once and have the decorating finished in a matter of days, but A) there's no fun in that, B) there's too much money in that and C) that doesn't express a great deal about us as a family.

I'm a big fan of quirky garlands at the moment and have been working on a woolen pom pom garland for the past couple of days. I forgot how long it takes to make pom poms the old-fashioned way, but I do find the repetitiveness therapeutic so I don't mind.

The progress on my own garland will be slow, I'm sure, but these gorgeous examples keep me inspired:

From Honestly...WTF

From Small Bird

From Millalove

From Honestly...WTF

K.I.S.S: Decisions

Chucks by Nan Lawson on Etsy

One of my dearest friends is moving to London today, indefinitely. We had dinner last week (such a pleasure, let me tell you! Great company, amazing Italian food, delicious wine...) and I was struck by how calm and committed to the move she was - no nerves or cold feet or second guesses. Not that it would be warranted mind you, I think this is going to be amazing for her, but you could be forgiven for feeling a little jittery about such a massive shift.

It got me thinking though about keeping decisions simple and owning your choices. Sparky and I have made a lot of big decisions in a seemingly short amount of time - the decision to sell our house in the city and move to the mountains was made early one morning and we were looking for property the same day. We also decided very quickly to close down Trove, just as it was becoming very successful. Both of these decisions have been life-changers and choices we've never once regretted. We made the best decision for ourselves and committed to it. There's no benefit in second guessing after the fact because the alternatives were never an option.

It's such a welcome relief when you commit to a decision and then simply move forward.

I once read an article on happiness, and one of the suggestions to creating more happiness was to simplify our decision-making process. If you need new shoes you should visit just two shoe stores and make your choice. More options doesn't mean you're going to feel more satisfied once your decision is made, it just means that making that decision will take longer and likely be more stressful.

Now, I don't know about you, but I'd quite like to spend a day shoe shopping, so I don't think that that was the best example but I do like the thinking behind it!

Baby Steps.

Fairly unrelated image from my iPhone.

When I first started thinking about the Lavender Experiment I was driven by huge, lofty goals of complete self-sufficiency - a garden overflowing with enough organic fruit and veges to feed my family every week, solar panels, huge rainwater harvesting tanks, organic, fair-trade clothes, chemical-free living. You name it, I wanted it.

But now, things are more complicated. I'm busier than I've ever been and most days I get through the absolute necessities and not much else. I'm all about doing what I can, where I can. Yes, it's incredibly admirable to live an entirely self-sufficient life, completely off the grid, but for me and my family it's not realistic right now.

We all hear about the imminent dangers of climate change. We all hear that we need to act now and act big in order to slow its approach. We see the melting ice, the rising sea, the floods, the droughts, the catastrophic weather events.

Though enthusiastic about the experiment, my soon became, "Well, what difference can I make? What could I possibly do?" I was so overwhelmed by the challenge at hand that I ultimately did nothing.

The way I see it now, it's far better making changes where we can, as opposed to having lofty intentions but doing nothing about them. Baby steps.

So this month I use low-VOC paint, recycle and buy second-hand furniture to restore. Next month we hold a garage sale, plant some native plants in the garden and restart the compost bins. I can buy gifts from local and independent producers. I can green clean. I can use fabric nappies on my kids. I can recycle, lots. I can get some chooks for the backyard.

These aren't big steps. But if I list all the baby steps I take this year, I can see that I may just start to make a difference.

Why?

So, a little bit of background and some understanding as to what this is all about:

I'm a stay at home mum of one very active and hilarious 18-month-old girl, with another bub on the way (due beginning December). My husband Sparky, Isy and myself live in a teeny tiny house in the Blue Mountains, about an hour out of Sydney.

An embarassingly old shot of us. (I'm a bit camera-shy.)

We're smack-bang in the middle of organising major renovations and an extension to our 1950s fibro cottage, and hope to start construction within the next 4 weeks. We hope (optimistically) to be finished the majority of the construction before baby #2 arrives in late November/early December.

I am a complete garden nerd. I love gardening magazines, shows, blogs, forums etc, and often find my bedtime reading consists of Organic Gardener or one of my numerous vegetable gardening books.  I have to admit, as excited as I am about the upcoming works on our house, I am a tiny bit more pumped at the idea of finally bringing to life my plans for a big vege garden and small orchard in our backyard and seeing just how much we can live off our little patch of land.

I used to own and run an independent jewellery label, Trove, but decided to close the doors earlier this year. (I am currently in the process of selling the last few hundred pieces, so do check it out if you are interested - the prices are pretty damn good.) After three years of building the business up - I had 40+ hand-selected stockists world-wide, showed my collections at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week and was on the verge of hiring permanent staff - I suffered major burn-out. I was trying to be an excellent full-time Mum to a very active, not-very-sleepy toddler, trying to run a busy jewellery label and trying to make every individual piece I sold (all production was down to me too) and it took its toll on me emotionally and physically.

As a result of the turmoil and angst we felt earlier this year, I started thinking about living more simply. Sounds twee, I know, but I can really see and really understand the value in living a life well, living a life wholly and living a life simply and naturally. And that's really where this journey, the Lavender Experiment, really begins.

I want to document the things I do (successfully and unsuccessfully) in trying to live life more simply and more naturally. I'm also keen on sharing the renovation process as it goes along, the garden's construction and other things that pique my interest along the way.

Hopefully you'll find it interesting. I know I will!

Brooke x

The Who in the What Now?

Welcome to The Lavender Experiment.


I mother, I wife, I cook, I clean, I bake and I plan renovations. I garden, I read, I project-manage said renovations. I budget, I shop, I grow handmade businesses up, I burn myself out when they become successful, I close them down. I also blog.


My name is Brooke and I'll be your host on this journey into the simpler life. Let me also be your cautionary tale. For "simpler" is in the eye of the beholder.