Beauty Empties November

It is time for an empties post again. Again, I successfully used up a lot of stuff. Altogether, 46 beauty items left me in November. And believe it or not: I was able to use up 860 ml of body butter and body lotion last month. Hence, I got rid of all my Bodyshop items (I kept the boxes of the body butters that are gone now, however, in order to use them as fancy storage boxes for other items - see them here being cleaned and here waiting to be filled). Finally my body lotion stash shrinks - at last! :-)

With decluttering, November might have been one of my best months ever. I was able to declutter 17 make up items, a couple of them were even quite expensive but I just don't like them or don't use them (and why should I keep them then even if I like them?) or they've gone bad, unfortunately, because they are really old. So, no guilt due to the waste, just gladness that these items are gone and my drawers are getting emptier and emptier! I'm nearly swimming in space and my stash continuously keeps to shrink and I enjoy the remaining products so much more! :-)

Here is a picture of all the beauty items that left me in November: 

A short summary and my thoughts about the emptied/decluttered products:

Scented Candle Obsession

It started to get really cold outside. In this season, what can be nicer and more relaxing that to sit besides a candle? While I haven't tried any scented candles at all in the last years, this autumn I discovered scented candles and became a bit obsessed with them. This is how my desk currently looks like:

On the picture, you can see my current favourite candle Feu de Bois by Diptyque. I adore this candle and the scent it has. I stumbled upon it on Meg's blog and had to buy it myself then too. I don't like how it smells when it does not burn, but when it burns, the scent is just wonderful. It smells like a fireplace. The scent is wonderful and very soothing and relaxing. Love it.

The other candle shown in the picture is Real Luxury by NEOM. This is nice but not as overwhelmingly great as Feu de Bois. Both are travel sized because I am still experimenting. However, I might purchase a big one soon as well. But I am not sure whether the big ones are not too bulky.

I love to burn my candles while meditating, while journaling, while reading, while writing my theses, etc. I could burn them all the time. ;-)

Some great advice for the week

Found @tumblr

Love that advice. It's a piece of advice that sometimes can be very hard to follow. Last month, however, I left something that no longer served me as it was not helping me to grow anymore (on the contrary) and, hence, didn't make me happy anymore. I love to grow and get new insights and walking away from that specific thing was the best I did for quite some time now. 

Was there anything you walked away from recently in order to serve your happiness and your natural need for growth?

11 things (part 1) / 11 Dinge (Teil 1)

I have been tagged by Fräulein Kitsch to answer the 11 things tag. This the first time someone tagged me. It's a pretty tough tag that involves a lot of work and also some honest personal answers but I'm very happy that I've been tagged and feel very honored! Thanks a lot Fräulein Kitsch! As it is the first time I've been tagged, I decided to post my answers bilingual in english and in german. For the german version, have a look below. Furthermore, I divide the tag onto two posts, because it is pretty comprehensive. This post presents the first part of the tag. Very soon, I'll post the second part. 

These are the rules of the 11 things tag:

1. write 11 things about yourself
2. answer the 11questions you're asked by the tagger to answer
3. devise 11 questions and tag 11 bloggers to answer them (the bloggers should have less than 200 readers if possible)
4. inform these bloggers
5. tagging backwards is not allowed

There is no rule about breaking up the work. Hence, as mentioned above, I'll now first write 11 things about myself and afterwards answer the questions, Fräulein Kitsch asked me in another post and pose my questions to the bloggers I want to tag.

Here are 11 things about myself:

