The art of Tszujing a home

My friend Tash’s home is always impeccable. It’s not one of those show homes where you’re too scared to touch anything, or even sit down, it’s got a laid back easy feel, beautifully decorated, but it’s always in order.

I don’t know about you but I have my moments in the home. At times I’m completely organised and everything has a place, as much as I can with limited storage. The other times there is a trail of things around the home, mostly paper, toys and clothes on the line or in a pile that needs to be ironed or folded. Yes, my home can at times (perhaps Guillaume, who tends to tidy more than me might say “always”) look like a Chinese laundry.

Then when I have guests and depending on the time constraints, I will either a) find a home for these things floating around, or b) stuff them in the cupboard so that I don’t reveal my true colours.

When Tash came to visit and our two families stayed in a lovely bach together, I saw exactly what she does. Actually, it was poor Guillaume that brought it to my attention with a good old “look what she’s doing” nudge. At the end of the night, we’re all chatting, one of us stacking the dishwasher, the others standing around. As we were doing this, Tash, who was in full conversation with us, glided around the room, fluffing pillows and placing them into position on the lounges, picked up the papers books and magazines that were strewn around the room and placed them in a neat pile (edges lined up), ready for the next day. It looked effortless, in fact we could have missed it. The room looked immaculate in no time at all and considering that we had five young children running around a couple of hours earlier, it felt like a miracle. If it were me, I would have been in deep concentration and focused on the task of tidying with almost this, poor me, look what I’m doing attitude, not the discrete and effortless way that Tash did it.

Each night, we observed that she did the same thing and we asked her about it. She told us that she was tszujing and it’s something that she’s always done (so she doesn’t spend every waking our tidying and cleaning like I had imagined).

So this is my aim, each evening as Guillaume and I are in conversation, I’m going to tszuj and be free of the mess. Yes, I’ve decided that I’m going to be a tszujer!

Happy weekend people!

Mel x

P.S. Do you like my new Nodi rug? I borrowed it for a photoshoot and fell in love with it, so had to buy it!