Stacey Solomon - Tap to tidy

STACEY SOLOMON ORGANISING, CRAFTING & CREATING HAPPINESS IN A MESSY WORLD Contents About the Author Mum, TV personality, meticulous organizer and crafter, Stacey shares love and positivity with every post, and her sense of humour is contagious. Find her @staceysolomon on Instagram and Twitter where she shares her daily recipes, craft projects, tidying wins and uplifting messages. Obviously everything in my life is dedicated to my Pickles. Butthis book isnt just for them, as much as I love them, this one is foryou, too. For each and every one of you who gave me the courageto put it all into writing and share my weirdness with the world. Iam forever grateful.

Loads of Love. A Quick Hello Storage jars. Glue guns. Labels. And dont even get me started on my trusty tension rods!Welcome to my world that I just love to tidy and organise. If youve picked up this book, you probably already know that about me. Im the one youll find busy clipping my crisp packets to curtain hooks in the snack cupboard (in colour order, of course) or spending Saturday night with my Hoover (and a Diet Coke in a champagne glass, too. Wild, I know!).

What you may not know, though, is why I bloomin love it and why Im hoping that, through these pages, you can enjoy it with me, too! I really do get so much joy from crafting, tidying and organising the crap out of life. I love nothing better than to see a messy corner transform into a happy, tidy space, to know that the junk drawer is finally sorted, or to turn my old candle jars into beautiful vases. It doesnt have to be something monumental either, just making the bed in the morning, or sometimes the afternoon, makes me feel like the day is going OK. Some nights, Joe and I are joined by all of the boys, so well wake in the morning and the bed is a complete tip. Its the most satisfying thing to just tuck the sheets in, put the throw over and chuck the pillows on (well, I say chuck, theyre actually all placed). I cant tell you how much I love that.

It may not seem a lot, but to me, with a baby and two older boys, a job, a cat, a dog and a Joe, it feels like a massive achievement. As a working mum, being tidy and organised definitely helps life run that much smoother. If things are tidy and organised and in a working system, my brain feels clearer, I feel as though Im more on top of things and I know exactly what I need to do to stay in control. Well, most of the time. But its much more than that, crafting, tidying and organising is something I do for me. Honestly, its not just the end result that makes me happy, its the process that I get something from.

Its a bit of time for me. Time to take my mind off whatever I might be worried about. It lets me focus on whats right in front of me. Tidying is the process, and being organised is the result, and the most important thing of all is that I feel good about things calmer, happier and more in control. Thats what Im so excited to share with you here. But above all, I hope that this book gives you a moment for you, because G-d knows, you deserve it.

Tidy By Nature Ive always been quite scatty, so being organised is a necessity for my personality. I need to know where everything is and I wouldnt say that this has ever ruled my life, but its always been a big part of it. When I was little, I used to sort through all my toys and make sure they were in the right boxes, and at mealtimes I would separate my food into little sections on my plate. My mum says she thought, what the hell? (I still do it now: if Im having a roast dinner, all the different foods have to be arranged into separate sections so I can get exactly what I want on my fork a piece of potato, a piece of meat and a piece of veg, each time, thank you.) Later, as a teenager, I stayed tidy and organised lazy, but organised! My college still uses some of my old exercise books as examples for their current students, because theyre all really neat and set out exactly as theyre supposed to be. Although I have to admit that this was during my college years, after Id had Zach, and being tidy and organised became more urgent than ever. Put it this way, none of my secondary school teachers would show me as an example for the model student! Proof that were all growing I definitely get that side of me from my mum.

My mum is really organised, even more so than me and taught me to be the same way. It was all part of learning to be responsible for myself. Growing up, if I forgot to pack a piece of homework or a part of my PE kit for school, it would be my responsibility. I quickly learnt that if I didnt get myself together, Id never have the right stuff for lessons and would end up in detention every day. GETTING MY SHT TOGETHER And then at a really young age I was just 17 when I became pregnant I became a mum myself. That meant there was me, my brother, my sister, my baby son, Zachary, and my mum all living in one small house.

Now there was no bloomin room to be messy! But more than that, I felt completely out of control and out of my depth. I just had no idea what the hell I was doing. I felt as if all my decisions had been made for me and there was nothing I could do about that. There were only tiny things that I could control, which might be, say, to make up the bottles, or to sort through the nappies and wet wipes. So, I ended up becoming even more into taking care of the little things that, handily, kept my mind busy, because I really didnt know where I was or who I was for a long moment. It was also a time in my life when I didnt really have anything as a teenage mum, I was on working tax credits.

So, I would collect my Giro (as the cheques were called) and have to be really organised with my money to make sure that I could afford everything that I needed. For instance, Id get milk vouchers from the government to buy formula for the baby, but I only got a certain amount. I had to be really strict about what type of milk I was going to buy and where I was going to get it from (it definitely doesnt all cost the same) and how I was going to use it. And that was just one of the ways I really had to get it together: to become more vigilant about what I was doing, what I was spending, what I had in already, so that when I went to the shops I didnt buy anything I didnt need. I found it all difficult, because I was really sad and struggling: asking myself, what have I done? The only thing that kept me going was knowing I had no choice but to get myself together for this little human that I loved so much. Even though, if Im honest, I had no idea how to love him at the time.