1. I am obsessed with anything related to good posture. This is why I am doing Pilates and Qi Gong at the moment in the first place and this also why I started to do horseback riding. Interestingly, however, I currently discover Qi Gong as something that has so much more to offer (but it indeed also is a really great training for the deep torso muscles that support our posture ;-)). But it was the same with horseback riding. It happens often that we start doing something with a specific aim in mind and discover new features of the activity that we appreciate as well and adds to the fun. 
2. I have been a very unorganized person myself but I am currently working very hard to become organized and the more organized I become the less understanding I have for a lack of organization. I am a bit embarassed to admit that but sometimes disorganization can annoy me very much.
3. It is not really something new (see my post on minimalism) but I am currently obsessed with striving after minimalism and I have managed to declutter half of my wardrobe in the last 12 months. Currently, I also try to shrink my beauty possessions and other possessions as discussed in my Minimalism post I recently posted.
4. Through realizing what minimalism really is, I discovered my love for limitations. I limit space for item categories, I limit time for certain endeavours and I think very much about all kinds of limitations and start to appreciate them. Recently I even thought that it's great that even our life has a limitation. Yeah, I know, I'm becoming strange ... ;-)
5. I cannot tolerate any alcohol and don't like to be drunk at all. This is why I discovered the world of alcohol-free alcoholic beverages. Today I am sucker for alcohol-free beer and alcohol-free cocktails and people who don't know me well easily think that I am hard drinker because I drink a lot of drinks that look like alcoholic beverages. Sometimes I even start at lunch. ;-) I have a lot of fun when I am admired for being such a hard drinker. :-)    
6. I taught myself how to knit with youtube videos 3 years ago. I love to knit because it is is a really meditative and soothing hobby. Unfortunately, I currently don't have time to pursue this hobby at the moment and I really miss it. Here are a couple of things I knit during the last 3 years: bow scarf, bow scarf again, crooked cowl
7. I'd love to learn how to sew and also experiment with carpentry. :-)
8. I cannot watch horror films. Unfortunately, sleep is something that doesn't come easily to me anyway but when I additionally watch horror films, I can feel haunted for weeks. Years ago I saw an advertisement for a really creepy movie where something came out of the head of somebody who was showering. Afterwards I had a hard time showering for weeks.
9. I love watching TV-series and enjoy doing it while cycling each morning on my bike ergometer.
10. I love to ask a ton of questions and discuss things deeply. Some people get annoyed. Others think that I cannot manage my life on my own because I sometimes ask every bullshit that crosses my mind. ;-) But I also had really great discussions because I am not afraid to ask any bullshit that crosses my mind. Hence, everything has it's pros and cons. ;-)
11. I drink too much. I might be the only person on this earth who does not need to remind herself to drink more. Each day, I drink tons and tons of coffee, tea, water, ... (1.5 liters of coffee and green tea and at least 1.5 liters of herbal tea and/or water and juice). I cannot sit anywhere with something to drink besides me. And this is why I also have to go to the bathroom all the time. Close friends even make fun of me having to go to the bathroom all the time. Therefore, I currently keep tracking what I drink and how much I drink of it in order to maybe shrink the amount a bit or to take care to drink more healthy drinks.

The Power of Less

I love the video above. It has been made by Leo Babauta from zenhabits as an advertisement for his book The power of less (haven't read it yet but it's on my to read list ;-)). The video is expressing exactly how I feel right now too. Actually, I felt attracted to minimalism for a couple of years now. But I didn't want to get rid of stuff, interestingly, I rather wanted to digitize it and store it on tiny hard disks. This is why I struggled with minimalism a lot and I realized recently that I wasn't a minimalist at all as I focused on space solely and this is just a tiny fragment of what minimalism really is. There are many things that cannot be digitized and that we have to keep in their physical form. E.g. clothes, beauty items, our furniture and many more. I also have to admit - although I love digital books, the software for reading them sometimes spoils the party for me, too. It does not allow to add a dog-ear to book pages, underline words and sentences in different colours, write thoughts at the border of the page and such kinds of things that I love to do with my books. So, of course although I own a lot of digital books, I still do purchase, keep and read many books the old style as well.

My wardrobe and my beauty collection (and other collections) were and still are quite huge because I love to experiment and also love to have a choice. These collections were even bigger last year. Last year I started to force myself to use up my beauty items and while doing so, I discovered that I didn't like many of these items or that the shades didn't match and this is why I started to experiment more and this lead to many additional purchases. Although these purchase were expensive, they also very valuable because I got to know more about colours, makeup and what suits me and what I like and how I like myself to look like in different occasions. While evaluating and experimenting with beauty, I ended up purchasing a lot of new stuff and there were times when my collection also grew more than it shrunk. (I just made an inventory of my body lotions here and I was pretty shocked when I realized how huge the amount is. ;-)) But by means of my monthly empties, I established a routine of experimenting and decluttering and using up and this is something that I am very proud of today. My beauty stuff is used and although it seems like I'm hoarding, it is not real hoarding because I try, experiment and use stuff up and also declutter on a regular basis. In the future, however, I want to shrink the amount of beauty items that I possess much more.