Hello cuties!

It's been a while since my last update. In regular fashion, my blog activity waxes and wanes depending on how much clutter I've had in my life, and lately there's been a LOT of clutter! The end of the year is supposed to be a time for relaxing and resting, but somehow I always end up cramming all the stuff I was leaving off until later into the last few weeks of the year. I've got a lot to update on, but I'm going to keep today's blog entry brief!

With the new year coming up, I'm dusting off my (very VERY dusty) bullet journal and doing some journaling exercises to get me set up for next year on the right foot. Today's entry is all about routines! Morning and bedtime routines can really make or break my executive functioning. I've done a horrible job of keeping up with them over 2021, and it really shows. Having a consistent sleep schedule and having time to take care of myself in the mornings is a huge goal of mine for 2022, but it's been so long since I kept up with those things that I've totally forgotten what a healthy routine even looks like anymore. So, I decided to start at the very very beginning, and I thought I'd share my methods with you!

Free PDF Kit

First things first, you can download the PDF kit here. It includes all the materials that this blog post covers! You can annotate it digitally, or print it out and fill it out on pen and paper. I printed mine on A5 paper to put into my binder, but A4 is also fine.

 

Hello friends! Some of you on the server have probably noticed that I was mostly missing up until recently. It's a little rude to silently abandon a community that you started, so I'm sorry for disappearing 

First of all I've been doing okay, all things considered. But mentally it's been more of a struggle than usual, and it's been really hard to feel cute or have the energy to keep in touch. I'm not in crisis or anything, I just feel tired most of the day and haven't done the best keeping on top of my regular chores or taking the best care of myself. Ideally it's good to have a healthy balance of self care and dressing up cute. Instead I've spent every day in pajamas playing games. Even if I dress up, my room is too cluttered to take outfit pics. Then before long I become overly sensitive to the fit or texture of the clothes and I'm right back in my pjs again. Lately I just can't tap into my inner cuteness, instead I'm full gremlin 24/7. I'm actually fine with myself not feeling cute sometimes. I love feeling cute and good about my appearance, but there's plenty other things to focus on or feel proud of myself for. It's just hard to keep in touch with a fashion and beauty based community when I'm wearing the same sweatpants again for the 4th day in a row

As someone with Brain Problems there's a constant push and pull with me and my fashion. It always seems like dressing up makes me happier, but it also takes more energy than being wrapped up in blankets all day long. It feels a little like parallel MP and HP bars. In himekaji clothes I feel powerful so my MP bar fills up, but my comfort clothes let me restore my HP while my MP stays low. (Ok I've been playing a ton of FFXIV lately) I've noticed that a lot of us in alternative fashion communities have a similar up and down. Maybe the struggle of taking care of yourself makes you more invested in the outcome. Like, okay, if I'm getting out of bed and washing my face it's gonna be on my terms 

Overall, it can be hard to tell if I'm sad because I'm not wearing himekaji or if I'm not wearing himekaji because I'm sad. I think it's best not to attach judgement to it though. Going back to MMOs, you've gotta balance your resources properly! I do want to be more active in the community though, even if I'm not feeling well to dress up at times. If nothing else it's a good reminder that there are still things to dress up for ♡

I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day about offbrand cardigans and why they were the bane of my early himekaji coords.

As a habitual sweater wearer, I tend to feel a little naked if I don't have some kind of outer layer. Because of that I already had tons of cardigans when I was first starting to build my himekaji wardrobe. They're soft and comfy, but a little dressier compared to sweatshirts, and more convenient than pullovers. Surely these qualities make cardigans perfect for himekaji! Or so I thought, as I shoehorned all my vaguely himekaji colored cardigans into my wardrobe. Cardigans can look really cute in a himekaji coord and there are tons of good examples out there. However, just because it's a cardigan, doesn't mean it will fit with your wardrobe automatically. At their worst, offbrand cardigans can make a perfectly cute coord look ill fitting and cheap. Please learn from my mistakes as I teach you about the key features of brand cardigans and what to look for in your offbrand endeavors!

Good morning! It's already been a bit of time since I was active, other than finally getting around to finishing up some of those konmari posts that had been sitting in my drafts forever! Last month I got really busy and I wanted to post my little recap since I never got around to posting about the tea party or what I was up to!

The theme for last month's tea party was Mahou May, with the concept being that putting on Himekaji can really feel like a magical girl transformation! May was also Fanime month, so I was extremely busy getting all the last minute preparations going. It was really great getting to see everyone virtually but I'm already hoping that we'll get to return in person for real next year 

For the tea party, even though I was so busy I definitely had to put together a coord for such a cute theme! I picked an ank rouge skirt with star lace trim with red accents. The color scheme kind of reminded me of madoka and for some reason the stars just felt very magical to me! I picked Mr. Bilbert (name courtesy of my boyfriend LOL) as my obligatory mascot character! It was really fun seeing everyone's coords and their pets and plushies they would pick as their mascot character as well.

In a normal year, the donation process probably would have been the easiest part of my konmari project. When I started the process I naively pictured myself proudly posing in front of the mountain of discard items before carting them off to a goodwill dropoff site and moving on with my life. As the pandemic was already in full swing at the time that I began this process, I'm still stunned by my absolute blind optimism. What I quickly learned, however, is that donating items during a pandemic is actually pretty complicated. When it came to books and clothing, donation drives and library donations made it pretty straightforward. However, the miscellaneous komono items turned out to be a much bigger challenge. Most charities weren't looking for scrunchies, orphaned pot lids, or balls of yarn, and the thirft shops that would normally accept such donations were all being deeply hit by the pandemic. After looking around, I joined a local chapter of the Buy Nothing Project and got posting.

Buy Nothing changed my life.

At first, I was intimidated by the lofty task of hand-picking recipients for hundreds of items, and then coordinating the exchange with each individual giftee. I even shamefully have to admit that there were a few failed experiments which resulted in completely failing to get the item to the recipients I'd chosen  After much trial and error, I finally found a system that worked for me, so here I'll share my tips if you decide to go this route for your discards!

Overall, although gifting each individual item is a lot more taxing than simply dropping it all off at a donation site like in the Before Times, I actually have found the process to be extremely rewarding overall. I felt so much better knowing that my items were genuinely being given better homes, and it was a nice way to honor each item by holding it in my hands one last time and specifically choosing where it would go next. It was also a great way to get to know more people in my community, and seeing people's gratitude and generosity has really been a highlight of my past year 

P.S. : This is part 6 in my Konmari series! Click the links below to read the rest.

• Konmari Part 1: Planning
• Konmari Part 2: Sorting by Category
• Konmari Part 3: Clothing
• Konmari Part 4: Books
• Konmari Part 5: Komono 
• Konmari Part 6: Discards <- you are here

Where can things go?

Even though this process seemed never ending, it was really fun to do it little bits at a time, and it was really encouraging to see my home slowly become more and more comfortable and enjoyable! I think this process took an exceptionally long time for me because I tackled both organization and decoration at once. If I were to do this again I think I would have advised myself to just work on organizing things first with a focus on ease of use and tidying. Once all the categories had been cleanly stored away and processed, that would have been a better time to focus on decor. It wasn't bad doing both at once, but decorating definitely created a moving target feeling that easily made it feel like I wasn't making any progress even when I worked really hard